Hawaii enacts Pay Transparency and Salary History Ban
08/01/18
Author: ADP Admin/Friday, July 27, 2018/Categories: State Compliance Update, Hawaii
Overview: Hawaii governor signs into law a bill seeking to address the pay disparity between men and women who perform similar work.
Effective Date: January 1, 2019.
Details
On July 5, Governor David Ige signed into law a bill seeking to address the pay disparity between men and women who perform similar work.
Effective January 1, 2019, Hawaii employers with at least one employee in the state may not ask a job applicant about his or her salary history or rely on the applicant’s salary history in determining salary, benefits or other compensation during the hiring process or negotiation of an employment contract. Employers also may not bar employees from disclosing their wages or discussing or inquiring about the wages of other employees.
The new law expressly permits certain inquiries. An employer may discuss compensation and benefit expectations with the job applicant and inform the applicant of the proposed or anticipated salary or salary range for the position. The law also provides that “any objective measure of the applicant’s productivity, such as revenue, sales or other production reports” may be discussed with the applicant.
If an applicant “voluntarily and without prompting” discloses salary history information, the employer may consider salary history in determining the applicant’s salary and benefits and may verify the salary history. But employers using such “voluntarily” disclosed salary history information to set compensation must exercise caution because of the risk of litigation over whether the job applicant made a truly voluntary disclosure.
Action Required: In anticipation of the effective date, Hawaii employers should review and modify their employment applications, interview protocols and verification policies to exclude inquiries that relate to a job applicant’s salary history. Please note that the most recent version of our model employment application available on FormSource / Forms Library does not include questions seeking salary history.
As always, please be sure to contact your HR Business Partner if you have any questions.
This content provides practical information concerning the subject matter covered and is provided with the understanding that ADP is not rendering legal advice.
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