Signed by Governor Gavin Newsom

Vote Smart's Synopsis:

Vote to concur with House amendments and pass a bill that requires California employers with 100 or more employees to submit an annual pay data report that outlines compensation and hours worked of its employees by gender, race, ethnicity, and job category.

Highlights:

• Authorizes the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) to receive, investigate, conciliate, mediate, and prosecute complaints alleging practices made unlawful under Section 1197.5 of the Labor Code (Sec. 2).

• Requires the DFEH to adopt procedures to ensure that the departments coordinate activities to enforce Section 1197.5 of the Labor Code (Sec. 2).

• Requires private employers that have 100 or more employees and are required to file an annual Employer Information Report (EEO-1) under federal law, to submit a pay data report to the DFEH on or before March 31 of each year, beginning in 2021 (Sec. 3).

• Requires the pay data report to contain information including, but not limited to (Sec. 3):

• The number of employees by race, ethnicity, and sex in specified job categories;

• The number of employees by race, ethnicity, and sex, whose annual earnings fall within each of the pay bands used by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Occupational Employment Statistics survey;

• A “snapshot” that counts all of the individuals in each job category by race, ethnicity, and sex, employed during a single pay period of the employer’s choice between October 1 and December 31 of the prior calendar year; and

• The total number of hours worked by each employee counted in each pay band during the prior calendar year.

• Authorizes the department to seek an order requiring the employer to comply with these requirements and recover the costs associated with seeking the order for compliance, if the department does not receive the required report (Sec. 3).

• Specifies that any individually identifiable information submitted to the department is considered confidential and not subject to disclosure, and prohibits any officer or employee of the department from making any individually identifiable information obtained under this section public (Sec. 3).

• Requires the DFEH to maintain pay data reports for not less than 10 years (Sec. 3).

Full Bill Text