The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2012/05/how-keeping-salaries-secrets-makes-employees-complicit-wage-inequality/53008/

Senate bill would ban employers from prohibiting or punishing workers who talk about what they make.  The article claims that secrecy in pay information hurts women in particular.

This is not a requirement to post pay scales, or force you to reveal what you make.

Good idea? bad idea?  Doesn't matter?

Very good idea if you want equal pay for equal work -- and not just for women. When the amount you are paid is required to be kept secret companies can get by with a lot of pay favoritism. Companies that must want it kept secret are probably the ones most guilty of pay favoritism. Transparency, after all lets light in where they don't want it.

 
However, you run into the problem of people thinking that they do more or better work than someone else so they should be paid more even if they don't see half of what the other person does and grossly overestimate their own contribution...

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2012/05/how-keeping-salaries-secrets-makes-employees-complicit-wage-inequality/53008/

Senate bill would ban employers from prohibiting or punishing workers who talk about what they make.  The article claims that secrecy in pay information hurts women in particular.

This is not a requirement to post pay scales, or force you to reveal what you make.

Good idea? bad idea?  Doesn't matter?

Depending upon the job it could hurt.  There are many factors that go into a persons base pay that can not be indicated on thier paystub.  Education, experience, critical skill sets, kickers for certain jobs, etc all factor into the final monthly pay.

It's like I worked for the school system where all our pay was public record.  Yet my particular job had a $1000 kicker on it because of the demands of being on call all the time plus the extra hours that it entailed.   Yet that kicker was never explained on the payscale as only a few jobs got it.  Yet on the job description it was hidden in small print or a foot note on the category pay scale.

I really can't compare it to the corporate world as I only worked for the military (23 years) and public school system (9 years) all of which make payscales part of the public record.

See, I know how I get and I have specifically told the guy I work with that I don't want to know how much he makes because you have the false comparisons.  

Granted, I've typically been in the boat that I make more than the people around me (Mostly due to education and ability) working a hybrid position (Administrative/hands on).  Because I did a lot of administrative stuff (IE I got to sit down and play with a computer) there was talk behind my back already about me being 'lazy', etc.  I know if pay had been public there would have been a lot more resentment and it would have created a hostile workplace.

GOod thing you don't work for a military or public sector then.

 
but the law actually isn't for that, it's to prevent punishment of people who do reveal how much they make, not to force posting or require that you reveal it.  If the other nurse had actually revealed that I had told her how much I was making, instead of going out, getting another job and demanding so much of a raise to keep her, I would have been fired for discussing my pay rate.  WIth this law, they would have had to find another excuse to fire me.  Me, I didn't even think about it when I told her, I realised what I had done later, thank heavens she did it the way she did.

Or for the military, which branch of the service, how many kids you have, where your home is, etc.  Base pay for the military is easy, all services use the same scale of rank and years.  It's all the add-ons that make it hard to figure out. Granted, the add-on calculations and such are public record, but the variety makes it hard for two people to compare pay at time.

That doesn't even figure in things like sea pay, sub pay, hazardous duty pay, family seperation pay, flight pay, combat pay, etc.  Some which applies only to married (but not military to military) and some which applies to everyone that qualifies for it.  Nor does that really take into consideration tax free zones and other things of that nature.

Yep the add ons make it very difficult to figure out at times.