Council’s women take lead on pay gap
Resolution supports gender wage parity
In celebration of Women’s History Month, a female-majority City Council affirmed its support Thursday to close the gender wage gap in San Antonio.
The resolution supports gender pay equality initiatives and directs the city’s Human Resources Department to evaluate best practices for salaries, conduct analyses, monitor the city’s pay structure and provide training opportunities to promote women in leadership positions.
“This passage is a commitment to change,” District 3 Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran said in a statement Thursday. “It is our duty to continue to look further into the unequal opportunities for women at all points — from education, to training and to their career choices.”
Women in San Antonio with full-time jobs are paid a median annual salary of $26,925, while their male counterparts are paid $33,358, according to city data.
The resolution also calls for the Department of Human Services and Economic Development Department to recommend strategies to close the gender wage at nonprofits the city contracts with.
For companies seeking economic development incentives such as tax abatements, the Economic Development Department will recommend gender awareness training, women sponsorship and leadership programs and other practices to promote equity among all employees.
“Pay parity will be transformational for San Antonio,” District 5 Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales said. “It goes well beyond paying women their equal worth. Pay parity will change our quality of life in positive ways because when women thrive families thrive, and when families thrive so do children and communities.
“We know that women will use their income in ways that directly benefit businesses and the community, so we can’t wait any longer to provide women with the
overdue support they need,” Gonzales added.
Viagran and Gonzales spearheaded the effort to pass the resolution.
With the signing of the resolution, the YWCA San Antonio, or Young Women's Christian Association, launched its wage equity awareness campaign.
The campaign will ask businesses to sign a pledge committing to address gender and racial pay gaps by recruiting women into its top five emerging high-growth roles, conducting an annual companywide gender pay analysis, reviewing hiring and promotion processes, and promoting best practices to close the pay gap, according to the YWCA San Antonio website.
City Council also made strides toward equitable benefits for their staffers Thursday by creating the City of San Antonio Texas Municipal Council Aides Corp.
Council aides work as direct employees for each council member — not the
city government. By creating the corporation, the city will be able to combine all the council staff under one employer plan and provide them with the same medical and retirement benefits as city employees.
District 1 Councilman Roberto Treviño requested the city look into council staff compensation back in August 2019. By January 2020, City Council increased the fund to pay their aides by 15 percent.
“There has been a historic disparity between the pay
and benefits City employees earn and those earned by city council aides,” Treviño said in a statement Thursday. The corporation “will go a long way towards achieving the pay and benefit equity council aides have long sought,” he said.
The corporation was approved in Thursday's council meeting as part of the consent agenda.
Now that the corporation is established, a contract with the city is being drafted and is anticipated to be voted on in May.