spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I think there is a difference between jobs offered on a take it or leave it basis, jobs where negotiations are short form and very limited, like where you say what you are hoping for, get a counter offer, and that is basically it, and jobs where the entire compensation scheme is negotiated. I don't see why we would treat all three groups the same.
We already have ways to deal with discrimination, but we do not have the data to identify it.
The enforcement strategy is the existing legal system, and the ability for other companies to poach underpaid workers.
I am honestly flabbergasted at your tacit approval of poaching as a viable strategy.
Big companies would just buy the talent out of smaller startups all the time if the numbers were out there, because they could afford to brain drain potential disruptive competitors.
It's a huge hand wave towards a very real and big problem of there being a database that ties names to companies/positions/income.
They do poach small businesses all the time for the express purpose of shutting down competition. And it isn't just the tech industry. That was Wal-Marts strategy cost decades even in low pay jobs.
But right now it is harder because there is some degree of obfuscation between the company, the staff, and the income they are making.
Oh, I just realized that this solution also means you can never hide who you work for from anyone, ever. Random people with access to your name and roughly where you live will be able to figure out your employer.
We already have ways to deal with discrimination, but we do not have the data to identify it.
The enforcement strategy is the existing legal system, and the ability for other companies to poach underpaid workers.
I am honestly flabbergasted at your tacit approval of poaching as a viable strategy.
Big companies would just buy the talent out of smaller startups all the time if the numbers were out there, because they could afford to brain drain potential disruptive competitors.
It's a huge hand wave towards a very real and big problem of there being a database that ties names to companies/positions/income.
They do poach small businesses all the time for the express purpose of shutting down competition. And it isn't just the tech industry. That was Wal-Marts strategy cost decades even in low pay jobs.
But right now it is harder because there is some degree of obfuscation between the company, the staff, and the income they are making.
Oh, I just realized that this solution also means you can never hide who you work for from anyone, ever. Random people with access to your name and roughly where you live will be able to figure out your employer.
We have this thing called the internet that means if I have your name and residence, I can find out where you work.
And why would you work at some place you would be ashamed to be associated with?
I applied for a job as an IT manager at a porn company a while back. Not everybody works at Socially Concious Correct Thought, Inc.
Hell, some of them work at Goldman Sachs.
Oh, that brings up another interesting angle. Publishing all salary data means you also make all salary history, and therefore all job history available. If you worked for 3 weeks at Fuck You Industries and then got canned because you were really bad at fucking people, you can't leave that off your resume anymore.
Would you be ashamed to have porn work on your resume?
Personally, I think that the shaming associated with sexual work needs to be done away with. But that is a separate discussion.
We already have ways to deal with discrimination, but we do not have the data to identify it.
The enforcement strategy is the existing legal system, and the ability for other companies to poach underpaid workers.
I am honestly flabbergasted at your tacit approval of poaching as a viable strategy.
Big companies would just buy the talent out of smaller startups all the time if the numbers were out there, because they could afford to brain drain potential disruptive competitors.
It's a huge hand wave towards a very real and big problem of there being a database that ties names to companies/positions/income.
They do poach small businesses all the time for the express purpose of shutting down competition. And it isn't just the tech industry. That was Wal-Marts strategy cost decades even in low pay jobs.
But right now it is harder because there is some degree of obfuscation between the company, the staff, and the income they are making.
Oh, I just realized that this solution also means you can never hide who you work for from anyone, ever. Random people with access to your name and roughly where you live will be able to figure out your employer.
We already have ways to deal with discrimination, but we do not have the data to identify it.
The enforcement strategy is the existing legal system, and the ability for other companies to poach underpaid workers.
I am honestly flabbergasted at your tacit approval of poaching as a viable strategy.
Big companies would just buy the talent out of smaller startups all the time if the numbers were out there, because they could afford to brain drain potential disruptive competitors.
It's a huge hand wave towards a very real and big problem of there being a database that ties names to companies/positions/income.
They do poach small businesses all the time for the express purpose of shutting down competition. And it isn't just the tech industry. That was Wal-Marts strategy cost decades even in low pay jobs.
But right now it is harder because there is some degree of obfuscation between the company, the staff, and the income they are making.
Oh, I just realized that this solution also means you can never hide who you work for from anyone, ever. Random people with access to your name and roughly where you live will be able to figure out your employer.
We have this thing called the internet that means if I have your name and residence, I can find out where you work.
And why would you work at some place you would be ashamed to be associated with?
I applied for a job as an IT manager at a porn company a while back. Not everybody works at Socially Concious Correct Thought, Inc.
Hell, some of them work at Goldman Sachs.
Oh, that brings up another interesting angle. Publishing all salary data means you also make all salary history, and therefore all job history available. If you worked for 3 weeks at Fuck You Industries and then got canned because you were really bad at fucking people, you can't leave that off your resume anymore.
I, personally, am only arguing for the companies to make the salaries public, not for the companies to attach names to those salaries.
It's a middle ground I can get behind.
+7
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
We already have ways to deal with discrimination, but we do not have the data to identify it.
The enforcement strategy is the existing legal system, and the ability for other companies to poach underpaid workers.
I am honestly flabbergasted at your tacit approval of poaching as a viable strategy.
Big companies would just buy the talent out of smaller startups all the time if the numbers were out there, because they could afford to brain drain potential disruptive competitors.
It's a huge hand wave towards a very real and big problem of there being a database that ties names to companies/positions/income.
They do poach small businesses all the time for the express purpose of shutting down competition. And it isn't just the tech industry. That was Wal-Marts strategy cost decades even in low pay jobs.
But right now it is harder because there is some degree of obfuscation between the company, the staff, and the income they are making.
Oh, I just realized that this solution also means you can never hide who you work for from anyone, ever. Random people with access to your name and roughly where you live will be able to figure out your employer.
We already have ways to deal with discrimination, but we do not have the data to identify it.
