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Keeping employees from discussing their salaries is illegal

m.theatlantic.com

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Re: Keeping employees from discussing their salaries is illegal

#11

Post by abruzzi »

As an employee in local government, my salary in posted in the local newspaper every year. (The paper only posts the top 20 salaries at the organization, but all salaries are posted to the paper's website.) And while I prefer it open, there is a lot of grousing throughout the organization about who they think is overpaid, or that they are underpaid. Without such complete transparency there would still be some of the same reactions, but I strongly suspect it would be less.

Open salaries is very good because they protect against genuine abuse, but I've seen a lot of people completely misread what equity in pay really means (most recent was several "document technicians" with 10 years seniority (in this case people who worked at a counter to help people file forms) complaining that they were paid less than a database administrator who had been working at the organization for 6 months.)

Re: Keeping employees from discussing their salaries is illegal

#12

Post by asgard1024 »

Here's an idea for people who don't like the current social norm, but I am not brave enough to go with it (someone will probably find a good reason why it is not a good idea):

Publish your own salary unilaterally, on your blog or FB page. Don't worry about others.

If anyone complains, there are several arguments you can make:

- It's your money, you can spend them publicly, you can count them publicly.

- If the company pays you competitively, they should be proud. If they aren't proud, that's obvious sign they don't pay you competitively.

- Any threat will reflect on your salary, which is made public. Is it a good way to treat an employee?

- If you want to compromise, you can say you give certain percentage of your salary to charity and publish the amount. Then technically, you didn't publish your salary. And again, any reaction from the employer will reflect negatively on them (because it will reduce the amount you put to charity).

I believe, if someone does that, there will be good people in the same company that will be willing to privately tell him how is he standing. And if enough people do this, they can change the social norm eventually.

Re: Keeping employees from discussing their salaries is illegal

#13

Post by YokoZar »

It goes beyond salary discussion -- the law also protects discussion of working conditions.

One of my former employers once placed a noisy server in the main working area where employees had their desks. It was a serious distraction for some, and people began to complain to eachother. Management tried to shut down this conversation.

This was technically illegal -- employees have a right to discuss their working conditions with eachother, even if they're not actively forming a union. Even if it's a cushy startup job in a nice office and the working conditions are the free food benefit not being as tasty as usual. Similarly, employees can discuss pay.

And it's time we did discuss pay openly - a lot of us aren't sure whether we should expect 75k or 150k at our next job, or anywhere in between. Salaries are all over the map in this market, and job roles are similarly not well defined.

Re: Keeping employees from discussing their salaries is illegal

#14

Post by joeframbach »

click170 wrote: post #9
dllthomas wrote: post #7

So, what do we do about the corresponding social norms?

We break them. Take your colleagues out to lunch and explain that in order to determine if there is any on-going wage discrimination that you think that the group should share their salaries with each other, and that you're willing to go first if they agree to share their salaries as well. Follow up by posting your salary to GlassDoor. My understanding of the law in my country is that discussing salaries for the purp…

Glassdoor protip: The mobile site doesn't have a login-wall for salary information. I always set Chrome to a mobile emulation in an incognito window when browsing Glassdoor salaries.

Re: Keeping employees from discussing their salaries is illegal

#16

Post by rodgerd »

YokoZar wrote: post #13

It goes beyond salary discussion -- the law also protects discussion of working conditions. One of my former employers once placed a noisy server in the main working area where employees had their desks. It was a serious distraction for some, and people began to complain to eachother. Management tried to shut down this conversation. This was technically illegal -- employees have a right to discuss their working condi…

> And it's time we did discuss pay openly

It's worth noting that unions historically had a fair degree of pay transparency for precisely this reason.

One of my first jobs was in a company that whose owner was keen to aggressively de-unionise. Contracts for new, individually contracted employees (like naive young me) were pitched as better than the old union contracts[1]. They had secrecy clauses in them specifically as part of the divide-and-conqueor part of the operation, as well as making sure none of the individuals knew how much they were losing out on their superfically better contracts (see [1] again).

Ironically enough a number of senior managers weren't that keen on de-unionising[2], but the owner[3] insisted.

[1] A higher base salary, but with no penal/overtime provisions. Since I was young and foolish I didn't realise that while my colleagues nominally earned $10-15,000 p.a. less than me, in practise they took home twice as much because they got 1.5-3 time multipliers for all those 2 am finished and Saturday evenings spent babying 30 year old publishing systems.

[2] Negotiating and ongoing management of 600 individual contracts, or negotiations with three or four union negotiating teams? The assistant GM vastly preferred the latter.

[3] Murdoch.

Re: Keeping employees from discussing their salaries is illegal

#19

Post by Flenser »

asgard1024 wrote: post #12

Here's an idea for people who don't like the current social norm, but I am not brave enough to go with it (someone will probably find a good reason why it is not a good idea): Publish your own salary unilaterally, on your blog or FB page. Don't worry about others. If anyone complains, there are several arguments you can make: - It's your money, you can spend them publicly, you can count them publicly. - If the compan…

What about your next employer? If you did this you'd be taking a bet that your number potential future employers who would hire someone that posts their salary (or a proxy to it) online is greater than zero.
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