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HR Departments Tell Equifax Your Entire Salary History
chiguy writes with this snippet From NBC News: "The Equifax credit reporting agency, with the aid of thousands of human resource departments around the country, has assembled...[a database]...containing 190 million employment and salary records covering more than one-third of U.S. adults...[Equifax] says [it] is adding 12 million records annually.' This salary information is for sale: "Its database is so detailed that it contains week-by-week paystub information dating back years for many individuals, as well as ... health care provider, whether someone has dental insurance and if they've ever filed an unemployment claim.""
Privacy and sin,
.2. . .
Like skin on the chin,
Covered by hair,
Nicked by tech #FTW
Burma Shave
This is an important story, beyond the troll.
A political party supporting liberty, where that is defined in part as the right to own all data pertaining to yourself, would see a great deal of support.
And we can expect any of our entrenched parties to support liberty in 3. .
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
How soon can I browse the salary history of CEO's, Congressmen, the chairmen of the FED, the leaders of Scientology, and the lobbyists on capitol hill?
I'm sure the vast majority of those employees whose info was sent had signed something on their first day of employment that gave the company the right to do this. Until the courts strike that sort of thing down, you got no recourse.
After spending over a year on a mission to get my credit report "fixed", I have a number of anecdotal stories regarding the inherent inaccuracy of the reporting that goes into these databases. My credit reports were not that bad but after a review of the report from the top three agencies, I discovered dozens of factually inaccurate items ranging from wrong addresses to poorly formatted history items. My reports contained input from companies I had never done business with and companies that no longer existed. The problem with this is that if they can't be trusted to confirm the proper spelling of your name, how can they be the "authoritative" source for detailed information regarding your trustworthiness.
Charter Member of The Committee Group For The Elimination And Eradication Of Repetitive Redundancy
Salary information does pertain rather directly to ability to pay off debt.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I don't think Special Interest Groups would give out that information, and fortunes made through insider trading are equally difficult to quantify.
that needs to be made but probably never will.
I think that they should not be giving out health info like that.
In our culture, we are afraid of abuses.... legitimately! Having this information for sale can easily be used for such obvious purposes as rejecting a job candidate because their past salary is "too high". Stronger privacy protection is generally considered the antidote to such potential abuses. However, more and more regulation leads to greater and greater bureaucracy and therefore the cost of government increases.
Another solution is a longer-term solution and that is to address the underlying cultural assumptions and shift the world to a more positive outlook based on the idea of the inherent nobility of humans. Our bureaucracy has grown as we have moved away from a perspective on the noble human to the animal human with greed motivating our every move. In fact, this is a cultural choice, not a foregone conclusion.
At some point, I hope that we (culturally) will start responding to these sorts of crisis with a long-term view to improving humanity rather than reacting to the down-side.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Just this week, in the paper, I read that one senator is proposing a bill to allow employees to freely and openly discuss their pay. But here we read that this information is simply handed over to credit agencies. These credit agencies can then basically sell your information to Credit Card companies, Banks and more.
So it really begs the question, why am I not allowed to openly discuss my salary information but HR can hand it out to a Credit agency where from there it can be sold to half the corporations in America?
Our government really does not care about it's citizens any longer, only which corporations donate the most to their campaigns. /sigh
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
The word "corporation" comes to mind.
Welcome to the corporate anarchy, citizen.
Because those same HR groups use the services from Equifax and friends to perform background checks on employees, and new hires.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
As our political class increasingly becomes an aristocracy, this sort of thing becomes a weapon to keep the peasants out.
Once you're a made member of the club, scrubbing your data and enjoying some privacy is a perq.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Insurance is for the type of thing that is mostly cheap, rarely expensive.
Just like the credit reporting agencies, gathering all sorts of financial information without your permission.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I'm not being conspiracy nut in this. This is just one more tool that HR departments can use to keep pay low for people applying for work at a company. They always ask for what your current salary is. Before an applicant could lie and tell the HR department a higher number and get offered that higher number. Now they can just check this database and see what the number actually is.
When I job switched in the past I've never been offered a number higher than what I currently made when I was truthful about my salary, and I screwed myself over. There was a time when I worked for a start-up and my salary was frozen for four years. When that job died I told my new employer what I was making and got offered a bit less since it was a rough job market. The raises I got at that job were less than inflation. The last time I switched I took my salary at the start of the previous job, ran it through the inflation calculator, added 10% and told that number to the new company. That was the number that I was offered, and they gave me some song and dance about it was a privilege about working in the industry when I tried to see if I could get it higher. So I got a 17% raise over my previous company.
