|
WhiskeyJuvenile posted:News to me. Well based on the fact that the National Federation of Federal Employees, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, has 100,000 members throughout the federal government, I'm going to say that's because it's not true. I think icantfindaname might be misremembering the law about federal workers being unable to strike, which doesn't preclude them from forming a union, but certainly does limit their collective bargaining rights.
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 09:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 18:54 |
|
|
Kilty Monroe posted:If this were true, open salary data would already be a widespread thing. Probably not. The resentment (some justified, mostly not) and angst that employers would have to deal with would not in any way be worth it. Not to mention employees do not all have the same incentives on this issue and many would probably prefer their pay not be made public. But if it happened, I think the response would be that thing I described.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 13:20
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:Probably not. The resentment (some justified, mostly not) and angst that employers would have to deal with would not in any way be worth it. Not to mention employees do not all have the same incentives on this issue and many would probably prefer their pay not be made public. The reason you change jobs in the first place is more money, why would knowing how much you get paid change that?
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 13:25
|
|
|
Electricians and Utility workers as part of the IBEW and AFL-CIO still do pretty well for themselves. It's important to understand the context in which the electrical workers of the USA came to organize. At the onset of construction for early distribution systems, workers were expected to provide their own tools (such as wooden sticks for manipulation of live wires) and their own safety equipment. The fatality rate for electrical workers prior to organization was 1 in 2. The founder of the IBEW died on the job. Con Edison's 2012-2016 contract with Local 1-2 is publicly accessible, and that includes the pay-scales. It is the first hit on Google if you care. A customer service representative (call center personnel) hired today would start with a minimum of $18.34 per hour. There's a separate entry for bi-lingual CSRs because that's a super useful skill for a major metro area, after Jun 2015 they will start at $19.91 per hour. A bi-lingual rep can max out their pay at $44.42 (via yearly contractual raises of 3% with a .5% merit bonus based on performance). Contrast this with a Distribution Splicer, who by necessity is typically a 10+ year veteran of underground electrical work. This title is gated by promotional exams and observation. A person who moves into this title (virtually guaranteed to be an internal promotion as it has a very specific skillset tailored to the Con Edison electrical system) today would make a minimum of $28.46 per hour, with a maximum as of Jun 2015 of $50.28 per hour. Neither position requires higher education. There used to be jobs like this all over the place, serious and necessary work that paid well enough that a person could support a family on their wages. Somehow, most of them went away but the ones that were within unions stuck around. Curious, that. I'm sure I could replicate this with the transit worker contract, the sanitation worker contract, and everything else, but this is the company I know best.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 14:09
|
|
|
It's worth noting that despite everyone knowing each other's salaries, there isn't widespread disharmony and chaos. That is, in the union at least. e: discussing pay with my friends who are "Information Workers" often leads to a bizarre situation, wherein they attempt to use intangibles to justify their wages. Given the extremely personal nature of most people's self-identification and the way a career is to many people an extension of self, I typically opt not to talk to them on this topic because it is a major flashpoint. frest fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Apr 17, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 14:10
|
|
|
drilldo squirt posted:The reason you change jobs in the first place is more money, why would knowing how much you get paid change that? I'm not sure what you mean.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 14:24
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:I'm not sure what you mean. The reason people change jobs is that a company is willing to pay them more than their previous job. The worker wouldn't leave if the price the company was willing to pay for their labor wasn't more than what the worker is already getting.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 15:03
|
|
|
More money isn't the only reason to change jobs. Improved quality of life sometimes trumps money.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 15:21
|
|
|
Most state governments and state universities already make salaries public. As far as I know, this really hasn't helped anyone's bargaining power. HR can just write vague job descriptions and create a ton of arbitrary ranks that they award at will (e.g. Analyst I to Analyst XII).