The enforcement strategy is the existing legal system, and the ability for other companies to poach underpaid workers.
I am honestly flabbergasted at your tacit approval of poaching as a viable strategy.
Big companies would just buy the talent out of smaller startups all the time if the numbers were out there, because they could afford to brain drain potential disruptive competitors.
It's a huge hand wave towards a very real and big problem of there being a database that ties names to companies/positions/income.
They do poach small businesses all the time for the express purpose of shutting down competition. And it isn't just the tech industry. That was Wal-Marts strategy cost decades even in low pay jobs.
But right now it is harder because there is some degree of obfuscation between the company, the staff, and the income they are making.
Oh, I just realized that this solution also means you can never hide who you work for from anyone, ever. Random people with access to your name and roughly where you live will be able to figure out your employer.
We have this thing called the internet that means if I have your name and residence, I can find out where you work.
And why would you work at some place you would be ashamed to be associated with?
I applied for a job as an IT manager at a porn company a while back. Not everybody works at Socially Concious Correct Thought, Inc.
Hell, some of them work at Goldman Sachs.
Oh, that brings up another interesting angle. Publishing all salary data means you also make all salary history, and therefore all job history available. If you worked for 3 weeks at Fuck You Industries and then got canned because you were really bad at fucking people, you can't leave that off your resume anymore.
I, personally, am only arguing for the companies to make the salaries public, not for the companies to attach names to those salaries.
It's a middle ground I can get behind.
As can I, so long as there isn't an easy roadmap from person to salary.
Like, range of compensation and median within the position, per position, would be posted.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
We already have ways to deal with discrimination, but we do not have the data to identify it.
The enforcement strategy is the existing legal system, and the ability for other companies to poach underpaid workers.
I am honestly flabbergasted at your tacit approval of poaching as a viable strategy.
Big companies would just buy the talent out of smaller startups all the time if the numbers were out there, because they could afford to brain drain potential disruptive competitors.
It's a huge hand wave towards a very real and big problem of there being a database that ties names to companies/positions/income.
They do poach small businesses all the time for the express purpose of shutting down competition. And it isn't just the tech industry. That was Wal-Marts strategy cost decades even in low pay jobs.
But right now it is harder because there is some degree of obfuscation between the company, the staff, and the income they are making.
Oh, I just realized that this solution also means you can never hide who you work for from anyone, ever. Random people with access to your name and roughly where you live will be able to figure out your employer.
We already have ways to deal with discrimination, but we do not have the data to identify it.
The enforcement strategy is the existing legal system, and the ability for other companies to poach underpaid workers.
I am honestly flabbergasted at your tacit approval of poaching as a viable strategy.
Big companies would just buy the talent out of smaller startups all the time if the numbers were out there, because they could afford to brain drain potential disruptive competitors.
It's a huge hand wave towards a very real and big problem of there being a database that ties names to companies/positions/income.
They do poach small businesses all the time for the express purpose of shutting down competition. And it isn't just the tech industry. That was Wal-Marts strategy cost decades even in low pay jobs.
But right now it is harder because there is some degree of obfuscation between the company, the staff, and the income they are making.
Oh, I just realized that this solution also means you can never hide who you work for from anyone, ever. Random people with access to your name and roughly where you live will be able to figure out your employer.
We have this thing called the internet that means if I have your name and residence, I can find out where you work.
And why would you work at some place you would be ashamed to be associated with?
I applied for a job as an IT manager at a porn company a while back. Not everybody works at Socially Concious Correct Thought, Inc.
Hell, some of them work at Goldman Sachs.
Oh, that brings up another interesting angle. Publishing all salary data means you also make all salary history, and therefore all job history available. If you worked for 3 weeks at Fuck You Industries and then got canned because you were really bad at fucking people, you can't leave that off your resume anymore.
Would you be ashamed to have porn work on your resume?
Personally, I think that the shaming associated with sexual work needs to be done away with. But that is a separate discussion.
Yes of course I would. Moreover, as I trend my career toward C-suite positions in the next decade or so, potential employers will be embarrassed and uncomfortable hiring me.
And doing nothing (because the suggestion here that forcing workplaces to,publish everyone's pay is never going to pass - it may as well be nothing) is worse. Do not let perfect be the enemy of progress. You could get support behind this and get many millions of American workers in a situation where their pay is not widely disparate from people performing the same task in their company.
In what world do you think that you can enforce standardized pay without publishing pay data?
By saying a position pays X-Y dollars a year, with guaranteed raises to match cost of living.
And not publishing a list of every employee who has those positions in a public facing database.
Tying salary to cost of living permanently is a bad idea. Look at CEOs that require greater than average increases.
Your proposal is too arbitrary and impossible to regulate fairly.
It also sounds like it would preclude an employer and employee coming to agreement on a salary outside the norm, and I think businesses should have a degree of flexibility.
If some dude really is the Stephen Hawking of software engineering, and he's the backbone of his company, and they think he's worth twice the going rate, fuck it, let the dude have his crazy salary. And then when someone asks why the guy is making all that money, you tell them exactly why, and they can deal or they can walk.
Similarly, if a company can only afford to pay everyone half the going rate for their position, and they find people comfortable with that, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I worked at a company like that! I took a huge pay cut to work there because I wanted to! And that's fine! Had they been required to pay a certain wage, they wouldn't have existed, and I wouldn't have been able to take a really rad job.
The point of the policy isn't that it will make everyone content, it's that it'll make everyone honest about what's going on. What people can do with that info is another piece of the puzzle.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
+12
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
And doing nothing (because the suggestion here that forcing workplaces to,publish everyone's pay is never going to pass - it may as well be nothing) is worse. Do not let perfect be the enemy of progress. You could get support behind this and get many millions of American workers in a situation where their pay is not widely disparate from people performing the same task in their company.
In what world do you think that you can enforce standardized pay without publishing pay data?
By saying a position pays X-Y dollars a year, with guaranteed raises to match cost of living.