Now with this database that tactic is no longer viable. And if you don't tell them the current number you're making and then check it out, they can mark you as dishonest. Kind of hypocritical if you ask me.
Software Engineer & Writer of Military Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog: petermwright.com Twitter: WrightPeterM
Ted Kasinsky was right.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
They may be able to fill your income tax return on your behalf.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
If you are a bank considering loaning me money, then I can choose to share my salary information with you. There is no reason at all for this information to be made available without the individual's permission!
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
and it costs less than 1 USD per record.
It's stupidly expensive in the US.
Though dental insurance still isn't worthwhile, might be a good indicator of a person worth trying to sell useless shit to though (unless the insurance came with the job and they had no option).
I just wrote my congressman and senator.... feel free to copy and paste. This is so sick. Wait until the health information exchanges get installed, people will know your health history, social history..... I love the tech age, but this is one aspect of it that I can do without. -M Dear Mr./Mrs. Congressman/Senator: I am writing to request urgent regulation of the following unregulated data collection and resale activity; at minimum grant US citizens the ability to opt-out.... A subsidiary of Equifax named "The Work Number" is gathering and reselling personal salary data.... right down to the paystub. This data can be purchased by just about anyone including debt collectors. This data also includes Uneployment Insurance information, which might dissuade an employer from offering employment to an otherwise qualified individual. Please see this link for information: http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/30/16762661-exclusive-your-employer-may-share-your-salary-and-equifax-might-sell-that-data Please act on this soon. I don't feel that my salary information and paystub data should be resold, without my consent. This should be an opt-in program, but they have crept under the regulatory radar. All the best, [YOUR NAME HERE]
Because under EU Data Protection Law, such information passing would actually be illegal from the start anyway without obtaining my explicit consent.
Sometimes the Data Protection Act really screws up my job. But it does it because it makes me comply with things that *stop* others lives being screwed up.
Equifax have no need for that information, anonymised or not. Thus they should have no access to it.
Mine is stupidly cheap.
It costs about $10 a year more than the two cleanings a year would cost me. So far I am way ahead, since it paid for a large part of my wisdom teeth extractions just a few years ago. Just the discount for having insurance was enough to put me way ahead.
When my identity was stolen (credit card opened in my name by someone with my name/address/SSN/DOB), I froze my credit and my wife's credit. This means that nobody can read our credit files or add to it without our permission. If we want to get a car loan, refinance my mortgage, or open a new credit card, we need to thaw out our credit files. (This costs us $5 per person per agency - of which there are 3 - but this fee varies by state.) If a potential employer wants to run a credit check on me, they'll need to ask for my permission before they can see my credit file.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
What I pay for dental insurance comes out to a little over $200/yr and it covers almost everything including regular check-ups. Over the last few years, it has been pretty break-even between regular checkups and a two chipped teeth. Over decades, I'll probably spend more on insurance than if I paid in cash but it's nice to have a regular, predictable pre-tax expense and have one less emergency expense to worry about.
Salary records! Coming soon from Anonymous, LLC.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
It follows the bit torrent model. Providing it may not help you directly, but if everyone does it then when you want to access information that someone else uploaded, it's available. Credit checks are nothing new for HR considering candidates for hire.
Equifax also typically has the worst credit database. Most people have a lot of errors on their file. It blows my mind that anyone trusts a credit report from the amount of wrong or misfiled reports are on them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah, I am not buying it either. HR departments have no incentive to cough up the info. It takes time (aka money) to do - HR staff is already overworked, so who in the hell is going to do it for free?
Plus, why would they? It gives them nothing in return and opens them up to possible liability.
I don't buy it.
Insurance makes it expensive. Your insurance is willing to pay up to $500/yr for xrays? Take a wild ass guess at the future price of xrays in a privatize the profits socialize the losses system...
Its the same thing with govt "assistance" for childcare, or "assistance" for tuition, or "assistance" for health care. Another good example is K12 education, where public takes $10K per student but private takes $2K per student to do about the same thing.
If no one had dental insurance, I could probably get a simple cavity filled for $99.95 cash looking at the materials, tools, and education level. But they know they can get $750, so they do. That means uninsured people cannot get any treatment at all unless they're incredibly rich, and insurance ends up being very expensive.
