If you believe the pundits, the remote work movement spawned by Covid-19 lockdowns is going to empower workers, revolutionize career flexibility, and improve housing affordability. Just not in Colorado.

In 2019 Colorado passed the “Equal Pay for Equal Work Act” (EP4EW). The law went into effect earlier this year. It requires that all companies advertising job openings in the state include salary ranges in their job postings.

This law is now responsible for Colorado job seekers being excluded from hundreds of remote work opportunities.

EP4EW was advertised as a shortcut to closing the pay gap for women and people of color. Women in Colorado earn just 86 cents for every dollar men earn in comparable roles. Latinas earn just 54 cents and black women 63 cents per dollar compared to white men.

The heart of the EP4EW legislation is a straightforward requirement that employers “shall not discriminate between employees on the basis of sex, or on the basis of sex in combination with another protected status by paying an employee of one sex a wage rate less than the rate paid to an employee of a different sex for substantially similar work, regardless of job title, based on a composite of skill.”

To help facilitate that goal, the law prevents employers in Colorado from asking job applicants to disclose their salary history in prior jobs. It also bars employers from using nondisclosure agreements to prevent them from discussing their compensation, and it prohibits retaliating against employees who have shared information about their wages.

Those elements of EP4EW are straightforward. They build upon protections that exist in federal employment law. The requirement that employers publish pay rates with their job listings is another matter.

The idea behind the pay range requirement in EP4EW was that if prospective employees know how much a company can offer, they won’t lowball themselves when negotiating their compensation.

Advocates argue that federal employment data prove that pay transparency in job postings will automatically reduce race and gender based wage disparities. The federal government has to publish salary ranges, and among federal employees women earn 93 cents for every dollar earned by men.

And yet, most companies are opposed to salary transparency. A study by Payscale, a compensation data company, reports that only 13% of global companies published the pay range for a role within their recruitment advertising last year.

Employers argue that salary transparency increases the likelihood of intra-company organizational friction, and can lead to inaccurate comparisons. Many large companies utilize multiple geographic pay scales for a single role to account for regional differentials in labor and living costs.

Companies also claim that salary transparency in public job postings simply makes it easier for competitors to poach talent, although it is difficult to find data to back up this concern.

Lastly, some companies fear that if they list a salary band, too many applicants will expect to receive the figure at the top end, even if that compensation applies only to the most qualified candidates. Receiving an offer at the bottom end – even if it is accepted – might queer the recruiting dance by generating resentment right from the start.

Currently 21 states have rules that ban employers from asking an applicant about their salary history, but Colorado is a lonely pioneer in requiring salary transparency in all job postings. Even in the EU, Latvia is the sole member nation with a similar rule.

Failure to comply with Colorado’s rule can trigger penalties from $500 to $10,000 per violation. How have companies responded?

Many large companies, such as Johnson & Johnson, Cigna, and Nike, have added language to their job listings (which do not include explicit salary figures) that specifically prohibits workers in Colorado from applying. One example from Johnson & Johnson read: “Work location is flexible if approved by the Company except that the position may not be performed remotely from Colorado.”

Denver-based software engineer Aaron Batilo is a fan of the remote work revolution. In response to this blacklisting he started a website that tracks jobs that ban Coloradans from applying (www.coloradoexcluded.com). Batilo’s data currently includes 418 job listings from 171 companies using blacklist language.

According to the Colorado Department of Labor, the transparency requirement is working. The Division of Labor and Statistics shared an analysis showing that just 1 percent of all remote-job listings are blackballing Coloradans. The agency has notified 24 companies that their ads violated the law. Apparently they all tweaked their listings, but did they “fix” them by disclosing salary ranges or by adding blackball language?

Is EP4EW the catalyst for a new era of hiring transparency? Time will tell. For now, it clearly is costing some Coloradans a shot at the remote job of their dreams. As a former colleague used to say, “to the pioneer go the arrows.”