And not publishing a list of every employee who has those positions in a public facing database.
Tying salary to cost of living permanently is a bad idea. Look at CEOs that require greater than average increases.
Your proposal is too arbitrary and impossible to regulate fairly.
It also sounds like it would preclude an employer and employee coming to agreement on a salary outside the norm, and I think businesses should have a degree of flexibility.
If some dude really is the Stephen Hawking of software engineering, and he's the backbone of his company, and they think he's worth twice the going rate, fuck it, let the dude have his crazy salary. And then when someone asks why the guy is making all that money, you tell them exactly why, and they can deal or they can walk.
Similarly, if a company can only afford to pay everyone half the going rate for their position, and they find people comfortable with that, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I worked at a company like that! I took a huge pay cut to work there because I wanted to! And that's fine! Had they been required to pay a certain wage, they wouldn't have existed, and I wouldn't have been able to take a really rad job.
The point of the policy isn't that it will make everyone content, it's that it'll make everyone honest about what's going on. What people can do with that info is another piece of the puzzle.
I just look at it this way: companies make employees sign confidentiality agreements, withhold salary ranges in their job postings, ask recruiters to obfuscate salaries, etc, because it benefits them. Ergo, on the balance of things, publicizing all salary information probably benefits workers.
+1
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
And doing nothing (because the suggestion here that forcing workplaces to,publish everyone's pay is never going to pass - it may as well be nothing) is worse. Do not let perfect be the enemy of progress. You could get support behind this and get many millions of American workers in a situation where their pay is not widely disparate from people performing the same task in their company.
In what world do you think that you can enforce standardized pay without publishing pay data?
By saying a position pays X-Y dollars a year, with guaranteed raises to match cost of living.
And not publishing a list of every employee who has those positions in a public facing database.
Tying salary to cost of living permanently is a bad idea. Look at CEOs that require greater than average increases.
Your proposal is too arbitrary and impossible to regulate fairly.
It also sounds like it would preclude an employer and employee coming to agreement on a salary outside the norm, and I think businesses should have a degree of flexibility.
If some dude really is the Stephen Hawking of software engineering, and he's the backbone of his company, and they think he's worth twice the going rate, fuck it, let the dude have his crazy salary. And then when someone asks why the guy is making all that money, you tell them exactly why, and they can deal or they can walk.
Similarly, if a company can only afford to pay everyone half the going rate for their position, and they find people comfortable with that, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I worked at a company like that! I took a huge pay cut to work there because I wanted to! And that's fine! Had they been required to pay a certain wage, they wouldn't have existed, and I wouldn't have been able to take a really rad job.
The point of the policy isn't that it will make everyone content, it's that it'll make everyone honest about what's going on. What people can do with that info is another piece of the puzzle.
I don't think honest is the right word. Withholding pay data is not lying.
0
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
And doing nothing (because the suggestion here that forcing workplaces to,publish everyone's pay is never going to pass - it may as well be nothing) is worse. Do not let perfect be the enemy of progress. You could get support behind this and get many millions of American workers in a situation where their pay is not widely disparate from people performing the same task in their company.
In what world do you think that you can enforce standardized pay without publishing pay data?
By saying a position pays X-Y dollars a year, with guaranteed raises to match cost of living.
And not publishing a list of every employee who has those positions in a public facing database.
Tying salary to cost of living permanently is a bad idea. Look at CEOs that require greater than average increases.
Your proposal is too arbitrary and impossible to regulate fairly.
It also sounds like it would preclude an employer and employee coming to agreement on a salary outside the norm, and I think businesses should have a degree of flexibility.
If some dude really is the Stephen Hawking of software engineering, and he's the backbone of his company, and they think he's worth twice the going rate, fuck it, let the dude have his crazy salary. And then when someone asks why the guy is making all that money, you tell them exactly why, and they can deal or they can walk.
Similarly, if a company can only afford to pay everyone half the going rate for their position, and they find people comfortable with that, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I worked at a company like that! I took a huge pay cut to work there because I wanted to! And that's fine! Had they been required to pay a certain wage, they wouldn't have existed, and I wouldn't have been able to take a really rad job.
The point of the policy isn't that it will make everyone content, it's that it'll make everyone honest about what's going on. What people can do with that info is another piece of the puzzle.
I don't think honest is the right word. Withholding pay data is not lying.
Lying isn't the sole way to be dishonest.
+12
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
Not to drag in arguments from other threads, but didn't you suggest in the adultery thread that a similar lie of omission, having an affair but concealing it from your partner, was morally unacceptable? It seems now you're making the opposite argument, that as long as the employee doesn't know, it can't hurt him, and that the information should be withheld, because it'll make him unhappy. What's the difference? That monogamy in marriage is implicit, but fair pay in employment isn't?
hippofant on
+8
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
If some dude really is the Stephen Hawking of software engineering, and he's the backbone of his company, and they think he's worth twice the going rate, fuck it, let the dude have his crazy salary. And then when someone asks why the guy is making all that money, you tell them exactly why, and they can deal or they can walk.
Lets start by saying I do not disagree with this paragraph.
But seriously, how is this not abused to hell and back by any company that wants to pay whitey mcWhiterson 50% more than his contemporaries because he is a "rockstar", whether he is or isnt?
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
If some dude really is the Stephen Hawking of software engineering, and he's the backbone of his company, and they think he's worth twice the going rate, fuck it, let the dude have his crazy salary. And then when someone asks why the guy is making all that money, you tell them exactly why, and they can deal or they can walk.
Lets start by saying I do not disagree with this paragraph.
But seriously, how is this not abused to hell and back by any company that wants to pay whitey mcWhiterson 50% more than his contemporaries because he is a "rockstar", whether he is or isnt?
