New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer announced on Tuesday that the New York City Retirement Systems filed shareholder resolutions with three companies asking whether they have gender pay gaps and asking that they provide “meaningful” gender-pay information.
The resolutions will be submitted to shareholders at the annual meetings of Aetna, The Travelers Cos. and Express Scripts Holding Co.
Mr. Stringer also said Tuesday that six other companies have agreed to release information and/or conduct additional studies about pay equality.
“Gender pay equity disclosure should be a market standard,” Mr. Stringer said in a news release. He is the fiduciary for the five city pension plans within the $169.8 billion New York City Retirement Systems.
According to the news release:
- AIG and Prudential Financial have released, for the first time, “information on how they review employee salaries” and how they act to make sure women and men are compensated equally. “Both are confident they do not have a statistically significant gender pay gap;”
- Aflac will disclose female-to-male salary ratio, opportunities for advancement and board oversight of pay and benefits in its next corporate social responsibility report;
- Allstate will publish a diversity report late this year including information on its compensation review process, board oversight of diversity efforts and “gender pay equity adjustment policies;” and
- Anthem and UnitedHealth Group have “agreed to conduct additional analyses.”
For companies that haven’t provided pay equity information, “investors have an opportunity to stand up,” Mr. Stringer added. “This is simply too important for companies to ignore.”