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 15:31
|
|
|
cafel posted:Well based on the fact that the National Federation of Federal Employees, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, has 100,000 members throughout the federal government, I'm going to say that's because it's not true. Whoops, you're right, I remembered they couldn't strike. Slobjob Zizek posted:Most state governments and state universities already make salaries public. As far as I know, this really hasn't helped anyone's bargaining power. State jobs generally have much better benefits and job security than equivalent private sector jobs. Exactly how much of that is due to open wages isn't clear without data but it's not unreasonable to think it's at least part. In general I don't see much effective difference between vigorously enforcing current labor law stipulating you can't be fired for discussing wages and making wages public, besides of course ease of enforcement. Seems to me if you're opposed to one you'd necessarily be opposed to both. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Apr 17, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 15:31
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:State jobs generally have much better benefits and job security than equivalent private sector jobs. Exactly how much of that is due to open wages isn't clear without data but it's not unreasonable to think it's at least part. Isn't the trade-off for working in the public sector that you earn less in exchange for better non-pecuniary benefits? How does open wages factor into this at all?
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 15:53
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:In general I don't see much effective difference between vigorously enforcing current labor law stipulating you can't be fired for discussing wages and making wages public, besides of course ease of enforcement. Seems to me if you're opposed to one you'd necessarily be opposed to both. And the ease of enforcement issue is a real one. I (anecdotally) know of a lot of people who were disciplined or fired for retaliatory reasons, but never pursued it. Filing a lawsuit is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, and it's very hard to prove that you were discriminated against when there's inherently very little evidence that can be presented about the mental state of your boss.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 16:05
|
|
|
shrike82 posted:Isn't the trade-off for working in the public sector that you earn less in exchange for better non-pecuniary benefits? This is fast-changing, though, as the Feds and states look to gut pensions, never offer raises, institute furloughs, etc.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 16:05
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:In general I don't see much effective difference between vigorously enforcing current labor law stipulating you can't be fired for discussing wages and making wages public, besides of course ease of enforcement. Seems to me if you're opposed to one you'd necessarily be opposed to both. There's a major difference - protecting workers' rights to discuss wages means only the workers themselves will know the wages in their specific company, while publicly posted wages exposes the data to the public, which allows scientists and activists to pull and compare that salary data to get more accurate looks at the wage gap. Still, that's just data; it just reveals the problem, it doesn't fix it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 17:16
|
|
|
drilldo squirt posted:The reason people change jobs is that a company is willing to pay them more than their previous job. The worker wouldn't leave if the price the company was willing to pay for their labor wasn't more than what the worker is already getting. Ah, got it. In that sense workers get boned from two directions. First, prospective employers will know exactly what they're making and that anchors what they'll be willing to offer. Second, employers will be able to point to their public pay scale and say "sorry, we can't bring you in above X because we have to maintain an appearance of fairness, etc, etc". So where before you could have bargained your way into a sweet deal, after that becomes impossible and all improvements become marginal. Main Paineframe posted:There's a major difference - protecting workers' rights to discuss wages means only the workers themselves will know the wages in their specific company, while publicly posted wages exposes the data to the public, which allows scientists and activists to pull and compare that salary data to get more accurate looks at the wage gap. Still, that's just data; it just reveals the problem, it doesn't fix it. The problem is it doesn't give any more of an accurate picture. There are a ton of legitimate reasons one person might make more than another person and not only is most of that data about why salaries are what they are not going to be published (because it can't be collected, because there are privacy concerns, etc) but the loudest voices are going to be the ones who don't give a gently caress about what the reasons are and if they're legitimate or not.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 18:59
|
|
|
Why would they know what you were making before unless you willingly divulge that information? I mean some industries it's harder to do but willingly giving a potential employer your salary info is dumb as poo poo. I know some jobs won't let you apply without divulging that information but those kind of companies always gave me bad vibes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 19:04
|
|
|
Stanos posted:Why would they know what you were making before unless you willingly divulge that information? I mean some industries it's harder to do but willingly giving a potential employer your salary info is dumb as poo poo. I know some jobs won't let you apply without divulging that information but those kind of companies always gave me bad vibes. The proposal is that everyone's salary data be made public, I think?
