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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

#211

Post by DINKDINK »

geebee wrote: post #60

I'd prefer to see this go in the other direction and make all salary information public. Right now, employers have far more information than employees, and I don't think this law will do much to change that. To me, it's similar to real estate - imagine if only sellers had access to the database of exactly what every house sold for and when, but buyers had to go with unsubstantiated, scattered rumors. Or vise versa. T…

>I work for a public institution and my salary, and the salary of all my coworkers, is public.

This disclosure is a measure put in place to audit some of the spending of the government. Because citizens are compelled through threat of violence or denial of liberty to pay tax it's pretty reasonable for citizens to have access to what their tax money is being used for.

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

#212

Post by everdev »

Sangermaine wrote: post #154
cracell wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thank you. My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. I also have never told a potential employer my salary. I believe it stopped things from going on to the interview stage but the way they took my refusal made me assume they paid under market rate.

>No thank you. >My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. But have you thought about why you feel this way? I assume you are American, as am I, and so I understand we've been socialized by our culture to feel this way, but it really makes no sense. It's just a way to harm workers by keeping us from seeing when we're being screwed. I'd even go so far as to wager that this entir…

All Americans have a right to privacy. Their reason for privacy doesn't matter and doesn't need to make sense to you.

Compensation is an important conversation to make sure a job is a win/win. I think "What would you like to be paid?" is the most relevant question anyway.

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

#213

Post by thereare5lights »

komali2 wrote: post #101
whyenot wrote: post #76

At the same time, salary information for all California state employees, from the governor to university groundskeepers is publicly available online for anyone to use. transparentcalifornia.com

That site has the most aggressive anti ad-blocker mechanism I have ever seen. I understand why people do this but holy shit that is obnoxious. EDIT: UC Coaches some of the highest paid people in the state... sigh.

I just open up the inspector and delete those nodes that are in the way.

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

#214

Post by watwut »

Sangermaine wrote: post #154
cracell wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thank you. My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. I also have never told a potential employer my salary. I believe it stopped things from going on to the interview stage but the way they took my refusal made me assume they paid under market rate.

>No thank you. >My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. But have you thought about why you feel this way? I assume you are American, as am I, and so I understand we've been socialized by our culture to feel this way, but it really makes no sense. It's just a way to harm workers by keeping us from seeing when we're being screwed. I'd even go so far as to wager that this entir…

You make it sound as if Americans were more open about salaries as the rest of the world. My impressions up to now were opposite - Americans super open and others not much.

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

#215

Post by cortesoft »

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #176
chollida1 wrote: post #3

> The goal is to narrow the gender wage gap. If a woman is paid less than a man doing the same job and a new employer bases her pay on her prior salary, gender discrimination can be perpetuated, the bill’s backers say. Hmm, I'd never thought about that angle,but I guess it makes sense. No word on if they are allowed to use Equifax, etc to pull salary data from? EDIT: looking at the bill it looks like querying Equifax…

> The goal is to narrow the gender wage gap. This makes the law seem even more ridiculous to me. Do we really need the government stepping into the hiring process like this and micromanaging? It feels like they treating us like children incapable of tying our own shoes or something

I am curious as to why this makes it more ridiculous? If you think it is government micromanaging, wouldn't it be that no matter what issue they were trying to solve?

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

#216

Post by ianai »

cortesoft wrote: post #183
ianai wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually in this case it’s the buyers of labor (employers) that have all the market power. Denything them this additional information gives the producers of labor an edge through asymmetric information, theoretically. In practice, I don’t buy it. Sophisticated entities with lots of resources (aka employers) will always find a way to game any situation to their benefit. They could simply use this as a reason to pay ev…

It isn't just an information problem, it is a leverage problem. Suppose a company has 100 employees; if an employee leaves, they are down 1/100 of their productivity while they find a replacement. If an employee if fired, they are down somewhere between 50% and 100% of their income, depending on family status. A single job is simply more vital to an employee than it is to a company, so the company has the leverage.

Yet another reason I don’t think this will make a dent into anything.

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

#217

Post by hota_mazi »

fsloth wrote: post #187
hota_mazi wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make all salary information public. It's a disastrous idea. First of all, if you mean public as in "the whole world can know", I can't imagine anyone being comfortable with that. Advertisers, family members, people who don't like you, etc... surely you see the problem here. If by public you mean "only within the company", even this approach will create resentment and hundreds of hours wasted in discussions and nego…

"As someone running a large organization, this is also a logistical nightmare since I usually have very good reasons to compensate X more than Y even if Y might think they should be paid the same amount." So what stops you from sharing this 'hidden' metric with Y? If there was some weasel reason X would have never recieved package in the first place if everything was public when he got his package. Now, the reason X…

> So what stops you from sharing this 'hidden' metric with Y?

"John is making $10k more than you because his code is usually higher quality than yours and he has a better attitude".

You closed one can of worms and you just opened five new ones.

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

#218

Post by CodeWriter23 »

mamon wrote: post #116
rpowers wrote: post #38

Really wish this would extend to apartment rent applications. I'm fine with a credit check, but they don't need to know how high they can increase my rent before I'll need to move. edit I am referring to my experience renting apartments from Property Management run communities. (Think Essex or Prometheus) Rent increases every year with them.

They really do that in America? I rented a lot of apartments in my country and was never asked about my income, or had a credit check. The usual way of avoiding not paying renters is requiring first rent plus guarantee deposit (usually equal to the one month rent) in advance. No further proofs of financial credibility required.

How fast can a non-paying renter be legally removed from the property in your country? In the US, someone with no legal skills can drag it out for 6-18 months by asserting various nonsense.

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

#219

Post by grasshopperpurp »

icelancer wrote: post #164
Sangermaine wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No thank you. >My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. But have you thought about why you feel this way? I assume you are American, as am I, and so I understand we've been socialized by our culture to feel this way, but it really makes no sense. It's just a way to harm workers by keeping us from seeing when we're being screwed. I'd even go so far as to wager that this entir…

>>But have you thought about why you feel this way? Yes. I don't want to increase my attractiveness regarding a house robbery, as I live well below my means in a developing neighborhood, amongst other reasons. I very much understand the concept of leverage and have no problems privately discussing my salary amongst groups that I trust. That doesn't include the entire Internet.

That's a legit concern. Assuming it was possible, if only those in your company could see your salary (and you could see their salaries), would you be in favor of it? I'm also assuming that people in your company don't live in your neighborhood/wouldn't be burglary threats.

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

#220

Post by ikiris »

nightski wrote: post #184
falcolas wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The info is supplemental to what is considered to be a credit report, and thus does not have to appear on your pulled credit reports. Similar to how your FICO score is not part of your credit report; it's a separate paid service that the credit unions pay for so they can charge their own customers.

Right, but this information is easily accessible from family & friends as the parent aluded? If so can you provide a link?

https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/
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