Well... among the cited reasons for the pay disparity between men and women are that men self-evaluate higher than women, and that men ask for pay raises more aggressively. It may not be "abuse", but certainly, the perception of rockstarness does currently generate pay disparities.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
"As long as employee X doesn't know he's being exploited, there is no harm" is a very poor argument, and not in the least on the level of logic I normally expect from you.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
I posed this to you at the beginning of the thread and never got an answer:
A starving man agrees to work all day in return for a crust of bread. Is he being exploited? Why or why not?
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
I posed this to you at the beginning of the thread and never got an answer:
A starving man agrees to work all day in return for a crust of bread. Is he being exploited? Why or why not?
Why not just come out and ask if minimum wage and maximum hour laws are legitimate, instead of playing silly games.
spool32 on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
Not to drag in arguments from other threads, but didn't you suggest in the adultery thread that a similar lie of omission, having an affair but concealing it from your partner, was morally unacceptable? It seems now you're making the opposite argument, that as long as the employee doesn't know, it can't hurt him, and that the information should be withheld, because it'll make him unhappy. What's the difference? That monogamy in marriage is implicit, but fair pay in employment isn't?
I think my position is entirely consistent with that thread. I was very explicit in stating that the problem with adultery is you violate the terms of your agreement with your spouse. When you negotiate pay with your employer you are not in a relationship with the employer where it has promised to pay you the most it could. In fact, the salary negotiation process is adversarial! You come to an arm's length deal on this basis. That is why I said outright lying is a problem for salary negotiation. It invalidates the arm's length deal.
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
I posed this to you at the beginning of the thread and never got an answer:
A starving man agrees to work all day in return for a crust of bread. Is he being exploited? Why or why not?
He is not. He accepted a deal he was happy with. If the employer acts to deprive him of other sources of food so that he can only get the crust, that is different.
I think my position is entirely consistent with that thread. I was very explicit in stating that the problem with adultery is you violate the terms of your agreement with your spouse. When you negotiate pay with your employer you are not in a relationship with the employer where it has promised to pay you the most it could. In fact, the salary negotiation process is adversarial! You come to an arm's length deal on this basis. That is why I said outright lying is a problem for salary negotiation. It invalidates the arm's length deal.
Being at arms length isn't a good excuse for the party with the most power to screw over the weaker one in a bizarre survival of the fittest competition. I expect them to have some ethics with negotiation - not be monsters. Lying isn't the only way they can benefit from this, omission is a potent weapon with this negotiation and without having all the facts the stronger party will dominate the other in every category; that's why information like how other employees are paid is good for the employee. They won't get swindled, because that type of negotiation is a con game. And don't confuse not being homeless with being happy. Employers don't have to deal with those consequences if they blow this deal.
He is not. He accepted a deal he was happy with. If the employer acts to deprive him of other sources of food so that he can only get the crust, that is different.
He accepted the deal he had no choice but to accept. And an employer who did this would be human garbage. That's Charles Dickens' type dickery.
How can you anonymize salary data and still have it be useful?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
How can you anonymize salary data and still have it be useful?
Position: Data analyst
Salary Range offered: 65-70k/yr
Number of workers in position: 22
Actual range of salary: 66250-70000
Median income: 67,100
Average tenure in position: 1.5 years
syndalis on
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
I posed this to you at the beginning of the thread and never got an answer:
A starving man agrees to work all day in return for a crust of bread. Is he being exploited? Why or why not?
He is not. He accepted a deal he was happy with. If the employer acts to deprive him of other sources of food so that he can only get the crust, that is different.
Thank you. I applaud you for your logical consistency while also narrowing my eyes very disapprovingly.
My problem with this reasoning, aside from its total lack of compassion is that the power dynamic between employer and employee is naturally skewed. The employee, being a human being, has certain basic needs that must be met else he will die, or become homeless, etc. This puts pressure on him to accept a deal that he may not really be happy with, because there is a time constraint on him. He must get a job, even if it pays significantly below market value or what he thinks he's worth, because the alternative is fatal. Maybe he turned down a bunch of lowball offers and now the landlord is nailing an eviction notice to his door. Well that shouldn't affect his willingness to accept the next lowball offer should it? Obviously if he accepts a below-market wage in those circumstances he's not being harmed or exploited.
Meanwhile the employer, being a corporate entity that cannot die, faces no such constraints. The company isn't going to cease to exist because this one job is unfilled for a week, two weeks, six weeks, six months. It can afford to be choosy, or negotiate more aggressively, or exploit perceived desperation or just toss out one lowball offer after another knowing that sooner or later somebody would accept.
So I would agree that, in a perfect world, the bolded would be correct. We could infer that acceptance equals absolute contentment with the terms of the deal. But we don't live in that world, and people in bad situations accept deals with lousy terms terms every single day. Refusing to admit that they were wronged only helps perpetuate the cycle of poverty.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
How can you anonymize salary data and still have it be useful?
Position: Data analyst
Salary Range offered: 65-70k/yr
Number of workers in position: 22
Actual range of salary: 66250-70000
Median income: 67,100
Average tenure in position: 1.5 years
If there's other metadata, it would get more dangerous the smaller the business.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
+3
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
How can you anonymize salary data and still have it be useful?
Position: Data analyst
Salary Range offered: 65-70k/yr
Number of workers in position: 22
Actual range of salary: 66250-70000
Median income: 67,100
Average tenure in position: 1.5 years
If there's other metadata, it would get more dangerous the smaller the business.
Right - which is why this should not apply to firms with less than a certain number of employees, like 100 or 250 or whatever is needed to provide appropriate position diversity.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
How can you anonymize salary data and still have it be useful?
Position: Data analyst
Salary Range offered: 65-70k/yr
Number of workers in position: 22
Actual range of salary: 66250-70000
Median income: 67,100
Average tenure in position: 1.5 years
If there's other metadata, it would get more dangerous the smaller the business.
Right - which is why this should not apply to firms with less than a certain number of employees, like 100 or 250 or whatever is needed to provide appropriate position diversity.
