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NYC Poised to Ban Firms From Asking Job Candidates About Pay (bloomberg.com)
In a vote this week, the New York City approved legislation that will ban employers from asking job applicants about what they make in their current or past job and could have far-reaching consequences beyond the city as employers try to standardize their practices. From a report: "This bill will go a long way in addressing wage disparities women -- and particularly women of color -- face," said Public Advocate Letitia James, who sponsored the measure. White women in New York earn on average 84 percent of what white men earn, while Asian women earn 63 percent, black women earn 55 percent and Hispanic women just 46 percent, according to a report from the advocate's office, based on U.S. Census data. Asking about pay in a job interview hurts women who may start from a lower level than male candidates -- an effect that compounds over time. "It perpetuates discrimination," James said. "And it has an effect on their pensions as well."
There is no need for government to insert itself into a market driven process during a salary negotion between a potential employer and employee. The employee is free to lie about past salaries (no employer will ever release this information). This is yet another example of government overreach and I'm pretty sure the Trump team will crush this under their heel once they hear about it.
The wage gap myth is, for some reason, easy to perpetuate no matter how many times you throw facts back at it. It's a politician's, feminist's, and SJW's crutch to lean on.
I've never understood why someone's current salary is important to an employer. A job pays what the job is worth and the skill set the candidate brings to the table. It should not pay based on what someone is currently making as there is no relationship.
If you pay less, you get less. I worked for a company that had about 20 programmers making $30k in the heart of Silicon Valley. How did we do it? We hired kids straight out of high school and trained them as code monkeys, to whip up Javascript or throw-away Perl scripts. Most of our projects were quick one-off stuff, and when we did need to maintain something for the long term we had one of our "real" programmers clean it up. This actually worked amazingly well, and the company was profitable for years. I kept in touch with many of those kids, and most of them went on to successful tech careers, and one of them even got a PhD from Stanford.
Because they aren't breaking it down by job. Hispanic women are paid half of white men because of the types of jobs they are working. I have read that when broken down by job/experience levels that the difference is around 3% and that in certain jobs women actually make more. The largest gaps are in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, two of the most liberal job markets in the country.
That's how it should happen.
And that's definitely not how it happens. Businesses by and large no longer negotiate. At least, big businesses. They know what they're going to pay and that's it. There is no discussion. If you ask for more, they will simply say no (speaking from experience). HR has a schedule: job title X with Y years of experience and Z tenure gets salary Alpha, and that's an end of it. They do this specifically to avoid discrimination lawsuits. If women in the company have lower average salaries than men, it's invariably because they have y experience, where y < the Y the men have.
Pretending to have a convesation with yourself does not help you prove your point.
While the gender-based unexaplained wage gap may be as low as 3%-7% in the U.S., the larger part, that which is explained by what positions people are working, is widely recognized an an indicator of hiring bias. Whether it's unequal pay for equal work or unequal opportunity for equal qualifications, it is still a problem that compounds on itself over a lifetime. The wage gap stat represents both factors.
Someone had to do it.
Yep, there's an immense hiring bias in nursing, teaching, garbage collection, lobster fishing, and ice road trucking.
Revealing your previous salary never, ever helps you. The only things that the company can do with that information all screw you somehow.
It's pretty normal to give this information in the UK. I've been refusing and it seems to be a useful test to filter out crap companies that aren't able to handle this situation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC