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Ask Slashdot: Should You Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Make?
An anonymous reader writes: Asking someone how much money they make is often -- if not always? -- considered impolite. But over the years, there has been a movement in toward more salary transparency. Some say salary transparency can make workplaces more equitable by helping to eliminate the gender and racial pay gaps. Even in companies that haven't decided to officially make all salaries open, some employees are taking matters into their own hands and sharing their pay rate with their coworkers. What's your take on this?
I think this is a variation of Dunning-Kruger. Lower-paid workers cannot understand what value the higher paid workers actually provide. Sometimes the higher pay is valid, sometimes not. But unless you are already an expert, you won't know. So while you help with race/gender pay inequality, you're also making a hostile work environment for managers and subordinates.
Three possible outcomes:
1- You feel undervalued
2- They feel undervalued
3- You're surprisingly in alignment on the value of the work both of you do, your initial negotiating position, and other possible impacts that may have led to your compensation.
I'd guess most people are not going to fit into the third category.
The province where I work has mandated that all university employees paid over a certain amount must have their salaries publicly disclosed because they are, at least partly, publicly funded. While I don't have a problem with this per se I think it is unfair to single out those of us working at universities. This rule should also apply to all companies who accept government contracts too since, by extension, their salaries are also being paid for, at least in part, by government money.
In the case of contracts, the amount of the contract should be made public, but how the contractor pays its employees is really their own business. All the public needs to know is the amount of the contract, and possibly, competing bids to ensure the public is getting a good value for its money. The employees of the contractor are not government employees.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The idea of keeping wages secret exists mainly because employers don't want everyone knowing what others make. If they did, they might all want to be "more equal" (deservedly or otherwise). For the most, the secrecy is still a tool employers use to maintain low wages.
Transparency puts the onus on employers to explain wage inequality.
Your position is a key piece of information when negotiating, a piece that Americans almost never have because of this custom. The only reason you should WANT your salary to be a secret is that you think you make the most compared to your peers. That or tax evasion.
it's "impolite" because we're told it's impolite. We're told that for a reason. It's yet another barrier to Unionizing and organized labor; the only two things that have ever made a widespread enough difference in the working classes quality of life to result in a 'middle class'.
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Nope. No one is ever happy. If you make less, you're pissed. If you make more, it's not enough more, and you're pissed.
Your employer benefits from the information asymmetry of not sharing your pay data with your peers. You do not.
Unfortunately no-one wants to be the one that speaks first.
That's great and all, until Trade Unions, just like any other person or group of people given representative power, inevitably transition out of acting on behalf of those who empowered them, and start acting on behalf of only themselves.
The employees of the University are not government employees either
That depends on whether or not we are talking about a public or private university. They are indeed government employees if they are teaching at a public university (which isn't the same thing as a publicly-funded university) such as a state college. Their employer might be the "University of Statesota" but they are working for the government. On the other hand, I don't think salaries of professors at private universities (even if they receive government funding) are required to publicly disclose their salaries.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
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NLRB indicates that employers cannot prohibit employees from discussing wages with other employees.
https://www.lexisnexis.com/leg...