I would actually break the criteria down to the "Number of workers in position" level, as it's pretty easy to guess who the 1 janitor or 2 CEOs are
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
Not to drag in arguments from other threads, but didn't you suggest in the adultery thread that a similar lie of omission, having an affair but concealing it from your partner, was morally unacceptable? It seems now you're making the opposite argument, that as long as the employee doesn't know, it can't hurt him, and that the information should be withheld, because it'll make him unhappy. What's the difference? That monogamy in marriage is implicit, but fair pay in employment isn't?
I think my position is entirely consistent with that thread. I was very explicit in stating that the problem with adultery is you violate the terms of your agreement with your spouse. When you negotiate pay with your employer you are not in a relationship with the employer where it has promised to pay you the most it could. In fact, the salary negotiation process is adversarial! You come to an arm's length deal on this basis. That is why I said outright lying is a problem for salary negotiation. It invalidates the arm's length deal.
Does this position mean you find child brides to also be acceptable? After all, the legal parties involved in the situation have agreed to a contract.
0
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
How can you anonymize salary data and still have it be useful?
Position: Data analyst
Salary Range offered: 65-70k/yr
Number of workers in position: 22
Actual range of salary: 66250-70000
Median income: 67,100
Average tenure in position: 1.5 years
If there's other metadata, it would get more dangerous the smaller the business.
Right - which is why this should not apply to firms with less than a certain number of employees, like 100 or 250 or whatever is needed to provide appropriate position diversity.
I would actually break the criteria down to the "Number of workers in position" level, as it's pretty easy to guess who the 1 janitor or 2 CEOs are
Yeah, that works too.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
If some dude really is the Stephen Hawking of software engineering, and he's the backbone of his company, and they think he's worth twice the going rate, fuck it, let the dude have his crazy salary. And then when someone asks why the guy is making all that money, you tell them exactly why, and they can deal or they can walk.
Lets start by saying I do not disagree with this paragraph.
But seriously, how is this not abused to hell and back by any company that wants to pay whitey mcWhiterson 50% more than his contemporaries because he is a "rockstar", whether he is or isnt?
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
You don't think disparate bargaining power and information assymetry allows for an 'unconscionable' contract agreement to be able to exist?
Unrelated, I had a reference question today about the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and the impact on implicit warranties. Along a similar vein I would say there are a lot of implicit agreements in hiring that extend beyond not being defrauded through false claims.
0
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
Not to drag in arguments from other threads, but didn't you suggest in the adultery thread that a similar lie of omission, having an affair but concealing it from your partner, was morally unacceptable? It seems now you're making the opposite argument, that as long as the employee doesn't know, it can't hurt him, and that the information should be withheld, because it'll make him unhappy. What's the difference? That monogamy in marriage is implicit, but fair pay in employment isn't?
I think my position is entirely consistent with that thread. I was very explicit in stating that the problem with adultery is you violate the terms of your agreement with your spouse. When you negotiate pay with your employer you are not in a relationship with the employer where it has promised to pay you the most it could. In fact, the salary negotiation process is adversarial! You come to an arm's length deal on this basis. That is why I said outright lying is a problem for salary negotiation. It invalidates the arm's length deal.
Does this position mean you find child brides to also be acceptable? After all, the legal parties involved in the situation have agreed to a contract.
This is pretty far afield and I'm not sure what it has to do with anything.
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
Not to drag in arguments from other threads, but didn't you suggest in the adultery thread that a similar lie of omission, having an affair but concealing it from your partner, was morally unacceptable? It seems now you're making the opposite argument, that as long as the employee doesn't know, it can't hurt him, and that the information should be withheld, because it'll make him unhappy. What's the difference? That monogamy in marriage is implicit, but fair pay in employment isn't?
I think my position is entirely consistent with that thread. I was very explicit in stating that the problem with adultery is you violate the terms of your agreement with your spouse. When you negotiate pay with your employer you are not in a relationship with the employer where it has promised to pay you the most it could. In fact, the salary negotiation process is adversarial! You come to an arm's length deal on this basis. That is why I said outright lying is a problem for salary negotiation. It invalidates the arm's length deal.
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
I posed this to you at the beginning of the thread and never got an answer:
A starving man agrees to work all day in return for a crust of bread. Is he being exploited? Why or why not?
He is not. He accepted a deal he was happy with. If the employer acts to deprive him of other sources of food so that he can only get the crust, that is different.
This is seriously fucking horrifying, dude.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
Not to drag in arguments from other threads, but didn't you suggest in the adultery thread that a similar lie of omission, having an affair but concealing it from your partner, was morally unacceptable? It seems now you're making the opposite argument, that as long as the employee doesn't know, it can't hurt him, and that the information should be withheld, because it'll make him unhappy. What's the difference? That monogamy in marriage is implicit, but fair pay in employment isn't?
I think my position is entirely consistent with that thread. I was very explicit in stating that the problem with adultery is you violate the terms of your agreement with your spouse. When you negotiate pay with your employer you are not in a relationship with the employer where it has promised to pay you the most it could. In fact, the salary negotiation process is adversarial! You come to an arm's length deal on this basis. That is why I said outright lying is a problem for salary negotiation. It invalidates the arm's length deal.
Yeah, I'm having a hard time figuring out what legitimate argument there can be against "make corporations be honest."
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
I posed this to you at the beginning of the thread and never got an answer:
A starving man agrees to work all day in return for a crust of bread. Is he being exploited? Why or why not?
He is not. He accepted a deal he was happy with. If the employer acts to deprive him of other sources of food so that he can only get the crust, that is different.
This is seriously fucking horrifying, dude.
It's very illustrative, as it is the natural consequence of focusing solely on "voluntary" exchange, where it is both practically and morally equivalent to a mugging.
Focusing on a purely amoral standard of labor is how you get things like Remote Area Medical, which was originally intended to provide free medical care to third world nations, but realized it couldn't justify it when so many Americans lacked any meaningful access to medical care. I don't know if my morals or my patriotism are more offended by that.
