By PHIL GREGORY

Just hours after being inaugurated, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed his first executive order. It promotes equal pay for women.

Murphy says the order prohibits any effort by a state agency to ask a job applicant about their wage history.

?Here and now we begin the process of bulldozing the roadblocks that have kept women from being paid fairly, that have kept many women of color from fulfilling their dreams of entering the middle class and that have allowed our wage gap to persist.?

Female lawmakers who attended the signing ceremony praised Murphy?s action.


Senator Sandra Cunningham says the executive order shows the state will treat women with dignity and respect.

?We have to be a state in which we are judged not by the color of our skin, not by our gender, but by our qualifications. And this says that is what we are going to do.?

Assemblywoman Joann Downey is thrilled Murphy made the executive order his first official action.

?We?ve been crawling, especially when it comes to women?s rights and to making sure that we have pay equity. But now with a Governor like Phil Murphy we are going to fly.?

Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt hopes lawmakers can work with Murphy on additional pay equity issues. She favors allowing women to recover back pay for inequitable salaries.

?We need women to be paid for what they?ve worked whether or not it was yesterday, or whether or not it was five years ago. So it?s vitally important that we continue this particular effort.?

Former Governor Chris Christie vetoed legislation that would have allowed a worker who was paid an inequitable salary to recover back pay for an unlimited number of years. He said it should be limited to going back two years as required by federal law.