If we ever get "oil change insurance" I guarantee within a year the $20 quickie lube places would be charging at least $200 if not $499.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I say publish all their other private data. I'm thinking selling the customer list is a good response to them selling my salary history.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
... why demand the secrecy? Why not adopt a Nordic-style openness that shows who pays what taxes and where the taxes actually go. I also appreciated my annual credit history/report that was automatically mailed to my address when I lived in Stockholm. Why do you guys have to make everything so complicated? There's no security through obscurity.
You obviously have never seen a bill for braces. :-) Having said that, my premiums for dental insurance are around $80 a year for my entire family. It covers most routine things at 90-100%. The annoying part is that it costs my employer $1620 for their portion of the bill. Now, if you asked me if I'd like $1700 cash every year, or if I'd like dental insurance, I would decline the dental insurance. Unfortunately, my employer gives a whopping $100 refund if you choose to not get dental insurance. So the way I look at it is, do I pay $180 ($100 refund + $80 premium) for dental insurance, or do I pay for dental out of pocket? Two people getting two cleanings a year would probably cost over that. Add in an X-Ray, and you're way over. Forget about it if you need major work (fillings/crowns/etc). My last job charged $720 a year in premiums and had significantly worse coverage. I declined that coverage.
If the USA ever wants to fix the health care system, part of that will require companies giving people cash in leu of benefits. Between my company and I, my health coverage costs $13,300 a year. That is a ridiculously high amount to pay. I would gladly tweak my plan to make it more economical if it was an option. For instance, I'd take a high deductible plan or a catastrophic plan. My wife was in the hospital for almost two weeks last December. I need insurance for things like that. I don't need insurance to cover a runny nose. If I could tailor a plan to meet my needs, I could potentially save thousands a year. Heck, if I just put my wife on a full plan, and then put myself on a catastrophic plan, I could save tons. How much will my employer pay me if I decline health insurance? $50 a paycheck or $1300 a year. I pay $2000 of the $13,300, so if I dropped my coverage, I'd save $3300 a year. When I did looking, I was able to find pretty good coverage for a lot less than $13,300, but it cost significantly more than $3,300. If my employer would empower me to save money, I would. Especially if I got to pocket it.
Sorry for the rant. The point I'm trying to make is that sometimes people make bad financial decisions because they aren't in control of all of the money being spent. If I have to choose between me spending $50 or my company spending $500, I will take the company spending $500 every time. My money is worth more to me than my companies money is. Having said that, if I could choose to save money for my employer, I would do that to. I had opportunities with my last employer to fly first class to South America. Ticket prices were around $8,000 more to fly first class than to sit in the back of the plane. My company wouldn't have cared. I wouldn't have been punished for doing so. Yet I still chose to sit in the back of the plane, because I wouldn't have been able to sleep knowing that my seat cost $8000 more than it needed to. Now, if my choice was to spend $50 of my own money to sit in the back, or $8,000 of the companies money to sit in the front...that would have been a tough decision.
"Randian Nutbag" would be an awesome superhero name.
Too bad he won't help anybody.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Politician salaries are a matter of public record.
Now you understand the fight against national health insurance in America. Crazy, right?
They wanted insurance to cover routine activities, as if forcing a middle man into the equation is ever a good idea in those cases.
I tried to explain how insane the idea was using a car analogy, where they bought secondary insurance on their car to cover oil changes. Instead of paying $20 per oil change several times a year, I suggested that they pay $8 per month on oil change insurance that covers them for up to 4 changes per year. Of course they wouldnt buy my oil change insurance, but somehow they felt that routine dental work (scheduled cleanings!) should be covered by their health insurance.
Americans have come to be extremely stupid.
"His name was James Damore."
Wanted to mention something very relevant about Equifax. I took advantage of a "get your credit score" free offer several years ago that was posted on Slick Deals. It involved giving Equifax a little data on myself, including an email address that they sent the final credit score report to. I've long used the Spamgourmet forwarding service, so I created and used a unique email address for this purpose. Never gave it to anyone else. It even includes Equifax as part of the name, as well as a "watch word" that was only active for a month when the Equifax account was created. Later I started getting LOTS of spam from Chinese sources to that email address. I don't think it was intercepted, as Equifax hadn't sent me any more mail for quite a while. No one got into my system and none of my other accounts started getting spammed, only the Equifax account.
So, as I see it that leaves three possible causes: Equifax sold my email address to spammers, an employee at Equifax stole data and sold it, or Equifax is so insecure with this very important personal data that they were hacked by the spammers. None of these possibilities speaks well for Equifax.
