It’s a question on employment applications that many job seekers dread: What is your salary? 

Decline to respond and you might be taken out of the running for the opening. Answer the question, and you may have blown your chances of making much more than you did in your last job.

A proposed law scheduled to be introduced today in Cleveland City Council would make it illegal for employers located in the city to ask job applicants about past and current salaries. Employers also would be required to include salary ranges and scales in all formal job postings. Employers who fail to follow the law could face fines of up to $5,000 for each offense. The law would apply to businesses with at least 15 employees.

When a job applicant knows the salary range of a position, it makes it easier for the person to negotiate, said Grace Heffernan, executive director of the nonprofit Northeast Ohio Worker Center. The Pay Equity Alliance, a project of the worker center and Collaborate Cleveland, includes about 40 community groups and labor organizations that lobbied council members for the legislation.

Asking job seekers about their current or past salaries is anything but a straightforward question, she said.

“You ask them what they made at their last job, and then you pay them nominally more,” Heffernan said. “It is the simplest thing that employers can do to stagnate workers and prevent economic mobility.”

If passed, the ordinance would be the strongest pay transparency law in Ohio, according to Heffernan. Laws in Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo are less comprehensive, she said. For example, they either prohibit employers from asking about salary history or require them to post salary ranges – not both.

“The purpose of this ordinance is to raise labor standards and increase the availability of and accessibility to good jobs in the city of Cleveland,” she said.  

The ordinance would also establish a citywide task force to “develop and implement strategies to close pay gaps,” according to a council news release.

Council Member Charles Slife, one of the sponsors of what is known as the unlawful discriminatory salary practices ordinance, said that having such a law is important in a city with many low-wage workers. Council members Jasmin Santana and Stephanie Howse-Jones are co-sponsors. Mayor Justin Bibb is also supporting the proposal.

“We’re trying to make sure that people are given the opportunity for salaries that are livable,” Slife said. “Obviously, we are a city that is really challenged by high levels of poverty. Anything that we can do to improve those circumstances is a worthwhile endeavor.

“It’s becoming common practice across the country,” he said of pay transparency laws, adding that about 20 states and several large municipalities have enacted them.

Cleveland’s pay transparency legislation aims to close the gender wage gap

Pay transparency laws have grown in popularity in the past few years with places such as New York state and Washington, D.C., enacting them. Advocates say these laws help prevent workers from being underpaid and assist in reducing widespread pay disparities, which disproportionately affect people of color and women. The Cleveland legislation’s preamble, or introduction, mentions the gender wage gap and how Black women and Latinas are among the hardest hit by it.

Women make 84 cents on the dollar compared to men, according to an analysis of 2023 Census data by the National Committee on Pay Equity. The committee started Equal Pay Day, which is March 25 this year, to focus on the gender wage gap. Black women typically earned only 66 cents on the dollar to what white, non-Hispanic men made and Latinas earned 58 cents.

Some in the business community, including organizations whose memberships represent demographic groups who have been marginalized in the workplace, have already supported Cleveland’s proposed pay transparency ordinance. They include the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development and the Plexus LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce, which joined the Pay Equity Alliance in lobbying for an ordinance by sending letters to Bibb and Council President Blaine Griffin last November.

Jenice Contreras, president and CEO of the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Center for Economic Development, wrote that the ordinance would “foster a more equitable and competitive job market to fuel our businesses.”

“[T]his legislation will help ensure that all workers are paid fairly for their labor, based on their skills and experience, rather than on their previous salaries,” she wrote in her letter to Bibb and Griffin. 

Signal Cleveland contacted the Greater Cleveland Partnership, which is the local chamber of commerce, to get the organization’s view on the legislation. GCP declined to offer a response and referred Signal Cleveland to a local human resources trade organization. Signal Cleveland will update this article with the organization’s response.

Discriminatory salary practices bill latest in Cleveland City Council’s pro-worker efforts 

Cleveland’s Fair Employment Wage Board will oversee the ordinance. This summer, the wage board began meeting for the first time in more than two decades. Both Slife and Heffernan view the proposed pay transparency ordinance in the context of such things as the wage board becoming active, the passage of Cleveland’s wage theft law and linking increases to Cleveland’s Fair Employment wage to the inflation rate. (This is the lowest wage, currently $15.85 an hour, that employers with city contracts can pay workers.)

“I see this as part of a series of pro-worker policies that council has passed in the last three years,” Heffernan said. “That is really laudable.”

Though employers could face fines under the pay transparency ordinance, Slife said the intent of the legislation is to improve the economic lives of workers and not punish employers.

“Civil penalties and fines are associated with this, but it is our hope that those are used in the most extreme circumstances, where businesses are not working collaboratively to come into compliance,” he said. “The intent of this ordinance is not to nickel and dime businesses.”