How can you anonymize salary data and still have it be useful?
Position: Data analyst
Salary Range offered: 65-70k/yr
Number of workers in position: 22
Actual range of salary: 66250-70000
Median income: 67,100
Average tenure in position: 1.5 years
Not bad at all, but devil's advocate.
No gender / race breakdown. If you've got 11 women making 66250, and 11 men making 70000, there's a huge problem that's not apparent from this data. Not sure how that could be addressed while keeping everything relatively anonymized.
Who is deciding on job titles? If the company is deciding on the job titles, there is a lot of room to play with those numbers - you're a Business Intelligence Data Analyst, you're a Customer Service Data Analyst, you're a Internal Metrics Data Analyst, all of which have different pay scales. Alternately, those different positions could be aggregated to make the data so broad as to be meaningless depending on the business's strategy.
If the government is deciding on job titles, they will also probably have to aggregate titles to the point that the data is meaningless as well.
Now, small businesses. We know how much the government loves to fellate small businesses / small business owners, even though those seemingly are the most exploitative, arbitrary, and discriminatory ones out there. Are we going to leave an exemption in there for small businesses? If we don't, we again run into the problems with anonymization - most 'small businesses' don't have enough employees in a given position anyway.
I don't think anonymization is necessary - I do see why some people might take issue with 'published name', but you could also just publish race / gender data without names. In some cases people could probably figure it out, but in the vast majority of cases it would be sufficient to protect the identity of the people involved.
Here's some suggestions:
1. Policies that punish employees for sharing salary details with one another are explicitly prohibited, with large penalties to business that violate these policies. Won't prevent the whole 'no, totally fired for other reasons', but it will help quite a bit.
2. Companies are required to publish salary ranges for positions, and there should be a documented reason for salaries outside that range.
3. Companies are required to publish the average percent pay increase year to year, possibly with some crosstab data on time in position and possibly broken down by staff, management, and executives. This will allow women / minorities to see if they are systematically lagging. Will also prevent the whole 'nah, totally not giving raises this year' or 'we have a 4% cap on increases'.
4. By law, all employees are entitled to an annual review that quantifies their performance - this establishes a paper trail that could be used to establish if women / minorities are systematically lagging.
5. NLRB or other labor boards should be able to request this data for review if a discrimination complaint is filed.
There would still be some workarounds for businesses of course, but I think this would give a huge step up for employees and a lot more power in negotiations.
A starving man agrees to work all day in return for a crust of bread. Is he being exploited? Why or why not?
He is not. He accepted a deal he was happy with.
Actually I want to touch on this again because it's just not true. It assumes that individuals only accept terms that they are, if not 100% satisfied with, then mostly satisfied with. It ignores that sometimes (a lot of the time) we accept terms that are unfavorable to us because we either have no choice, or the alternative is even worse than accepting the deal. And (most importantly) it assumes that we are free to walk away from an infinite number of unfavorable deals until an equitable deal can be reached. In the case of the starving man, it isn't the he is "happy" with the crust of bread -- he would prefer a whole loaf of bread, to be certain! -- it's that the cost of turning down the deal (starving to death right now, today) is catastrophically worse than accepting what he, the employer, and every damn one around knows is a shitty, exploitative deal.
If only this were a textbook universe with spherical cows, frictionless surfaces, and a free market.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Like, if the only criteria for an exploitative contract is that one party deliberately manipulated the other party's situation in order to force them into it, then this would be perfectly legit:
A man is walking alone late at night and is attacked by a mugger, who robs him, stabs him, and leaves him bleeding out in a gutter. He only has moments to live. Just then, he is happened upon by a bystander, who agrees to bandage his wound and take him to a hospital, saving his life. But in return he demands that the bleeding man sign over the deed to his house.
Since the bystander didn't actually stab the man, this contract isn't exploitative?
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
Like, if the only criteria for an exploitative contract is that one party deliberately manipulated the other party's situation in order to force them into it, then this would be perfectly legit:
A man is walking alone late at night and is attacked by a mugger, who robs him, stabs him, and leaves him bleeding out in a gutter. He only has moments to live. Just then, he is happened upon by a bystander, who agrees to bandage his wound and take him to a hospital, saving his life. But in return he demands that the bleeding man sign over the deed to his house.
Since the bystander didn't actually stab the man, this contract isn't exploitative?
Some people are happy being exploited. By reducing or removing exploitative scenarios you're reducing the potential happiness of those who like being exploited from being exploited. Have you no heart?
It's like Stockholm Syndrome. Separating a victim in love from his/her captors is just cruel.
If some dude really is the Stephen Hawking of software engineering, and he's the backbone of his company, and they think he's worth twice the going rate, fuck it, let the dude have his crazy salary. And then when someone asks why the guy is making all that money, you tell them exactly why, and they can deal or they can walk.
Lets start by saying I do not disagree with this paragraph.
But seriously, how is this not abused to hell and back by any company that wants to pay whitey mcWhiterson 50% more than his contemporaries because he is a "rockstar", whether he is or isnt?
See I think this is the main issue. There needs to be a system in place to reward harder workers. However there is not yet a perfect system for unbiased evaluation of workers. Until such a system is created we will still face problems of favoritism and discrimination (which may be unintentional).
Publishing salaries lets people know when they're being screwed over (or at least they thing they are), however I'm doubtful that it will lead to any significant changes in pay balance.
How can you anonymize salary data and still have it be useful?
Position: Data analyst
Salary Range offered: 65-70k/yr
Number of workers in position: 22
Actual range of salary: 66250-70000
Median income: 67,100
Average tenure in position: 1.5 years
If there's other metadata, it would get more dangerous the smaller the business.
Add quartiles, because while median is a good measure of center it's not an indicator of the shape of the data.
