REMARKS
Council Member Farah N. Louis opens committee meeting on pay equity and diversity in the municipal workforce
0:04:59
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3 min
Council Member Farah N. Louis provides opening remarks highlighting the city's ongoing struggles with gender and racial pay disparities in the municipal workforce.
- She thanks colleagues for organizing the hearing to address pay inequities.
- Louis references a recent council report showing persistent pay gaps, disproportionately impacting women of color.
- She outlines statistics on the pay gap between white male employees and other demographic groups.
- The council member anticipates discussions on actions to address disparities.
- Louis mentions two proposed bills (Introductions 828 and 829) aimed at promoting diversity in the city's workforce.
- She concludes by thanking staff and attendees for their contributions.
Farah N. Louis
0:04:59
Thank you, Chair Delarosa.
0:05:01
Hello, and welcome, everyone.
0:05:03
My name is Council member Faroe Lewis, and I chair the Committee on Women And Gender Equity.
0:05:08
First, I wanna thank my colleagues, chairs of the committee on civil service and labor, and the committee on civil and human rights.
0:05:17
Council member's Carmen Dela Rosa and council member, Natasha Williams, for organizing this hearing today.
0:05:24
An important hearing to address the pay equities and the municipal workforce.
0:05:29
For far too long, the city has struggled with both gender and racial economic equity.
0:05:35
The council has attempted to address this issue throughout the years, including by passing legislation to focus on remedying these problems on the municipal level.
0:05:47
In effort, in this effort, I introduced and the city council enacted local law 29 of 2023, which sought to expand the information available to the city council to help our continued work in this area.
0:06:00
However, the council's report on the city's progress on pay equity release this past week shows that there's still more work to be done.
0:06:09
As chair Del Arosa mentioned, this edition of the report continues to show that occupational segregation remains a serious issue and our municipal workforce, and that women of color, once again, are disproportionately impacted by this disparity.
0:06:24
The report found that paid disparities in a municipal workforce are heavily attributed to the fact that women of color are concentrated in particularly low paying roles.
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For every dollar earned by white male employees, all other workers earn an average of 82¢.
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Of this pay gap, white female employees account for 13.1%.
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Non white male employees 31.5% and non white female employees 55.4%.
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Non white workers earn 84¢ for every dollar earned by white.
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Workers with non white male employees accounting for 32.4% and non white female employees accounting for 60 7.6% of this gap.
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I know there's a lot of numbers.
0:07:12
Female employees earn 84¢ for every dollar earned by male employees with white female employees accounting for 15% for non white female employees 85% of the pay gap.
0:07:26
The committees look forward to hearing from the administration, the work that's being done to address these vast disparities and what more can be done on the council side to make sure that we fill these gaps.
0:07:39
I also look forward to hearing from members of the administration about two pieces of legislation that are being heard at this hearing.
0:07:46
Intro 828 and intro 829, relating to careers in civil service for CUNY students, as well as relating to the promotion of civil service examinations, both of which could help efforts to promote diversity and the city's workforce.
0:08:00
I would like to thank members of the administration, the Department of Administrative Services, the advocates and members of the public who have joined us today out like to thank members of my staff, Daniel Herrera, Shona Duncan, and Jaylen Aileen, as well as our committee staff as well as committee counsel, Sahar Mohammi, and senior legislative policy analyst Christy Dreyer for their work on this hearing.
0:08:24
Thank you.