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 19:06
|
|
|
Ah oops, I thought were still talking about public workers, carry on.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 19:30
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:The proposal is that everyone's salary data be made public, I think? Well, the original proposal I made wasn't set in stone. Maybe it's public, maybe it's privileged information only available to employees at a particular company. I'd lean towards it only being available to internal employees. There are privacy implications either way, but there are much worse ones if everyone with a job had his pay publicly available.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 19:40
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:Ah, got it. This seems like a weird focus on individual "superstar" workers that isn't really material to the point. Sure, if some individual is ostensibly so great that they want to get paid much more than their peers, then I guess that might be difficult for them. But in general, if two companies have their wage scales totally open to prospective new employees, then how is that not going to push the scales upward? If the claim here is that every actor having perfect information with which to make a reasoned decision does not lead to workers receiving the most fair price for their labor, then are you just repudiating capitalism entirely? Because it certainly sounds like your argument is "well, owners are going to screw over the worker no matter what."
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2014 23:08
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:Second, employers will be able to point to their public pay scale and say "sorry, we can't bring you in above X because we have to maintain an appearance of fairness, etc, etc". So where before you could have bargained your way into a sweet deal, after that becomes impossible and all improvements become marginal. This is the same as other short-sighted anti-union arguments. "If there were a union then I couldn't be compensated properly for my special snowflake Randian superman work!" If you're really such a super star then there's a thing called a promotion that would justify raising your salary. Maybe instead of you being just one stellar salesman they promote you so that you can teach all the other salespeople how to be like you too. That seems pretty logical, doesn't it? It's really interesting how "bargaining your way into a sweet deal" usually involves being a white male, though. White males must be excellent at bargaining! Gee, that's kind of a paradox, though. The white males that are potential candidates seem to be doing some stellar bargaining while the white males that are hiring them seem to be uniquely terrible at the bargaining process. Somehow the white males doing the bargaining becoming masterful at it when facing a female or minority candidate for a job. I just can't figure it out! "Bargaining power" is a fantasy. It all comes down to how much a business wants a candidate. If the candidate is a minority or a woman then they're wanted less than white males are. That's what the salary information is telling us. A lot of businesses are only interested in minorities or women as long as they can get them for a cheaper rate in order to offset the "inconvenience" caused by being a minority or a woman. "Bargaining," for the most part, is the fairy tale justification society tells itself to justify discrimination. ErIog fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Apr 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 02:08
|
|
|
Mornacale posted:This seems like a weird focus on individual "superstar" workers that isn't really material to the point. Sure, if some individual is ostensibly so great that they want to get paid much more than their peers, then I guess that might be difficult for them. But in general, if two companies have their wage scales totally open to prospective new employees, then how is that not going to push the scales upward? If the claim here is that every actor having perfect information with which to make a reasoned decision does not lead to workers receiving the most fair price for their labor, then are you just repudiating capitalism entirely? Because it certainly sounds like your argument is "well, owners are going to screw over the worker no matter what." I just explained two mechanisms that would tend to work against employees getting paid more. Can you tell me why you think having salary information public would result in people getting more money?
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 02:50
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:I just explained two mechanisms that would tend to work against employees getting paid more. Can you tell me why you think having salary information public would result in people getting more money? All else being equal, a company would prefer to get the first choice of applicants, since that will allow them to hire the best employees and therefore make the most money. If prospective employees can easily determine which companies offer the best compensation, then those companies will have an obvious advantage in the hiring process. This would in theory push salaries upward until the marginal value of elite employees is worth less than the additional cost in pay. Of course, in practice it would probably just lead to more collusion and wage fixing since capitalists are scum, but since I assume you aren't arguing in favor of a worker's revolution I'm interested in why you think hidden information is a benefit to the free market.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 08:41
|
|
|
When an industry/company becomes prestigious and high-paying though, women and minorities tend to get pushed out though. So if you have a company that pays higher, you will attract more highly qualified applicants, but statistically most of the best and most qualified applicants will be from groups you aren't trying to help (due to better access to education and previous opportunities in the past). As an example of this, you have tech companies, which pay very well, but aren't exactly fair to women or minorities.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 08:51
|
|
|
on the left posted:When an industry/company becomes prestigious and high-paying though, women and minorities tend to get pushed out though. So if you have a company that pays higher, you will attract more highly qualified applicants, but statistically most of the best and most qualified applicants will be from groups you aren't trying to help (due to better access to education and previous opportunities in the past). I'm pretty sure that if a company starts raising its salaries for men and not for women, and all this data is public, it's not going to go well. I certainly don't think that something like this is going to eliminate pay discrimination--only the destruction of systems of oppression in general will do that--but I don't think that it would somehow help white men and leave everyone else behind.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 09:12
|
|
|
If salary disclosures help with compensation negotiations, why haven't we seen any meaningful uptick in comp with sites like glassdoor or payscale?
