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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

#541

Post by trampypizza »

tonyg wrote: post #529
trampypizza wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are legally prohibited from banning sharing of employee salaries (as long as you are sharing your own information, not others) Do you have a source for this?

https://www.dol.gov/wb/media/pay_secrecy.pdf is a good summary, starting with discussion of the federal situation and then quoting state law here's the executive order mentioned at the beginning of the linked PDF: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/0... here's NPR on the topic: http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies... here's the atlantic on the topic: https://www.theatla…

Thanks very much for those. It's very interesting to see how despite the legislation, it's still commonplace for pay-talk to be frowned upon in the workplace.

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

#542

Post by pgeorgi »

Sangermaine wrote: post #329
pgeorgi wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. > But have you thought about why you feel this way? Not every family is healthy. Some become _decidedly_ unhealthy as soon as money comes into play, and having precise figures available can be really destructive. It might work better in more egalitarian societies, where the difference in pay is less to begin with (eg Scandinavia). But that's not a road t…

>and having precise figures available can be really destructive. How? It doesn't change anything with regard to this specific concern about family. They already have an idea about how you live and how much you have from knowing you. They might not have a specific dollar amount, but they'll have a good idea.

People aren't rational. "Works a high paying job" feels different from "makes $120000 when even the most highly paid people in my long forgotten rural town make only $35000", and so the response will be different.

That said, I don't think it should be necessary to defend privacy. The idea proposed up-thread is to publish all income data on everybody. Not merely to encourage people to share their income data so they can reduce the information differential with employers, or some central opt-in system to make it easier to compare the numbers. It's about fully _enforced_ transparency.

A proposal for such forced loss of agency needs explanation and must be defensible against scrutiny, not the request to leave people alone just like they're used to.

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

#543

Post by phantom784 »

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…

Does this law prevent employees from sharing salaries though?

I could see companies low-balling when they don't have salary information, but then going up if they find out they're not matching/beating the candidates current salary, which would effectively be the same thing as today.

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

#544

Post by sokoloff »

darklajid wrote: post #477
ada1981 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It generally asked your household income. This means many 18 year olds can report 6 or even 7 figure household incomes.

Putting aside the household income for a moment: "Many" being able to report 6 figure incomes seems quiiiiite a stretch to me, 7 seems insane. Do you have a source for this? Or can you define "many" some more?

A million or more 18-20 year olds could no doubt truthfully report 6-figure household income. To me, that's "many".

(Slightly over a quarter of households in the US have a household income over $100K as reported on tax returns. Household income for the purposes of credit application can be meaningfully higher than for adjusted gross income tax return concerns.)

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

#545

Post by crummy »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #432
syshum wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the fact that male and female pay for the same job, and experience level are statistically the same and there is no actual pay gap. The $0.79 on the $1 shit has been debunked a million times yet is still persists for some reason. The last good study I read showed a gap of something like 5% which was in the statistical margin and was largely accounted for by negotiation tactics. For an anecdote I (a male) e…

> The $0.79 on the $1 shit has been debunked a million times yet is still persists for some reason. Because a certain group of people insists that the original $0.77 on the $1 statistic DID control for career choice and the like...even though it didn't. Any claims to the contrary are obviously misogynistic lies continuing the patriarchy. \ eyeroll\ I've always said...if the pay gap really WAS that big, then why would…

> I've always said...if the pay gap really WAS that big, then why would employers bother to hire men?

The proposed answer is that the employers are sexist. Even large corporations don't always act rationally.

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

#546

Post by lr »

khedoros1 wrote: post #419
greymeister wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What culture is socialized to publicly disclose income?

Scandinavian, apparently. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned that tax filings in Norway are public information, and that they include salary and wealth information.

Same thing in Finland, where government fines are based on your income (as it should be).

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

#547

Post by lr »

Every single state employee’s salary in the state of California is public. Look it up yourself: sacbee.com/statepay (warning, horrible search mechanism).

The UC system alone has 250,000 people. Student salary data is the only data anonymized.

Making salary data public is the only way to go. Anything else is a poor half measure that will probably not solve the problem they are trying to address.

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

#548

Post by throwanem »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #494
throwanem wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, those are protected categories about which a prospective employer may not inquire. This point was explicitly called out and repeatedly reiterated in the training I received a few years back about how to participate in an interview from that side of the table. Some of that information can be obvious, as in the case of visible disability and occasionally ethnicity. But it's not permissible to inquire in any…

They can ask, legally. Maybe it would be used as evidence they wanted to discriminate but it's not a violation of the law simply to ask.

Unless the protected characteristic is in some material way relevant to the role, asking such questions is likely to contravene the law or laws establishing the protection. It's not a criminal act, but it is unlawful; to do so, without a very clear and compelling argument for why it's relevant to the candidate's ability to perform the job, places the organization at the mercy of any candidate who cares to file a claim.

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

#549

Post by icantdrive55 »

alexanderstears wrote: post #18
civilian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equifax has salary data? I hadn't heard that. //edit: Well shit, TIL: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/10/equifax-breach-fallout-y...

They do - I'm not sure how they licence it though or what data sources they use but I've seen that their data on high income households is the best in the business and shockingly accurate. However, I can't imagine the compliance nightmare that would exist around a process that lets HR people look up people's equifax information. If they get a full report, it could contain information about disabilities, national orig…

HR shouldn't be pulling credit reports for 99% of the applicants.

It's against the law to look at credit ratings in California in a hiring situation.

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

#550

Post by icantdrive55 »

dsgfhasgjklas wrote: post #83
alexanderstears wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do - I'm not sure how they licence it though or what data sources they use but I've seen that their data on high income households is the best in the business and shockingly accurate. However, I can't imagine the compliance nightmare that would exist around a process that lets HR people look up people's equifax information. If they get a full report, it could contain information about disabilities, national orig…

> However, I can't imagine the compliance nightmare that would exist around a process that lets HR people look up people's equifax information. Employment credit checks are perfectly legal.

Not in CA.
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