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New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

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Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#21

Post by xenihn »

Stanleyc23 wrote: post #15
sjeanpierre wrote: post #7

definitely a step in the right direction, but employees can still get this info from Equifax and other data providers :-(

"The new bill goes further by prohibiting employers, “orally or in writing, personally or through an agent,” from asking about an applicant’s previous pay." according to the language in the bill, employers don't seem to be allowed to use those types of Equifax products anymore. "However, if the applicant “voluntarily and without prompting” provides this information, the employer may use it “in determining the salary…

How do you prove that employers did or didn't use Equifax or an equivalent service?

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#23

Post by dangero »

vultour wrote: post #14

Not an American, couldn't you just tell them a made up number?

Could be considered fraud. This law removes a lot of concern by providing clarification. Some employers ask for pay stubs, but I agree with you, making up a number should have been OK on the grounds of privacy. Even creating a fake pay stub for this seems reasonably moral if the sole purpose is to set the salary expectation at a new job. Current salary and value aren't necessarily correlated and hires should be judged on their skills and value.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#25

Post by thrden »

I'd be interested to see if this ends up playing out like ban the box (banning employers from asking about former convictions), where it ends up hurting the applicants the law intends to help.

ban the box source: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/ban-the-box-does-more-har...

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#27

Post by bdcravens »

randyrand wrote: post #16

Well... there goes your expectation of an increased salary without negotiation. And they did this to improve the gender wage gap? People who don't negotiate will be stuck with their same salary year over year, while those that negotiate will have steadily increasing salaries.

I don't see how this is a problem. Those who don't negotiate on a car price probably get a worse than those who do.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#28

Post by wavefunction »

gfosco wrote: post #20
ryguytilidie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time you apply for a credit card or other form of credit, you generally have to give your income.

It's much worse than that... The recent "The Work Number" incident showed they shared access to your entire paycheck history, in detail.

at the granular level of per paycheck, even

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#29

Post by kelnos »

randyrand wrote: post #16

Well... there goes your expectation of an increased salary without negotiation. And they did this to improve the gender wage gap? People who don't negotiate will be stuck with their same salary year over year, while those that negotiate will have steadily increasing salaries.

Salary negotiation is a part of life. People need to learn to at least do the minimum amount of negotiation. If you're making $X and a new potential employer offers you $(0.9X), and you just accept it without countering, that's on you.

People need to get over the fear that they'll lose their offer if they negotiate. The potential employer has already put in a lot of time (and money) to get to the offer stage; they're not going to rescind the offer just because you ask for more ("That amount isn't going to work for me; I was looking for something more like $(1.1X)"). At worst they'll tell you that they can't go any higher than the original offer, and then the decision is entirely up to you.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#30

Post by pmoriarty »

nicolashahn wrote: post #5
pmoriarty wrote: post #4

This is a ban on employers -- afaik, recruiters can still ask (and many probably will ask). But, IANAL. (Correction: It looks like recruiters fall under this prohibition too, if they are acting as agents of the employer.) I personally never answer questions about my previous salary or my expected salary. When HR has given me forms to fill out that have questions about either I just leave them blank, and they've never…

Kind of off topic but should one always hide their current salary, even if it's above market rate (given their experience on paper)? It seems as though if an employer were only looking to spend so much on a hire, then if you're already likely above that number, wouldn't it save both you and the employer's time? I can see the obvious downside of sharing a relatively low salary, but it seems like there could be benefit…

I never consider interviewing to be a waste of time. At the very least I get some very valuable practice out of it, learn more about what's out there, and meet some interesting people.

Even if they wind up not hiring you because they find out you're too expensive for their current budget, their budget might increase in the future and they might try to hire you again. Or the people who you made a favorable-enough impression to want to hire you might look to hire you when they're working for some other employer with a bigger budget. If you disqualify yourself by naming too large a number at the outset you'll never get the chance to make that great impression.

Finally, not everything's always about money. If you wind up at the point where they want to hire you and finally you start talking numbers, if their best salary offer is below what you're looking for there might be able to compensate you in some other ways that you could both find acceptable -- that is the essence of negotiation. Here once again, if you had disqualified yourself by naming too high a number at the outset, you'd never get the chance to negotiate.

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