Like, if the only criteria for an exploitative contract is that one party deliberately manipulated the other party's situation in order to force them into it, then this would be perfectly legit:
A man is walking alone late at night and is attacked by a mugger, who robs him, stabs him, and leaves him bleeding out in a gutter. He only has moments to live. Just then, he is happened upon by a bystander, who agrees to bandage his wound and take him to a hospital, saving his life. But in return he demands that the bleeding man sign over the deed to his house.
Since the bystander didn't actually stab the man, this contract isn't exploitative?
Somewhat related: This is how American medical policy actually works. Medicine is one area where the free market can't work by definition, hence why everything is such a clusterfuck.
Posts
Would you be ashamed to have porn work on your resume?
Personally, I think that the shaming associated with sexual work needs to be done away with. But that is a separate discussion.
It's a middle ground I can get behind.
As can I, so long as there isn't an easy roadmap from person to salary.
Like, range of compensation and median within the position, per position, would be posted.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Yes of course I would. Moreover, as I trend my career toward C-suite positions in the next decade or so, potential employers will be embarrassed and uncomfortable hiring me.
It also sounds like it would preclude an employer and employee coming to agreement on a salary outside the norm, and I think businesses should have a degree of flexibility.
If some dude really is the Stephen Hawking of software engineering, and he's the backbone of his company, and they think he's worth twice the going rate, fuck it, let the dude have his crazy salary. And then when someone asks why the guy is making all that money, you tell them exactly why, and they can deal or they can walk.
Similarly, if a company can only afford to pay everyone half the going rate for their position, and they find people comfortable with that, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I worked at a company like that! I took a huge pay cut to work there because I wanted to! And that's fine! Had they been required to pay a certain wage, they wouldn't have existed, and I wouldn't have been able to take a really rad job.
The point of the policy isn't that it will make everyone content, it's that it'll make everyone honest about what's going on. What people can do with that info is another piece of the puzzle.
I just look at it this way: companies make employees sign confidentiality agreements, withhold salary ranges in their job postings, ask recruiters to obfuscate salaries, etc, because it benefits them. Ergo, on the balance of things, publicizing all salary information probably benefits workers.
I don't think honest is the right word. Withholding pay data is not lying.
Lying isn't the sole way to be dishonest.
The argument is that the employee agrees to a salary at arms length which he is pleased with. If he was not happy with it, he would not agree. That he could have pushed for and received more money is not relevant, anymore than that he could have been more conservative and gotten less. As long as the Company does not say "we don't pay anyone more than $x" when they actually pay plenty of people in similar roles more, I do not see a problem with this arrangement.
Not to drag in arguments from other threads, but didn't you suggest in the adultery thread that a similar lie of omission, having an affair but concealing it from your partner, was morally unacceptable? It seems now you're making the opposite argument, that as long as the employee doesn't know, it can't hurt him, and that the information should be withheld, because it'll make him unhappy. What's the difference? That monogamy in marriage is implicit, but fair pay in employment isn't?
Lets start by saying I do not disagree with this paragraph.
But seriously, how is this not abused to hell and back by any company that wants to pay whitey mcWhiterson 50% more than his contemporaries because he is a "rockstar", whether he is or isnt?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Well... among the cited reasons for the pay disparity between men and women are that men self-evaluate higher than women, and that men ask for pay raises more aggressively. It may not be "abuse", but certainly, the perception of rockstarness does currently generate pay disparities.
"As long as employee X doesn't know he's being exploited, there is no harm" is a very poor argument, and not in the least on the level of logic I normally expect from you.
I posed this to you at the beginning of the thread and never got an answer:
A starving man agrees to work all day in return for a crust of bread. Is he being exploited? Why or why not?
Why not just come out and ask if minimum wage and maximum hour laws are legitimate, instead of playing silly games.
I think my position is entirely consistent with that thread. I was very explicit in stating that the problem with adultery is you violate the terms of your agreement with your spouse. When you negotiate pay with your employer you are not in a relationship with the employer where it has promised to pay you the most it could. In fact, the salary negotiation process is adversarial! You come to an arm's length deal on this basis. That is why I said outright lying is a problem for salary negotiation. It invalidates the arm's length deal.
He is not. He accepted a deal he was happy with. If the employer acts to deprive him of other sources of food so that he can only get the crust, that is different.
Being at arms length isn't a good excuse for the party with the most power to screw over the weaker one in a bizarre survival of the fittest competition. I expect them to have some ethics with negotiation - not be monsters. Lying isn't the only way they can benefit from this, omission is a potent weapon with this negotiation and without having all the facts the stronger party will dominate the other in every category; that's why information like how other employees are paid is good for the employee. They won't get swindled, because that type of negotiation is a con game. And don't confuse not being homeless with being happy. Employers don't have to deal with those consequences if they blow this deal.
He accepted the deal he had no choice but to accept. And an employer who did this would be human garbage. That's Charles Dickens' type dickery.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Position: Data analyst
Salary Range offered: 65-70k/yr
Number of workers in position: 22
Actual range of salary: 66250-70000
Median income: 67,100
Average tenure in position: 1.5 years
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Thank you. I applaud you for your logical consistency while also narrowing my eyes very disapprovingly.
My problem with this reasoning, aside from its total lack of compassion is that the power dynamic between employer and employee is naturally skewed. The employee, being a human being, has certain basic needs that must be met else he will die, or become homeless, etc. This puts pressure on him to accept a deal that he may not really be happy with, because there is a time constraint on him. He must get a job, even if it pays significantly below market value or what he thinks he's worth, because the alternative is fatal. Maybe he turned down a bunch of lowball offers and now the landlord is nailing an eviction notice to his door. Well that shouldn't affect his willingness to accept the next lowball offer should it? Obviously if he accepts a below-market wage in those circumstances he's not being harmed or exploited.
Meanwhile the employer, being a corporate entity that cannot die, faces no such constraints. The company isn't going to cease to exist because this one job is unfilled for a week, two weeks, six weeks, six months. It can afford to be choosy, or negotiate more aggressively, or exploit perceived desperation or just toss out one lowball offer after another knowing that sooner or later somebody would accept.
