A bill up for consideration by the Maryland General Assembly this session would prohibit employers from asking prospective employees about their salary history, 930 WFMD reports.
The bill’s sponsor, Del. Karen Lewis Young, says this issue is one of the workarounds to the state’s current equal pay laws and that past salary history is frequently irrelevant to the job they’re interviewing for, which perpetuates the problem of wage disparities, especially for women and minorities. Del. Young says employers typically have a preconceived expectation of what they’ll pay for a role and that a determined salary should come from that range, based on the candidate’s skills and qualifications, and not on what they earned in the past.
Job candidates could still volunteer their salary history information if they want to, but the bill would also require employers to name a salary range if the job applicant asks for that information.
This legislation passed the House of Delegates in 2017, but did not make it out of the Senate.