As of today, 264 pieces of mail have been sent to that account, including the one or two legitimate ones. That particular account was quickly shut down without compromising my read email address, but I've always wondered what information the hackers got on me.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
In the article, it says HR departments in large companies outsource the handling of INBOUND employment verification checks because those checks take time and energy to perform.
So, they outsource it to Equifax and in some cases give Equifax direct access to [ex-] employees salary information.
So their benefit is it saves them time. Enough time for them to pay Equifax to mine their employees' data.
From the article:
"Companies sign up for The Work Number because it gives them an easy way to outsource employment verification of former workers. Firms hate taking these calls, which usually come when a former employee is applying for a new job, because they are a costly distraction for human resources departments and open the firm up to lawsuits if someone says something disparaging about the former employee. So they contract with The WorkNumber, which automates the process. In exchange, firms upload their human resources data to The Work Number, which was part of an independent St.Louis-based firm named TALX until it was acquired by Equifax in 2007 for $1.4 billion."
passetspike!
Dental is one of those know thy self issues. If all you usually need is two cleanings a year than it might make sense to pay out of pocket. If you have any history of dental related issues or are even just cavity prone, a plan probably pays for itself after a couple fillings ever few years. Mostly do the group rates; rather than the actual benefit.
What has always amazing me is Vision. I have been offered a vision plan almost everywhere I have ever worked and I can't work the numbers out in a way that I could possibly ever come out ahead even when being pretty imaginative; about the goods and services I might possibly need.
The only reason I can think anyone else chooses to be on them is to avoid a single large outlay on a new pair of glasses or set of hard contacts. If you consider the premiums over time, you lose; but I guess if you have no savings, limited cash flow, and littler or no credit that might be a reason to do it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
What are you insuring against with the "mostly cheap" style coverage?
You insure your home against fire and water damage, but you don't insure it against a broken floor tile, chipped paint, a stained carpet, and other "mostly cheap" stuff.
See, insurance is supposed to be about insuring against rare eventualities that you are not prepared to handle should they happen to you. If the eventuality is not rare, or if the eventuality is common but inexpensive, then why have any middle man at all in the transaction?
"His name was James Damore."
Of course I'm out of points so I can only thank you.
Perhaps NatasRevol will recognize the wit in you reply and endevor to up his game.
Awesome.
No brain, no pain.
You are extremely stupid, I think.
The reason dental cleanings are covered is because otherwise the insured person would not get them and would cost the insurer more. This is a case where relatively cheap preventative care can completely replace very expensive treatment. Not only that but during this cheap preventative care problems can be discovered while they are still minor and much cheaper to fix.
If you were offering insurance that covered all work on cars you would of course cover oil changes, rather than pay for blown motors from lack of them.
I have no inside knowledge but it took me 10 second to think up an engineering solution which is you don't technically buy the data, you upload the candidates claims and get the output of what CS/IT people would call a diff or patchfile vs the semi-official records. So candidate claimed $75K salary but our records show $70K a diff of $5K how interesting. On the other hand a diff against the employment dates matches so the diff file is blank there.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
How is this different than a hacker obtaining information without your consent and offering it for sale?
Hackers don't force you to sign your life away when you enter a professional relationship with them.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The problem in the USA is the absolutely insane marketing. If public information shows that you make a good income and keep your debts under control, you will be bombarded with "pre-approved credit cards", "refinance your home with us", "buy a new car here", "lose all your money in our casino", and other lovely stuff.
If you live in Europe, you have no idea. When I went back to visit the US for several weeks a couple of years ago, I found the incessant marketing just incredible. The bank tellers trying to sign you up for credit cards. Every phone call to a company begins with a recorded sales pitch. Television shows contain more commercials than content, especially the children's shows. It's just incredible. I suppose you must eventually get numb to it...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
If you RTFA they are given an incentive to provide this information and they even pay Equifax for the privileged! They provide a service for employment history verification. When a potential employer or creditor wants to verify that an individual is actually employed at a company, that company would use this service to handle these verification requests. The HR dept is already overworked and they don't want the liability of a lawsuit in case they accidentally say something negative. To avoid all of this, they just outsource it to Equifax and provide them with all of their HR data; Equifax still retains that data and turns around and sells it.
The funny thing is they tell the HR departments that the information will only be disclosed to the people that you say it can be disclosed to, yet a collections agency could potentially ask for this information to see if it's worth trying to collect or use it as a tool to sue for garnishments.
If enough people raise cane about it, employers will stop using the service. I doubt we can get those jokers to move at all to stop this.
I agree on both accounts.
