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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 foresee a lot of voluntary disclosure. :(
I'm job-seeking right now and they always ask. ALWAYS.
I love how this was passed thru (the law) because of male/female pay issues.
the REAL issue is that it makes negotiating a one-way street, with the company having all the power and you have nearly none.
'the first one to mention a number, loses'
that's how the old saying goes when you are haggling.
and yet, there's few ways out of this game, especially since you can't just mark 'market rate' on the online hr forms.
its all about keeping you in your place. the god damned 'job creators' that we have been worshipping really don't have our needs in mind; they could not care less if we all starved and died on the streets. lots of indians to come over and work for a fraction of what a US person needs to live on.
good that this passed thru; but sad that it had to be couched as a male/female thing instead of 'strong company/weak worker' negotiation balancing.
either way, I expect companies to find loopholes to work around this 'unpleasent' rebalance of power.
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Gotta give the progressive morons in Sacramento credit for this one..This should be the law everywhere...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I've been asked the question by recruiters at major tech companies. It's been pretty quickly shut down by "I'm not in the Bay Area currently, I don't think what I'm on just now is in any way relevant to how much I should be paid over there".
That's still better than telling them your previous salary.
I mean, let's say you're interviewing for a position that pays $65k - $80k (and it was advertised as such), depending on experience. If you tell them that at your last job, you were making $60k, they're going to start negotiating at $65k.
But if the question is, how much do you expect to earn here, it puts you in a better position for negotiation. Maybe you have enough experience to flat out say "$80k". Or maybe, you want to give them a little wiggle room for negotiation so you don't come across as a hard-ass, and you say "$75k".
But you still have a better starting point for the salary negotiation.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Anything that prevents companies from playing HR compensation games when they hire new employees or promote from within is a good thing. Most big company HR departments absolutely will not entertain offers if the salary is over x% of what the person says they were previously making. Almost all companies enforce this rule when promoting someone too -- they want to pay as little as possible, not how much the job is worth.
I imagine this rule comes from California due to the extremely distorted labor market that SF/SV has now. I know the official reason is gender equality, which does need to be addressed, but the side effect is a more level playing field for all job applicants. If you can convince an employer that you're worth $250K as a rockstar Rust developer, but you're making $100K doing JavaScript, then companies will just have to do a better job figuring out whether the candidates are lying.
Because then they will verify this as a condition of your job offer, find out you were lying, and disqualify you. Dishonesty is always a high-risk lay where one mistake will cost you.
Who needs to ask the employee when you can ask Equifax or Transunion the same question?
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"Ask me once, you a fool. Ask me twice, wait, What?" -- J. Muamma
Now that you mention it, I do remember such questions from a couple of lifetimes ago when I was applying for unskilled jobs. That was so long ago that I forgot. Those questions stopped when I started in engineering, though.
I've worked as an engineer for 20 years in the very best companies out there. All of them asked that. Some require a drug test, others don't. It's silly, I am not going to be operating a bus, I'm going to be driving a keyboard and mouse, maybe an oscilloscope if I get suckered into lab work. All ask for your previous salary on the job application.
These days I leave it blank, but often HR will ask directly. I give them a number that is defensible but misleading, and what I want them to beat to work there. So far nobody has ever called me on it.
They should not ask though. First, it is usually considered confidential information from current employers. Second, the should be paying me what they think I'm worth, not based on what the other guy thought I was worth, or via some fixing scheme where everyone agrees this is what we pay engineers, and when they get pissed we give them a few % more.
How can they verify it?
The best they could do is tax records, but that's sufficiently imprecise to cover you. They could do a credit check, but that only gives them a general range, not an exact salary.
But, if you don't want to lie, then just don't answer the question.
There's exactly no chance that I'm going to tell potential employers what previous employers paid me. That's very personal information that they have no legitimate need to know.
If that means I won't get hired for the position, that's fine -- if the information is that important to them, that's an excellent indication that I wouldn't fit in well in that company anyway.
You just admitted to illegal age discrimination in a permanent public forum.
Is there a theoretical gap in pay? Yes. However, when you look at the real numbers, it's quickly shown that the difference is because there is also a difference is time actually worked - IOW - a difference in experience levels, and once adjusted for that the gap goes away to within the normative ranges.
So yes, if you look at a man and a woman who are both 35 years old and say "oh, there's a $20k difference in their pay", but then...
- failed to account for work experience differences
- failed to account for time-off differences
Oh, and pretty much every employer - especially large employers - are pushed to have all people (regardless of age, sex, etc) at a given position level to be within a certain spread. If you're in the upper end of the spread, then HR pushes for a promotion so they can keep the numbers relatively close together. If you're at the bottom of the spread, then HR pushes for pay raises. Essentially, the position might have a spread of $20k, but HR pushes to keep folks within $5-10k of each other.
Still thing there's a gender pay gap? Take a look at the demographics of HR departments (it's highly skewed - opposite the general tech field).
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
You mean the fact that Single Women just out of college earn more than their male counterparts, but an average of 8%?
"Census data from 2008 show that single, childless women in their 20s now earn 8 percent more on average than their male counterparts in metropolitan areas."
http://www.politifact.com/pund...
The wage gap myth is based on the idea that men and women make equal choices, and doesn't account for career choices, family choices, and other meaningful criteria. But hey, it fits the narrative.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I guarantee this will have unintended consequences. Interviews will be much longer. We'll hear stories of people who BS their way through interviews to much higher positions than they're actually qualified for. It's going to be a learning process for companies. I know I've already shared this with other managers on my team...many of us hire folks in CA.
Or.... how about you offer the salary that you think is reasonable for the position? Interview the skill-level of the candidate? Rather than trying to judge it based on what someone else previously thought they were worth. You've no idea how good the previous employer was at judging their worth.
a) Progressive companies generally have a 90-day probation period for new hires. If their performance is not commensurate with what your offer is then let them go or make them renegotiate.
b) Asking for previous salaries unilaterally removes a lot of leverage from candidates' salary negotiations. HR departments use this with salary bands to great effect to depress wages of workers in the US. It's part of the reason why real average hourly wages have stagnated since 1980.
The Obama administration did push through an update to the Federal overtime regulations to make the majority of blue collar workers, especially retail/restaurant managers eligible for OT again, because they mostly get salaries around $24k/yr whereas a $12/hr worker would get OT without question, but its been blocked in court and the Trump administration is trying to kill it.