About four years ago, Councilmember Evan Glass introduced his very first bill called the Montgomery County Pay Equity Act.
Glass wanted to close the gender pay gap here by making sure department heads no longer requested a job applicant’s salary history. He also included a requirement that job postings included the salary being offered. The idea was to be upfront about salaries and pay people for the work they do rather than their gender.
Since council passed the Pay Equity Act in mid-2019, the county has basically erased pay inequities between its male and female employees, according to a report released Wednesday by Executive Marc Elrich.
When only considering base salary, men earn $1 for every $1.02 earned hourly by their female counterparts.
However, when extra pay for overtime and weekend work is taken into consideration, men earn about 10 cents more per hour, Elrich said.
“Montgomery County is a leader,” declared Traci Anderson, director of the county’s Office of Human Resources.
According to Glass when he presented his original bill, this was not the case. He spoke of a male employee in the county’s Department of Health and Human Services who was earning more than the 12 female employees hired at the same time in the same department.
The male employee was earning $31,317 more than the lowest paid of those dozen women, and $5,629 more than the highest paid woman, Glass said at the time.
In another example cited by Glass, a female employee in the county’s Department of Health and Human Services was earning 66.8% of a men’s salary, even though both were ranked as Level 1 program managers.
There are 3,188 female and 5,362 full time male county employees.