But you last point I disagree with. You can get an eye exam and glasses for sub $100 without trying. You can keep it below $50 with a little work on your part.
Cheap exam and get glasses online.
They will not be light glasses, but they will be serviceable. I would not recommend it for anyone with funds though.
I found a place that for $99 gives exams for 3 years. Basically you pay for 2 exams and get one free. You can of course use it as many times as you wanted so I use them when I need the drivers license form signed and such.
Welcome to the corporate anarchy, citizen.
s/citizen/consumer/g
There, fixed that for you.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
actually, no one has anything to hide, because you can't hide anything. i have to say that it allows one to focus on what's important (i.e. life) and not stupid crap like checking credit reports ... lol
As an employer, I have to say that anybody stupid enough to work for a company that asks for credit information deserves what they get. The same goes for drug testing. If you're willing to sell your credit history and your personal health information for a job, then you're part of the problem.
OK, so when every job that isn't at McDonald's requires one, the other, or both, please explain how we're supposed to financially support ourselves and not be "part of the problem," as you put it.
Moral superiority is easy to feign when you're not the one getting screwed.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Everybody who WANTS to work should be guaranteed a job that is accessible! It is a human right to work!
I would rather want healthy inflation than unemployment!
Where is the quadrillion dollar platinum coin when we need it?
New Economic Perspectives
...for an employer interviewing a candidate. Not so much for the candidate.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
If they want to fix it, they'll stop with someone else subsidizing or otherwise footing (even shared) the ultimate bill. Of course you have hospital rooms that cost $10,000 per day and where a Tylenol is $95, because as long as you're ultimately billing an insurance company or the state, who gives a shit? Same goes for car insurance. If everyone had to pay out of pocket directly for their insurance and various expenses, the price would have to drop because you couldn't play the "inflate the costs, because no actual individual ultimately gets the bill at the end of the day for everything" game.
This is a little OT, but it's been bugging me for a while. There are a lot of companies out there that don't want to increase a potential worker's pay by a large amount and won't hire a qualified and competent candidate because of this large increase. I've even heard that they would consider this massive increase potentially detrimental to the candidate if they hired them at this larger rate. To me it's ludicrous and can't think of anything reasonable on how their statements could be true.
I don't understand the logic of not hiring someone that's unemployed either. A good portion of a job interview is to vet whether they have the necessary skills or not. If they're capable, then what does it matter? If they're hired and they suck, it's time to review how candidates are interviewed and get better at it.
CSB:
At my last job I got a few promotions in title, responsibility, and work load without any salary increases beyond the yearly 3% if I was lucky. My boss knew I was underpaid and I even put together a well worded case with referenced to DOL statistics in the area to show how far behind my salary was to his boss, the CTO, could try and increase his payroll budget. Obviously that never went through. I saw the signs that they were on the path to bankruptcy so I started looking for better opportunities.
About half of the headhunters wanted my current salary info from me, but I would only let them guess and when they got close to within $15k of my goal salary, I'd say "around that area" or "that's pretty close" and they'd just run with it. They never got close to my actual pay since I was in a senior position getting junior pay. The pay increase didn't ruin me at all. Instead it let me live more comfortably, not have to worry whether I could afford to eat a more nutritious meal, and be able to put money away into savings.
I found this when googling "The Work Number" and ADP.
http://investor.talx.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74399&p=irol-newsArticle_Print&ID=898835&highlight=
What it means is that if you want to verify someone's work history, you call up that company, and they will give you a third-party service to call to verify employment at their company. Negotiate a huge phone tree, and you find out you have to sign up for that service in order to verify employment. Seems like a scummy way of preventing your employees from changing jobs, getting loans, etc. by outsourcing something you should be mandated into doing to a fee-charging company.
Have you ever tried to use your own pills when you are staying in the hospital? They about flipped out when I tried to do that with my wife. She was on some regular daily meds, and I figured it would be better to just take them then have the nurses have to get and charge us for said meds. You'd have thought I had declared war on the hospital by the reaction I got.
It was a TV station that had done a story about credit scores and promoted this offer. I never got anything from the station, and would have noticed it if I did since it would have come in on the same address. I doubt very much if they paid to harvest email that they could sell for pennies to Chinese spammers, that likely just got a free offer from Equifax as part of doing the credit score story. And other reports of other people also having similar problems with Equifax when their relationship with them originated differently further discounts your speculation.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
My impression is likely old or wrong then. Or I only saw some particularly bad deals.