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 09:25
|
|
|
Mornacale posted:I'm pretty sure that if a company starts raising its salaries for men and not for women, and all this data is public, it's not going to go well. I certainly don't think that something like this is going to eliminate pay discrimination--only the destruction of systems of oppression in general will do that--but I don't think that it would somehow help white men and leave everyone else behind. No, what I am saying is that a company could have equal pay, but not a very diverse workforce. You wouldn't hire many women if taking a year off to raise a baby put you behind the top 50 applicants.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 09:27
|
|
|
shrike82 posted:If salary disclosures help with compensation negotiations, why haven't we seen any meaningful uptick in comp with sites like glassdoor or payscale? One obvious possibility is that these sites do not have good enough data or a wide enough user base to dramatically affect the market. But, again, if you are arguing against economic liberalism then I am right there with you. Tearing down private ownership of capital would absolutely do much more to help workers, and women, than free-market-based reforms. on the left posted:No, what I am saying is that a company could have equal pay, but not a very diverse workforce. You wouldn't hire many women if taking a year off to raise a baby put you behind the top 50 applicants. I agree that workforce discrimination is a problem. Do you contend that rising wages in an industry will necessarily cause more discrimination to occur, thereby pushing women and minorities out of it? If so, do you think that allowing ownership to depress wages as much as possible is a good solution to the problem?
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 09:46
|
|
|
Mornacale posted:Do you contend that rising wages in an industry will necessarily cause more discrimination to occur, thereby pushing women and minorities out of it? I thought this was a pretty well-known thing? Once women join a profession en masse, prestige and pay tend to drop, and the reverse is true for when men start filling up a profession. Computer programmers used to be mostly women until it turned out there was lots of money in it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 10:34
|
|
|
shrike82 posted:If salary disclosures help with compensation negotiations, why haven't we seen any meaningful uptick in comp with sites like glassdoor or payscale? I've never heard of these sites, and frankly they don't inspire a lot of confidence. Payscale looks like it's fishing for demographic information, and glassdoor doesn't seem to work at all. So, I don't think these sites actually do anything towards salary disclosures at all.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 12:19
|
|
|
on the left posted:No, what I am saying is that a company could have equal pay, but not a very diverse workforce. You wouldn't hire many women if taking a year off to raise a baby put you behind the top 50 applicants. If a company doesn't want a diverse workforce, they are already discriminating in hiring. Giving workers more negotiating power isn't going to make them discriminate more. They are already trying to get the best workers they can for the lowest price. Nice concern troll though, much better than your usual pathetic attempts to defend exploitation of labor by capital.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 12:50
|
|
|
This Jacket Is Me posted:I've never heard of these sites, and frankly they don't inspire a lot of confidence. Payscale looks like it's fishing for demographic information, and glassdoor doesn't seem to work at all. So, I don't think these sites actually do anything towards salary disclosures at all. The way glassdoor works is that you need to disclose your own comp before you're allowed to see the comp of others. It's probably more useful for white collar roles at decent sized firms but it's been pretty accurate for finance and software companies from my personal anecdotal experience.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 14:27
|
|
|
While that might be true, financial and IT workers are a real small portion of the actual workforce. So expecting "a meaningful uptick in comp" via some salary disclosure mechanism because <5% of the workforce has a (probably not truthful) window into others' compensation, is uh, not realistic.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 14:49
|
|
|
It's not limited to finance and technology. I'm saying that I've found it accurate for those industries based on my personal experience.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 14:52
|
|
|
Sorry, I'm not being clear. I'm saying that glass door isn't read by the workforce at large, and so it can't possibly lead to changes in compensation, if we assume that salary disclosure even would. Also, I just made a fake salary submission. Someone's going to be pissed when they find out that I'm getting paid 5x times the average pay at their firm. Anonymity works both ways.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 15:02
|
|
|
I guess the next question is what exactly are you proposing be disclosed and how. You mention anonymity being an issue so are you suggesting that we have a nationwide system where we can look up any person's wage by name?
