Black Women’s Policy Center supports employers in closing Pittsburgh wage gap

This year, the Black Women’s Policy Center launched Level Up: Greater Pittsburgh Gender Pay Equity Pledge in collaboration with Women and Girls Foundation and YWCA Greater Pittsburgh.

The three activist groups wanted to challenge employers in the Greater Pittsburgh area to use their power to close the gender wage gap, which, according to the 2019 Gender Equity Commission report “Pittsburgh’s Inequality Across Gender and Race,” disproportionately impacts women of color.

Level Up is an initiative working to create a systematic change by asking Pittsburgh employers to adopt five commitments when hiring new employees. The five steps are:

• Commit to supporting, promoting and engaging in pay transparency early during the hiring process.

• Ensure a fair and equitable hiring process by eliminating desired salary and salary history questions from the application process

• Provide annual company-wide diversity trainings to address, reduce and educate about unconscious biases and associated barriers that impact hiring, promotion, and organizational culture.

• Undertake an annual review of gender and race pay differences among employees performing comparable tasks requiring similar levels of responsibility, skills, complexity and working conditions, and considering levels of education, prior experience, skill, and company tenure.

• Commit to reviewing policies and practices to ensure compliance with The National Labor Relations Act of 1935.

The organizations want to continue to support employers in their journey through the five steps. Employers from across the greater Pittsburgh area are invited to attend the first in a series of roundtables to assist them in taking that pledge on Sept. 21 at 9:30 a.m. at Emerald City, 213 Smithfield St., Downtown.

“Employers in Pittsburgh have the power to end the structural racism and sexism that has led to gender pay inequities that negatively impact the women of this city, particularly women of color,” said Rochelle Jackson, founder and director, Black Women’s Policy Center. “Through this series of roundtables, we seek to engage employers through the Pledge and serve as a thought partner in addressing challenges that would prevent pay equity from becoming a reality in Pittsburgh.”

“Pittsburgh’s Inequality Across Gender and Race” spotlighted gender and racial inequality across health, income, employment and education in the region. The report found that Black women earn only 54 cents on the dollar compared with their white male counterparts in Pittsburgh. This is a large difference between the national average wage gap, calculating that Black women earn 63 cents on the dollar.

Employers interested in attending a workshop can register at www.blackwomenspolicycenter.org.