Pittsburgh City Council wants to know if salary equality between male and female city employees has improved since 2009, when women earned about 68 cents for every dollar paid to men.

Council is scheduled to vote today on legislation authorizing Controller Michael Lamb to audit employees’ compensation and the city’s promotion system.

“It’s time for us to check back in to see how we’re moving forward, and if we’re moving forward,” Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak, a co-sponsor of the legislation, said Monday. “If people are getting paid differently for the same work, then that’s a problem.”

The 2009 study by Evergreen Solutions of Tallahassee, Fla., found that few women ranked among the city’s top wage earners and decision-makers. Most women were paid less than $40,000 annually.

The study also found that the city’s organizational structure heavily weighed political affiliation for filling decision-making positions.

The city’s personnel office referred inquiries about current salaries and other employment information to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s office, which did not return messages. Yesterday, Ravenstahl honored city Treasurer Margaret Lanier and Community College of Allegheny County President Alex Johnson for promoting workplace diversity.

Lamb said one of the big problems is that job classifications created over the years resulted in wage disparities among people in the same positions. If the legislation passes, Lamb said his office will begin work on the audit immediately and likely have it completed by year’s end.

“Sometimes you have two people working next to each, doing the exact same job in the exact same office, but making different salaries,” Lamb said. “How much of that we can identify by race or gender, we’ll find that out with the audit.”

Pittsburgh in 2009 had 3,325 employees and 610 job classifications, according to the study.

Heather Arnet, chief executive officer of the Women and Girls Foundation on the South Side, said her organization worked with Pittsburgh to improve minority recruitment and job promotions among women and minorities. The foundation, which contributed $20,000 toward the 2009 study, gave Pittsburgh $10,000 to improve on-the-job equality.

“It will be interesting to see if any improvements have been made,” Arnet said.

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