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New Law Bans California Employers From Asking Applicants Their Prior Salary (sfgate.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: California employers can no longer ask job applicants about their prior salary and -- if applicants ask -- must give them a pay range for the job they are seeking, under a new state law that takes effect Jan. 1. AB168, signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown, applies to all public- and private-sector California employers of any size. 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. Last year, the state passed a weaker law that said prior compensation, by itself, cannot justify any disparity in compensation. The new bill goes further by prohibiting employers, "orally or in writing, personally or through an agent," from asking about an applicant's previous pay. However, if the applicant "voluntarily and without prompting" provides this information, the employer may use it "in determining the salary for that applicant."
I must have been lucky -- I've never been asked that. I get asked what soft of salary I'm looking for instead.
Virtually every employment application I've ever filled out has asked me for my start & end salary at previous work places, along with start & end date of employment, plus why I left that position. I think those questions are pretty standard.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
But, how would they find out? No employer is going to tell how much they paid any employees, as that opens them up to lawsuits.
You're not very imaginative. They find out by requiring you to provide a copy of a recent paycheck stub as a condition for employment.
A few years ago, I worked at a job that I absolutely hated. The hours were bad, management was brutal and oppressive, etc. One day I got a call out of the blue from a recruiter about a job at AIG. I interviewed, they liked me, we progressed to the offer stage. Part of AIG's offer process, and I've heard a number of other companies require this, involves you providing their HR rep with a recent paystub. I'm sure there's some perfect excuse one could offer to get out of this requirement, but for most people the options are submit the paystub or lose the opportunity. Or maybe there's a third option of mocking up a fake paystub, but there's the risk of eventually being found out and getting fired or accused of fraud. It is incredibly one sided, and laws like the one recently passed in California are a good start to making the negotiations a bit more equal.
49 other states didn't want it? And yet the article says this is following Delaware, Massachusetts and Oregon who passed similar laws recently. Do you want to revise your opinion after reading the article or persist in your ignorance?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.