I had bad experiences with credit in my early 20's. Not ashamed to admit it. The more I got to learning about how the credit system works the more I was boggled at how bad it really was and was bound and determined to get out of it by my 30's. So I spent a lot of time in my mid and late 20's with a start up that I eventually sold for a fair amount of money. It wasn't millions, but enough to pay off my debts, buy a condo that I rehabbed and then got luck to flip for a good profit, and then I bought the farm next to my Dad's.
Now I pay cash for everything. If I need a car, I try to find a good used one (although thanks to cash for clunkers there aren't a lot out there. My 2004 Chevy Impala with 130k miles could fetch way more than it's worth at the moment).
After buying the farm, I didn't have enough to buy another place so I decided to rent a loft. Walked in and they all their "credit" requirements. I asked them to figure out the amount of the lease and I'd go right to the bank and get a cashiers check for the full amount up front. Amazing how they no longer needed to run my credit.
Last year I created an LLC for my part time business of going to estate sales and then dealing in antique and vintage furniture. Went to see about credit card processing from the bank and a couple days later got a call back stating that they had a problem: there wasn't any credit records for me. I smiled, said don't worry about it and opened a square account.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
A principled stand isn't acceptable legal tender at any bank, grocery store, or landlord I've ever heard of.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
How, exactly, did it work out for Poland?
Politician LEGAL salaries are a matter of public record. Here fixed that for you.
I followed the link in the article: http://www.theworknumber.com/Employees/DataReport/ It lets you search for your employer. My current employer does not report. My previous employer did, but the one previous to that did not. So that's 1/3 for me. YMMV, but it's probably worth checking. Then you can go (or not) to your HR dept and ask them why or thank them for not divulging your info.
You did. They need your inflated drug prices to pay for everyone walking into the emergency room who can't pay a dime but who they have to treat by law.
Well, grand. Now the world will know I am underpaid. Perhaps you all could start a grassroots effort to get me a raise?
Citizen: Help! Randian Nutbag! My house is on fire!
RN: Contemptible Weakling, if you were strong, I would help you. Or perhaps I would murder you and take everything that makes you strong. That certainly would be an option for a Heroic Spirit. But you are weak and destined for failure.
Citizen: My family is in the house! Oh, save them!
RN: Pusillanimous Conformist Vermin, you have bred hapless, dependent whelps as pathetic as yourself. You are weak and destined for failure. I am indifferent to your suffering. { begins to fly away }
Citizen: W-wh-where are you going?
RN: To collect my welfare cheque. I am *not* indifferent to my own suffering.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
that is false, trivial to "investigate" someone by running background and credit checks. hint, private detectives do it all the time.
credit score is NOT more accurate, it is ONLY based on debt and payment timeliness. of course, that whole industry should have its legs broken, be demolished as horrible invasion of privacy and enslaving people. the banking / finance cartel needs to be put to the flames, most of the recession, war, starving people of resources is a direct result of their machinations
this will very quickly become illegal.
In this case, public officials' salaries are already available BUT you can certainly try to find their past earnings.
If you're serious about making it a public issue, you have to at least contact your politicians.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ I think would be the best place to go.
passetspike!
Salaries yes, but not necessarily their income.
rewriting history since 2109
undoing incorrect moderation.
If there is a better way to do this let me know.
If my salary info is in there, it's merely for comic relief.
It's legal and doesn't require any security systems to be breached. The company has your salary information, there are no laws in place to keep them from giving that information to anyone they choose, currently it's protected only out of self-interest. For example, currently many companies will give out your salary information (among other things such as HR reports) to other companies calling about ex-employees as part of a background check.
That's not to say it's meaningfully less wrong, though. Just that the gap between morality and legality is much greater in this case than the hacking scenario.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Another good example is K12 education, where public takes $10K per student but private takes $2K per student to do about the same thing.
To be fair, they don't really do the same thing. The public school does a much, much worse job, at least in the US. YMMV.
This got me thinking, why am I paying insurance when my house has never once burned down yet???
Sue all the fucking HR departments that had no right to expose their financial information without explicit permission.
You're fighting feigned moral superiority with hyperbole. There are plenty of jobs that don't require either of those things.
LegendMUD
I cleaned up our credit after my (ex-)wife's card was stolen by a waiter. It took two years (because shit was being transferred between the credit bureaux or restored from back-ups faster than we whack the moles, but I finally succeeded. In EVERY case it was, "Not mine, not me, not then, Prove it or delete." It was only icing on the cake when I was able to show documentation which showed such a charge or action was impossible.
