California’s path-breaking bid to end workplace pay disparities faces one of its widest gender wage gaps among the state’s own employees.
A new report from the California Department of Human Resources shows that women in the state workforce earn about 79.5 cents on the dollar compared to men.
That’s a greater disparity than the gender pay gap in both California’s private sector and in the federal workforce, according to the report.
Database: See state worker salaries
It’s also a touchy bargaining point in stalled labor negotiations for the state unions that represent workers in female-majority occupations a year after Gov. Jerry Brown signed an ambitious law that aims to shrink the gender wage gap across public and private workplaces.
The state workforce’s largest union, SEIU Local 1000, is one of the groups referencing the new law in its campaign for a bigger raise than the one Brown is offering. Two-thirds of its members are women. It represents nurses, administrative employees and a wide range of other state workers.
SEIU hasn’t been able to budge the Brown administration from its opening offer, while several male-dominated unions have scored better deals.
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