
Keeping employees from discussing their salaries is illegal - ultimoo
http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/when-the-boss-says-dont-tell-your-coworkers-how-much-you-get-paid/374467/
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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.

~~~
Flenser
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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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.)

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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.

~~~
rodgerd
> 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.

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lifeisstillgood
A few days ago the UK underwent one of the largest public sector strikes in
decades. No one noticed. Schools ran half classes, bins were unemptied but
basically, nada.

Either withdrawing labour no longer works, or withdrawing labour needs to be
long enough that It hurts the employee more than the employer or, as I
suspect, the industries that could have an effect by withdrawing are not
unionised (retail being the obvious one)

I am just wondering how the coming "robotisation" and the supposed need for
wage-for-breathing will happen in a world where unions have no more power.

I am proud of the UKs labour movement - but it seems to have forgotten.

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grecy
I've always thought employers telling employees not to discuss wages is
similar to an adult giving candy to a child and saying "Don't tell anyone I
gave you this".

In both cases, I'm forced to ask why the giver is actively trying to block
others from finding out about the giving, or the amount of giving.

I believe, in both cases, they're trying to conceal something from someone.

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greenyoda
Discussion from two days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8038974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8038974)

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scott_s
Planet Money recently did a great episode on open salaries, called "When
Salaries Aren't Secret":
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/07/02/327289264/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/07/02/327289264/episode-550-when-
salaries-arent-secret)

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teddyh
In Sweden, Norway, and Finland, your personal income tax filings are public
for anyone to see.

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-06-18-salarie...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-06-18-salaries_N.htm)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/yourtaxes/14discl...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/yourtaxes/14disclose.html)

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norbu09
we got around this by agreeing on one salary level for everyone. works so far:
[http://blog.iwantmyname.com/2014/05/culture-at-iwmn-part-
one...](http://blog.iwantmyname.com/2014/05/culture-at-iwmn-part-one.html)

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

~~~
click170
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
purpose of preventing wage discrimination is explicitly legal, but this is not
legal advise and I likely do not live in your country.

Edit: The group you take our to lunch should not include your supervisor/boss.
For some reason my experience tells me that they view this as undermining
behaviour no matter how you broach the subject.

~~~
joeframbach
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.

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grecy
Does anyone know if there are similar laws in Canada?

~~~
click170
This is not legal advice. My understanding of Canadian law is that discussing
your pay for the purposes of preventing wage discrimination is explicitly
legal. This information is from a senior colleague who helped me stand up for
myself (them along side me) to a previous employer regarding a pay dispute.

Edit: Typo

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anonymousDan
Does anyone know if there are similar laws in the UK?

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vermooten
In USA only?