Line by line through each entire report. The creditor has (had?) to respond within 30 days or the entry must be (had to have been) removed. A new report may be requested to confirm. Lather, rinse, repeat.
This practice should be straight up illegal with real PMITA prison time for violations. Barring that, at the very least, all salary info older than five years is irrelevant and should be null, void, and undistributable.
There are plenty of jobs that don't require either of those things.
Such as? Name 10, excluding minimum wage and under-the-table type jobs like fast food and landscaping.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
No the stupid part is not understanding why the insurance company does that.
If you only ever need cleanings you are correct, but that is always the gamble with insurance. So far I am thousands to the good on my dental insurance.
You're the one who said "every job that isn't at McDonald's requires one, the other, or both," so I'm not going to do your leg work for you, but feel free to call and ask your local small businesses (and gas stations, and grocery stores, and retail stores, and restaurants, etc etc).
LegendMUD
In the USA it's expensive, but still inexpensive compared to outrageously expensive medicine.
You're the one who said "every job that isn't at McDonald's requires one, the other, or both," so I'm not going to do your leg work for you, but feel free to call and ask your local small businesses (and gas stations, and grocery stores, and retail stores, and restaurants, etc etc).
I specifically said, "excluding minimum wage and under-the-table type jobs." The occupations you mentioned are almost exclusively minimum wage.
Of course, your response serves to support my point, so I guess I shouldn't bitch.
PS if you're going to accuse other people of being hyperbolic, you may want to avoid the behavior yourself - nobody likes a hypocrite.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Maybe it's too obvious to need to be stated, but, essentially, this is a trust between companies to grant them a superior bargaining position and keep wages low. Meanwhile, companies keep salary information hidden from employees and forbid any salary discussion to maintain the asymmetry.
The whole credit rating system exists to give banks a superior position, granting easy access to information for the wealthy and restricting access to the poor. This is no different. I don't trust government to improve the situation at all, so that leaves Anonymous.
There can also be concerns about mixing meds. Bad drug combinations/wrong dosages can happen if someone else enters the picture. Which they, of course, will then be blamed for. At the very least they are going to want to take possession of the drugs and dispense them as prescribed.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
10 jobs? You dolt, it's company specific, not job specific. Nobody should work for a COMPANY that requires this kind of garbage. There are plenty of companies that don't treat their employees like cattle. If you're not intelligent enough to find one, then that's really your problem, not mine.
I don't respond to AC's.
10 jobs? You dolt, it's company specific, not job specific.
For the record, stepping right out of the gate with an ad hominem is not a good way to endear others to your cause; much to the contrary, it only serves to make you look like an unreasonable asshole.
Nobody should work for a COMPANY that requires this kind of garbage.
Don't disagree, in spirit. What I disagree with is the concept that getting a job worth having somewhere that doesn't require employees to essentially sign their rights away is just as easy as you seem to think it is.
There are plenty of companies that don't treat their employees like cattle.
Okay, then name one. I mean, you say they exist, so naming just one shouldn't be that taxing, should it?
If you're not intelligent enough to find one, then that's really your problem, not mine.
Full circle back to the personal attacks, I see. You really don't want to be taken seriously, do you?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Is there something that I signed when I was hired that allows this? If not, why's it not an invasion of privacy without my consent?
mark
I had varying success. Some nurses would agree to it, but they would tell me when to administer it to my wife. They would also document it on the computer. Other nurses were not so inclined. I hate to see what a pill costs from the hospital. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough once the bills start rolling in. On a side note, when you change insurance companies, don't take some jerks word for it that they have the new information on file. Those dirty jerks billed the old insurance who quickly denied it. Sad thing is the old insurance is the new insurance, just new account numbers. Yet they can't pay the charges because that would be insurance fraud! So now I have to call every jerk doctor who wants to get paid and have them resubmit the bill.
I'm not really sure why your qualification excludes minimum wage jobs (unless it's just an attempt to back up your original comment, which is odd, considering you said "McDonald's", not "fast food" or "minimum wage"); are minimum wage jobs not valid? Also, the very broad set I alluded to *do* include jobs paying above minimum wage, especially when you consider advancement within an organization.
Semantically, your phrase of "every job" is hyperbole, while mine of "plenty of jobs" is not.
LegendMUD
The National Labor Relations Act covers this fairly explicitly in the US; it was designed to allow unions to share salary information. IANAL, IAAAC (I am an anonymous coward).
