Salary history to be removed from applications for Kansas City jobs

Last month, Kansis City voted to take salary history off applications for city jobs.

According to KCTV, the decision came after about a dozen women’s groups came together to ask the city to stop collecting salary history in the hiring process. They claimed that “not asking for pay history is the fair, right thing to do because it ends wage disparity with future hires and reduces legal liability”.

Notable cities in the U.S. other than Kansas City with laws prohibiting employers from asking about salary history include New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

“What we really want to do is to show employers in the private sector that if we can do it, they can do it too,” said Kansas City Councilman Scott Wagner. “Just as we had in the ‘Ban the Box’ discussion, the city took the lead and a couple of years later passed an ordinance, actually just recently, that applied to all employers in Kansas City, Missouri. So, we hope that we can show leadership in this area.”

The council said they will also ask companies who have contracts with cities to do the same. They’re also doing a gender study that will compare women’s pay with men’s pay by job category.

A 2013 study from the American Association of University Women reported that women get paid 6.6 percent less than men in their first jobs. When it comes to future jobs, employers often ask about a candidate’s salary history as a basis for establishing their new salary, which worsens gender pay inequality over time.