Most workers don’t probably know how much their colleagues make, and likely don’t know how much their counterparts at other companies are paid, either. This lack of transparency may be keeping millions of Americans from earning higher paychecks.
What If Companies Were Required to Tell Workers What Their Colleagues Earn?
Despite employers’ access to comprehensive salary data, most employees are completely in the dark when it comes to how their salaries compare to those of their peers. In this piece, the author argues that greater transparency around employee salaries would help the average worker, and that policymakers should do more to encourage it. Specifically, he suggests that states across the U.S. should protect workers who discuss pay at work, that the Trump Administration should back the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s effort to collect and publish data on pay by demographic group, that regulators should change antitrust laws regarding the use of compensation surveys to encourage and incentivize managers to share this information with employees, that the federal government should prohibit firms from asking about prior pay during the hiring process unless they are willing to provide information on their own pay structure, and that Congress should appropriate a small amount of funding for the Department of Labor to study the issue of wage transparency. When you shop for groceries or buy gas, comparing prices is standard. It’s time for the same principle of transparency to apply when it comes to finding the best price for your labor.