A company CEO called Associated Industries of Massachusetts last week to express concern because she had been told that the association opposed equal pay for women.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

AIM and its 4,500 member employers unequivocally support the principle of equal pay for equal work. We support and the federal and state laws that protect fair compensation.  We believe that the best long-term strategy to achieve pay equity in the workplace is to ensure that both women and men possess the education and skills that allow our enterprises to succeed an in increasingly complex global economy.

What we do not support is the deeply flawed legislation that well-intentioned lawmakers are debating on Beacon Hill in response to the wage gap. An Act to Establish Pay Equity, which was passed by the Senate on a voice vote and is now pending before the House of Representatives, represents a classic example of “right goal, wrong approach.”

The bill is duplicative and unnecessary. Its ambiguous language raises the possibility that the privacy of our employees will be compromised. It may limit our ability as employers to financially reward the star performers in our companies. And most importantly, the bill will not achieve our shared objective of ensuring that women earn the same as men for the same work.

The important point is this: Don’t confuse employer opposition to the bill with lack of support for pay equity.

AIM and its member employers are committed to providing fair compensation to employees according to the value and success they bring to our enterprises. In an economy where skilled workers remain at a premium, any company that does not value all of its employees equally is unlikely to be around very long.

Martha Sullivan, President and CEO of Sensata Technologies in Attleboro said it best during AIM Executive Forum panel discussion ” “When you look at how much work you have to do to bring along great talent out of the engineering pool, the idea that you would not reward that talent based on meritocracy, based on performance and in an equitable way is just a really bad business decision,” she said.

That is why AIM is a charter member and supporter of the 100 Percent Talent Compact sponsored by the Boston Women’s Workforce Council. AIM and other signers of the compact agree to assess their own data to see if wage gaps exist, take steps to address those gaps, and anonymously provide data to BWWC to assess progress for the city as a whole in eliminating the wage gap.

That is also why AIM supports the online calculator developed by Massachusetts Treasurer Deborah Goldberg to allow women to calculate the wage gap in the industries in which they work and send anonymous notifications to employers to make them aware of the problem. Anything that stimulates employer introspection on wage equity brings us closer to solving the problem.

Cathy Minehan, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Co-Chair of the Boston Women’s Workforce Council, told the AIM Board of Directors on March 18 that pay equity is an enormously complex issue. She said differentials reflect factors ranging from the availability of reasonably priced and high quality day care; affordable housing and transportation; the fields women choose; and unconscious bias baked into workplace culture.

Regarding the Senate legislation, Minehan indicated “The law does not, and in many ways cannot, deal with these key issues.”

AIM strongly agrees. There are far more effective paths to pay equity than overly proscriptive legislation that endangers the privacy of employees and inhibits the ability of employers to run their businesses. We stand ready to work with all parties to locate those paths.

If you want to see AIM’s specific concerns with the pay equity bill, click here.