I'm not really sure why your qualification excludes minimum wage jobs (unless it's just an attempt to back up your original comment, which is odd, considering you said "McDonald's", not "fast food" or "minimum wage"); are minimum wage jobs not valid?
Minimum wage jobs are not valid career choices.
Also, the very broad set I alluded to *do* include jobs paying above minimum wage, especially when you consider advancement within an organization.
Semantically, your phrase of "every job" is hyperbole, while mine of "plenty of jobs" is not.
I suppose I can concede those points, although I will point out that, in many of the occupations you listed, advancing beyond entry-level typically does require drug testing at a minimum, and often entail other, more intrusive background checks.
However, none of that changes the fact that OP is being an unreasonable dick about the whole thing, which is what I intended to point out.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I have insurance provided by my company because they pay my portion for me and if I declined the insurance, I would receive nothing in return. Like you, I think that is asinine. I used to work for Sybase, and they gave you X in credits for insurance. If you chose a package that cost more than X, then they took some out of your paycheck. If you chose a package that cost less than X (which I did), then they put money INTO your paycheck. This is as it should be.
If I were to insure my family through my company, it would cost me an additional $900 per month. This is insane. Instead, I have a catastrophic insurance policy, which pays when things go horribly wrong, and on the day to day,I pay, but I get the insurance company rate. This costs me about $270 a month. That is also insanely expensive, but much cheaper than the "insurance" plan offered by the company. I worked it out and if I paid my entire deductible in a year (which I never have) plus the premiums, it would be cheaper than just the premiums on the company plan, and that is not including all the copays, deductibles, coinsurance and outright denials that I would have to pay on the company plan.
Everything claiming to be "insurance" that is not catastrophic insurance needs to be made illegal. Instead, it sounds like Obama plans to make insurance illegal, and make the expensive BS medical plans mandatory. Thanks, Obama.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I have no interest in doing research to convince anybody that they should have some self respect. I run such a company, so I'm 100% positive they exist. If you choose to prostitute yourself out to an unscrupulous company for something as banal as a job, that's your problem. Either you get it, or you don't, and you clearly don't.
I don't respond to AC's.
Sounds like you and your wife are poster children for abuse from the health care system. The issues I've had in the past are nothing in comparison. Good luck.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
I don't anticipate it being that big of a problem, except that every #!(#!% health care biller has 9-4 hours. Some of us have what we like to call JOBS, and I can't take 30 minutes out of my work day to call and deal with this crap.
I have no interest in doing research to convince anybody that they should have some self respect. I run such a company, so I'm 100% positive they exist.
Good for you. I'm 100% positive anecdotes do not equate to evidence. So, unless you want to name the company you claim to run, and post the documentation that proves what you say about it is true, I'm inclined to not believe you.
If you choose to prostitute yourself out to an unscrupulous company for something as banal as a job, that's your problem.
Being able to provide food and shelter to my family is what you consider 'banal?' What'r you, some kind of trust-fund baby that's never been forced to make that decision of, 'do I stand up for my morals, or do I feed my family?' If so, good for you, but that's no reason to be a prick to those of us who weren't blessed with a silver spoon in our mouths.
Either you get it, or you don't, and you clearly don't.
And we come back to the ad hominem attacks. I've always been a firm believer that if a person can't posit their argument without resorting to marginalizing opposition, be it through childish insults or other means, that said person doesn't have a valid argument to begin with. You have succeeded in supporting my contention, so I suppose congratulations are in order.
P.S. if you really do run a company, and you're as combative with your employees who disagree with you as you have been with me, I would imagine your turnover rate is astronomical.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Where you go wrong is thinking that libertarians are proposing solutions. They're not. They are proposing moral principles.
Those principles have a place regardless of whether they create "solutions" or not.
For example, let's take a civil libertarian who favors free speech. Now let's take a "moderate". The moderate will say that the libertarian's policies result in chaos: people speaking/writing all sorts of stuff, some inane, some possibly resulting in great harm (copycat killings). The moderate will cry out for "solutions". But the libertarian never proposed a policy to achieve a specific desired result.
That's not the point. The point is that free speech is a moral principle (according to the libertarian). As such, it doesn't matter what the results of free speech are. And you don't change the principle based on what people (individuals) are doing with their freedom.
Similarly, the libertarian would say you don't change the principle of the freedom to work and trade because you might disagree with the actions of some individuals in the marketplace.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
As a government employee (work for a state university) my salary has always been a matter of public record. This doesn't change anything for me, although I guess it centralizes searches of salary history.