Christie says he's for equal pay, but rejects pay equity bills: Editorial


Gov. Chris Christie vetoed two reforms that were designed to help ensure pay equity for women in New Jersey.

(Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger)

Gov. Chris Christie says he's committed to pay equity for women. So why, for the second time, has he killed two sensible reforms that would help prevent women from getting cheated in their paychecks?

First, let's be clear: The claim that women earn 77 cents to a man's dollar is a wild exaggeration. It distracts from a core truth: Gender discrimination does live on in the workplace. Even today, research shows that when a young man and woman take jobs in the same field, the man earns more.

This is less of a problem in public jobs, where wages aren’t secret. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do to help women in private employment, too — without meddling in the free market.

Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) proposed two smart reforms, which would make it easier for women to learn whether they are being discriminated against and recover the back pay they are owed.

One bill, called the Wage Transparency Act, Christie outright vetoed. It would have required state contractors to make their gender, race and wage information publicly available, as federal contractors will soon have to.

Christie argues the state’s prevailing wage law already requires wage reporting. But it doesn’t cover all public contractors. And we have yet to see any evidence that doing so would be too “costly and burdensome” for business, as Christie claims.

Weinberg’s other bill, the Unfair Wage Recovery Act, Christie’s conditional veto has rendered toothless. Under this reform, a woman who suddenly discovers she is being paid less than male co-workers would have had the opportunity to seek all the back pay she is owed, without hitting an arbitrary statute of limitations.

This is modeled after a provision of the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that Christie said he supports. Unfortunately, flaws in federal law make it hard to enforce. Even if a woman has been discriminated against for decades, she can recover no more than a two- or three-year window of back pay.

Weinberg wanted to remedy that in New Jersey. Our state law against discrimination has no such cap on damages. But Christie gutted her bill because he thinks there should be an arbitrary cap on damages in state law, too — one that’s not tied to injury. He is actually advocating to make New Jersey law worse for employees than it is today.

So yes, he says he supports equal pay. He agreed to require employers to hand out anti-discrimination fliers, and prevent them from retaliating against workers who compare wages in an effort to detect discrimination. All good.

But is it enough? In the end, is our governor most concerned with protecting the interests of women, or their bosses?