@ucbalumnus according to NPR, the 1935 National Labor Relations Act prohibits employers from banning salary discussions.
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies-at-work-often-illegal-and-misunderstood
From what I know there is no federal law governing discussing salary. In most companies salary is a private thing, other than the top executives where compensation is part of the 10k filing. The problem with knowing what other people make is that comparisons only generate friction. For example, someone in department Y sees what a manager in department X is making and isn’t happy, but X department happens to be technical where the pay scales can be larger than for let’s say an administrative manager, based on the market. You can have senior technical people who make more than managers in other areas,the idea of universal pay scales itself is kind of idiotic, because salaries in the private sector are set by supply and demand. Someone in my own field who has experience in the financial sector will generally make a lot more money than someone who works let’s say for a manufacturing company and it will show in how they are compensated. Most companies do have salary ranges for a job position, and often those are known, and that is fine, but knowing what specific people make should not be shared or publicly known, as someone said, all that does is lead to dissension. Basically, if you think you are underpaid, what person X is making is irrelevant, an argument you are underpaid should be based on the work you are doing, the responsibility you have, and one of the biggest arguments is what the market is paying for that experience. It doesn’t always work, beancounters think only their jobs are valuable, and are proud if they ‘save money’ by underpaying someone, but have never bothered to read how much it costs to replace an experienced employee.
Unequal pay is going to be present in any environment barring rigid pay grades like civil service or unionized positions. One of the fundamental things about most white collar work is that you are supposed to be compensated for what you bring to the table, not necessarily how long you have been there or even your position. It is not uncommon , for example, in tech sectors where a tech superstar might make more than their manager, and someone who is the manager of a development group will likely make a lot more than the manager of office support staff.
Most companies do have pay levels for certain levels of employees, a range, that they use in judging where someone is. The problem with that is in most organizations, they are trying to get away from structures where there are rigid grade levels a la the civil service, they also are running flat management structures so titles are not necessarily a way to increase pay, not to mention the old dilemma about promoting employees to manager to get them more money when they can’t manage or don’t really want to.
Everything that I have heard and read indicates that such costs are large for jobs that require substantial skill.
It is a lot,something that the Finance types totally ignore. First of all, if someone leaves who is skilled, it usually takes a while to hire someone who is a fit, someone who has the skills and personality to fit in, so right there you are losing time, plus then once you get someone, they have to learn. Not to mention that likely you will end up paying a replacement more, and if you use a headhunter, that can be a significant cost, as much as a years salary. I have had battles over a 5k raise, and by estimates replacing the person cost the company about 80k in fees and lost productivity, but try telling that to a finance type prod of how they saved the company money.
^FWIW - I work in Finance and it’s been HR who made those decisions where I work/worked. We just run the numbers
I’ve always thought it was taboo/impolite to
a) Tell people how much I make or
b) Ask them how much they make
I can see only negatives:
- You share your salary with a co-worker who makes less. Now he or she feels slighted, or jealous, or thinks of you as a jerk (especially if they think that you know how much they make).
- You share your salary with a co-worker who makes more. Now he or she looks down on you, feels sorry for you (a problem if you have pride), or thinks you’re a whiner (because he may think you know what he makes and are telling him your salary as a means of making him feel badly for making more – very douchey).
- Asking someone for their salary info is considered rude by some people and should not be done unless you are certain that it is OK with the person whom you wish to ask.
If a firm wants to introduce transparency, that’s another thing – they can post salary ranges on the company’s intranet site. Then you just need to know a person’s job title to ascertain their salary range, and personal ethics/comfort be damned.
I had a lot of chatty friends at work and eventually realized I was making CONSIDERABLY less than all of them for the same or lesser work. Even the receptionist was making more than I was. The morons they had me training to do my old job after I was promoted were making more than I was. I was hired in low for whatever reason and they werent going to increase it no matter how good of a worker I was until their hand was forced. I worked there for about a year before it came up but I did make it clear that I was not happy with my compensation and I was prepared to move on. When I left that company after three years, my salary was over 30% higher than when I started and about where it was supposed to be. We were all paid less than the industry standard, however, which is part of why I ultimately ended up leaving anyway.
Looking back at it all, I would have been better off NOT knowing and just leaving to go someplace that would pay me better. It was nice to know and be able to negotiate myself a higher salary, but if they were willing to screw me that way, do you think that was the only way they’d shortchange me over the years? Of course not. If you’re not happy look for other opportunities, if you are don’t worry about it. Otherwise you just end up angry.
At the company where I work, the salary ranges are about $10K wide and non-overlapping, and everyone knows their own level. We’re told when we’re hired. I think that’s reasonably transparent.
You can figure out other people’s levels pretty easily, too, because people at different levels are assigned to different types and sizes of offices. For example, you only get a window at level 13 or higher.
Seems like many people are much more comfortable displaying proxy measures of their financial status (window office, status symbol car, expensive jewelry/watch, etc.) than disclosing their actual financial status. Perhaps that may be because the proxy measures leave room for deception (displaying proxy measures that imply a higher or lower financial status than the actual), although some of these may leave more room for deception than others (e.g. if the office size/type is strictly tied to pay grade, there is less room for deception with the office than one’s choice of car, jewelry, or watch).
My salary is public record but in my state, the records are not that easy to find online. Fortunately our newspapers have not put a link to the records on their website, but that is a good place to find the data in some other states.
This is true, but in the company where I work, employees aren’t making a choice about whether to disclose the nature of our offices. Even if we kept our doors closed, which most people don’t, the nature of various offices (small vs. large, interior vs. window, corner vs. other locations) is obvious from the layout of the building.
It’s the company that’s displaying a proxy measure of employees’ financial status, not the employees.
But hey, at least we have offices. Private offices. We could be stuck in an open-office arrangement, where one’s workstation often is not an indicator of financial status but where the noise and lack of privacy would drive me crazy.
@marian:
Yep, we have one of those open plans, and you have it nailed. Despite the fact that there is absolutely no studies showing open floor plans improve productivity or collaboration, and open floor plans mostly are about fitting more people into a given space, economics, rather than productivity. I don’t know if having everyone out like that does much to break down barriers or get rid of hierarchy, all it seems to do is create a noisy workspace where it is far too easy to get interrupted.
Isn’t the predominant form of office furniture the high walled cubicles, which seemingly combine the disadvantages of full offices and open plans without the advantages?
Low walled cubicles are even worse.
My salary is public record and always has been.
With each successive job move, my office setting seems to have gotten worse & worse. I started out w my own individual office in a highrise tower, with a panoramic view of the city & river. Now I’ve hit a new low w an open floorplan w low desk partitions that you can look over at the adjacent drones, while seated. All our peer companies seem to have gone the same way. The noise distractions are terrible.
At least I have my own desk (be thankful for small mercies). At a former job posting, the company brought in a “efficiency expert” consultant who noted that on a given day, 20% of the staff (on average) were out of the office. So they did a complete design and took out 20% of the desks and made us “hot desk”. Even the senior mgrs had to hot desk. At the end of each day, we had to clear the desk completely. What a way to treat your expensive, creative staff…
“At the end of each day, we had to clear the desk completely…”
Lol, I can envision the revolt this could trigger at any biotech place! We need our desk space for our giant piles of reprints of scientific articles and free coffee mugs with scientific equipment co’s logos. 
To facillitate the “clean desk” policy for the hot-desking, we (even senior managers) were each assigned a private locker to store our scientific journals, notebooks, paperclips, personal stuff.