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 15:10
|
|
|
I'm not really suggesting anything, just killing time before I take off from here. I'll only say that anonymous, self-reporting is pretty weak tea compared to industry-wide contract negotiations.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 15:13
|
|
|
Mornacale posted:But in general, if two companies have their wage scales totally open to prospective new employees, then how is that not going to push the scales upward? Why would it? Wages aren't going to go up just because one company pays better than another company, except in hotspots where no company can get enough of a limited worker pool in the market, in which case wage growth happens regardless of whether wages are publicly available (see: finance, Silicon Valley). Even then, non-salary benefits like health insurance, catered lunches, ball pits, casual workplace cultures, and so on are a great way to muddle the waters. The idea of public wage databases fixing pay unfairness just seems to me to depend on the same magical thinking as the invisible hand - it seems to assume that the market would regulate itself and all problems would disappear if information was made free enough and regulations were removed. People are taking for granted that it'll work, but I haven't really seen anyone coherently explain just how public wage data will fix the fact that, on average, women make less than 80% of what a man in the same job does. Mornacale posted:I'm pretty sure that if a company starts raising its salaries for men and not for women, and all this data is public, it's not going to go well. I certainly don't think that something like this is going to eliminate pay discrimination--only the destruction of systems of oppression in general will do that--but I don't think that it would somehow help white men and leave everyone else behind. How won't it go well? What concrete consequences would the company face? Unfair treatment of women is already well-known and doesn't seem to hurt companies much. Injustices and inequities being made public, by themselves, won't cause enough backlash to force the company to change its behavior. Companies are perfectly fine paying some people less than other people, and the workers for the most part know that it's happening. They keep wages secret to keep morale up among the lower-paid workers, not because they'd be forced to equalize wages.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 20:39
|
|
|
Mornacale posted:I'm pretty sure that if a company starts raising its salaries for men and not for women, and all this data is public, it's not going to go well. I certainly don't think that something like this is going to eliminate pay discrimination--only the destruction of systems of oppression in general will do that--but I don't think that it would somehow help white men and leave everyone else behind. Main Paineframe posted:
Seriously? Blatant wage discrimination against women across the board as he's describing is illegal and a great way to get sued. It also doesn't account for a large part of the wage gap, but that's a separate issue. edit: It would make discrimination lawsuits a lot easier as the burden of proof is largely on the employees right now. Xandu fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Apr 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 20:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 18:54 |
|
|
Xandu posted:Seriously? Blatant wage discrimination against women across the board as he's describing is illegal and a great way to get sued. It also doesn't account for a large part of the wage gap, but that's a separate issue. It's not a separate issue at all, because the employee has to prove that the pay difference is because they're women and not for other reasons such as differences in skill, effort, responsibility, merit, output quality or quantity, or any other factor besides gender. Technically it's the employer's responsibility to prove this, but it's easier for them to make a case for it than it is for the employee to debunk that case - especially if the subject of debate is widened to all women's salaries at the company rather than just one. And since the Supreme Court has smacked down class action pay discrimination cases, each and every female employee has to sue separately for their particular case of pay discrimination. I'm not saying it won't work sometimes, but going to the trouble of making all this wage data accessible and then relying on individual employees to sue to fix it seems like a non-optimal way to fix the problem, focused more on changing as little as possible and hoping the market will sort it out than on efficiently and effectively solving the problem.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2014 21:37
|
|