So I would agree that, in a perfect world, the bolded would be correct. We could infer that acceptance equals absolute contentment with the terms of the deal. But we don't live in that world, and people in bad situations accept deals with lousy terms terms every single day. Refusing to admit that they were wronged only helps perpetuate the cycle of poverty.
If there's other metadata, it would get more dangerous the smaller the business.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Right - which is why this should not apply to firms with less than a certain number of employees, like 100 or 250 or whatever is needed to provide appropriate position diversity.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I would actually break the criteria down to the "Number of workers in position" level, as it's pretty easy to guess who the 1 janitor or 2 CEOs are
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Does this position mean you find child brides to also be acceptable? After all, the legal parties involved in the situation have agreed to a contract.
Yeah, that works too.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and good attorneys.
You don't think disparate bargaining power and information assymetry allows for an 'unconscionable' contract agreement to be able to exist?
Unrelated, I had a reference question today about the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and the impact on implicit warranties. Along a similar vein I would say there are a lot of implicit agreements in hiring that extend beyond not being defrauded through false claims.
This is pretty far afield and I'm not sure what it has to do with anything.
This is seriously fucking horrifying, dude.
I'm enlisted so E-6 over 10 years, living in Maryland.
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/33202971/#Comment_33202971
Easy day.
It's very illustrative, as it is the natural consequence of focusing solely on "voluntary" exchange, where it is both practically and morally equivalent to a mugging.
Focusing on a purely amoral standard of labor is how you get things like Remote Area Medical, which was originally intended to provide free medical care to third world nations, but realized it couldn't justify it when so many Americans lacked any meaningful access to medical care. I don't know if my morals or my patriotism are more offended by that.
Not bad at all, but devil's advocate.
No gender / race breakdown. If you've got 11 women making 66250, and 11 men making 70000, there's a huge problem that's not apparent from this data. Not sure how that could be addressed while keeping everything relatively anonymized.
Who is deciding on job titles? If the company is deciding on the job titles, there is a lot of room to play with those numbers - you're a Business Intelligence Data Analyst, you're a Customer Service Data Analyst, you're a Internal Metrics Data Analyst, all of which have different pay scales. Alternately, those different positions could be aggregated to make the data so broad as to be meaningless depending on the business's strategy.
If the government is deciding on job titles, they will also probably have to aggregate titles to the point that the data is meaningless as well.
Now, small businesses. We know how much the government loves to fellate small businesses / small business owners, even though those seemingly are the most exploitative, arbitrary, and discriminatory ones out there. Are we going to leave an exemption in there for small businesses? If we don't, we again run into the problems with anonymization - most 'small businesses' don't have enough employees in a given position anyway.
I don't think anonymization is necessary - I do see why some people might take issue with 'published name', but you could also just publish race / gender data without names. In some cases people could probably figure it out, but in the vast majority of cases it would be sufficient to protect the identity of the people involved.
Here's some suggestions:
1. Policies that punish employees for sharing salary details with one another are explicitly prohibited, with large penalties to business that violate these policies. Won't prevent the whole 'no, totally fired for other reasons', but it will help quite a bit.
2. Companies are required to publish salary ranges for positions, and there should be a documented reason for salaries outside that range.
3. Companies are required to publish the average percent pay increase year to year, possibly with some crosstab data on time in position and possibly broken down by staff, management, and executives. This will allow women / minorities to see if they are systematically lagging. Will also prevent the whole 'nah, totally not giving raises this year' or 'we have a 4% cap on increases'.
4. By law, all employees are entitled to an annual review that quantifies their performance - this establishes a paper trail that could be used to establish if women / minorities are systematically lagging.
5. NLRB or other labor boards should be able to request this data for review if a discrimination complaint is filed.
There would still be some workarounds for businesses of course, but I think this would give a huge step up for employees and a lot more power in negotiations.
Actually I want to touch on this again because it's just not true. It assumes that individuals only accept terms that they are, if not 100% satisfied with, then mostly satisfied with. It ignores that sometimes (a lot of the time) we accept terms that are unfavorable to us because we either have no choice, or the alternative is even worse than accepting the deal. And (most importantly) it assumes that we are free to walk away from an infinite number of unfavorable deals until an equitable deal can be reached. In the case of the starving man, it isn't the he is "happy" with the crust of bread -- he would prefer a whole loaf of bread, to be certain! -- it's that the cost of turning down the deal (starving to death right now, today) is catastrophically worse than accepting what he, the employer, and every damn one around knows is a shitty, exploitative deal.
If only this were a textbook universe with spherical cows, frictionless surfaces, and a free market.
A man is walking alone late at night and is attacked by a mugger, who robs him, stabs him, and leaves him bleeding out in a gutter. He only has moments to live. Just then, he is happened upon by a bystander, who agrees to bandage his wound and take him to a hospital, saving his life. But in return he demands that the bleeding man sign over the deed to his house.
Since the bystander didn't actually stab the man, this contract isn't exploitative?
Some people are happy being exploited. By reducing or removing exploitative scenarios you're reducing the potential happiness of those who like being exploited from being exploited. Have you no heart?
It's like Stockholm Syndrome. Separating a victim in love from his/her captors is just cruel.
See I think this is the main issue. There needs to be a system in place to reward harder workers. However there is not yet a perfect system for unbiased evaluation of workers. Until such a system is created we will still face problems of favoritism and discrimination (which may be unintentional).
Publishing salaries lets people know when they're being screwed over (or at least they thing they are), however I'm doubtful that it will lead to any significant changes in pay balance.
Add quartiles, because while median is a good measure of center it's not an indicator of the shape of the data.
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Somewhat related: This is how American medical policy actually works. Medicine is one area where the free market can't work by definition, hence why everything is such a clusterfuck.