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This is why I believe that many of these worker protection laws will wind up bringing more harm than good unless they can be implemented at the federal level. I

This is why I believe that many of these worker protection laws will wind up bringing more harm than good unless they can be implemented at the federal level. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be for a small or mid-size company to try and maintain compliance with a patchwork of 50 different state regulations. Suppose Colorado has a law saying that all new roles must be presented to current employees as promotional opportunities and then Michigan (hypothetically) passes a law saying that all new roles must be presented to students graduating from Michigan State first? These laws could be in direct conflict, so which state does the company pick? Do you spin up entire HR and Legal departments just to make sure you're not violating laws in states in which you don't even have employees yet? The easiest thing to do is just say "this law is too complicated for us to deal with right now, so we've decided not to hire here." Worse, this kind of law gives a huge advantage to FAANG-type companies who _can_ afford such intricacies.

rsj_hn 5y ago
The thing is that there are fundamental trade offs that you can't escape even if you make laws at the federal level. Laws which add costs to labor means that wages are going to be lower than if those costs weren't there. In a tight labor market that means employers have to go elsewhere, so more outsourcing or they cut back on labor employed. There is a reason why Europe has such high unemployment rates (and comparatively lower salaries) and struggles especially with youth employment. But they have much better worker protections. It's a tradeoff. Now that doesn't mean it's not worth it to pass certain worker protections. But every such protection will have a cost in terms of reducing demand for labor. Maybe the cost is small and the benefit is high, in which case, go for it. But don't pretend that the costs aren't going to be paid if you federalize the law, or that there is some sort of legal arrangement you can make to outlaw economic tradeoffs. The costs will just be paid in a different way. And it's not like everyone in Colorado is suddenly unemployed. Lots of people are hiring Colorado workers. It's just a small decrease in demand for Colorado labor in response to a small increase in employer headaches for hiring people in that state. If those who supported this law didn't expect exactly this to happen, then they were uninformed. I am assuming most people in Colorado knew this would happen and decided to pass the law anyway. Time will tell whether the benefits outweigh the costs, but there are always such tradeoffs.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  This is not wrong, but I feel you are hiding the adversity inherent to employee-employer relations. Why is there such a labor glut anways? If it's an immaterial underconsumptionist / keyensian demand-shortfall type problem, how can we boost aggregate demand and broad population purchasing power. If it's some sort of supply glut / too much productivity issue, how can we all work less? Speaking about these issues as if they are "engineering tradeoffs" ignores that the status quo is not static and universal.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > I feel you are hiding the adversity inherent to employee-employer relations. The only adversity inheritent to the employer/employee system is the same adversity inheritent to any buyer/seller relationship. Both want to extract the most from the other while providing the least. Sellers curse when it's a buyer's market and buyers curse when it's a seller's market, and buyers always want it to be a buyers market and vice versa. That's pretty normal and appears in every market, including the labor market. If you are buying flat screen TVs, you need to understand that the flatscreen TV makers are not your friend. They will charge as much as they possibly can. That doesn't mean you hate them, but if you feel personally wounded when they try to screw you over, then you are in for a life lesson. Be wary and avoid brand loyalties. The same with your employer. I don't think this is something I am trying to hide.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      > The only adversity inheritent to the employer/employee system is the same adversity inheritent to any buyer/seller relationship. Sure, but your choice of work far dwarfs any other of those other transactions in its magnitude (and ongoing nature).
    - markrages 5y ago
      I can't find any definition of inheritent. What do you mean by this word?
c_e 5y ago
What am I missing? What about this law (the real one that actually exists, not your hypothetical) is challenging to be in compliance with?
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  It has to occupy space in your brain. In an ideal world, if you want to make a job posting, you just put up the job posting. Instead, now in Colorado you have to make sure you do it right, or else — this is the crazy part — you get punished.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Punishing employers for trying to hire people is a bad strategy.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I can think of several examples. Here's one. Businesses want to be able to higher high performers or those who the firm knows have other options and can demand a higher wage, which means they must pay them more than they would like to pay the average worker, so the ideal situation is to have multiple ranges, for example one for the average worker and one for the workers they really want to hire. So under this law they'd publish a big range, like this position pays between $X and $2X, but if the firm publishes that range, it makes the average worker think they can get 1.5X -- after all that's the average -- and then they become resentful when they are offered only X. In fact most workers would be upset that they are getting X. Of course you could try to make a different job title -- e.g. Y and good-Y, and then say that Y pays X and good-Y pays 2X. But then you have to explain which job you are applying for and why you are not being promoted to good Y. It's a mess. Particularly in our current zeitgeist when there is an enormous amount of envy and obsession with equality, disclosing real salary ranges is guaranteed to generate lots of resentment and is the last thing the firm wants to do. And God forbid if the high performers are not perfectly distributed along whatever identity category is viewed as most critical, as then you could be open to lawsuits, etc. So think of this as the flipside of the UC System refusing to take SAT into consideration. UC doesn't want any objective measures as inputs for the same reason that firms don't want to disclose objective outputs. It's really the flipside of the same coin -- not wanting to offend those who insist there are no differences between groups by either refusing to collect the data or refusing to disclose the data, which if taken into consideration or disclosed would reveal that there are in fact differences between groups. Now in some cases the firm is in an industry where there is not much difference in employee productivity just due to the nature of the job. If you are serving coffee, then a slow coffee server is not much different than a fast coffee server. Same thing for a property manager. Hospital nurses are generally not paid based on performance, it's so regulated. So in those cases you don't care, you can disclose. But in other cases it's not. So some firms will avoid CO and others wont. I suspect in most industries you do not see really big differences, and so most employers will be fine as they are in the hospital nurse/property manager bucket. But some wont be. E.g. in tech, there are big differences in productivity. Also in sales occupations, there are huge differences in productivity. It really depends on the occupation/industry. Similarly for education, while it may threaten the worldview of UC admins to look at SAT scores, it would not threaten the worldview of a community college to look at GED scores, and so community colleges can still take GED scores into account while preserving the we-are-all-the-same view just as the property management offices, health care admin, and coffee shops firms can disclose salary-ranges and not be vulnerable to charges of discrimination. Of course these are all hypotheticals. If you want data, then look at which industries are the ones more likely to give CO a pass and then take a look at their compensation structures or what type of labor they are hiring to see which firms believe they will be faced with larger costs than other firms. Then there is the issue of special-casing your HR processes for Colorado, which some firms may not find as being worth the hassle.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
It’s only harmful because the people who privately compensate drastically differently on their private whims have the power to just move that pay around geographically. This protection would be much more effective if it wasn’t exploitable by capital mobility.
Kranar 5y ago
When hiring someone from Colorado, you follow Colorado's laws. When hiring someone from Michigan, you follow Michigan's laws. It's not really that difficult for most companies to do this. There are plenty of companies that have offices in multiple states, countries and they follow the laws of the jurisdictions in which they do business. You don't need an entire department to comply with local laws, usually you consult the services of an attorney in the respective jurisdiction or someone familiar with the laws of that jurisdiction and they let you know what you need to do to comply. Despite what you may often hear, getting advice from an attorney is not THAAT expensive.
- TimPC 5y ago
  This law is slightly different in that it’s about posting. So it’s more like if there is a possibility of hiring from Colorado consult an attorney and follow certain laws. That scales very differently from consulting an attorney after picking an employee from a specific jurisdiction.
  - Kranar 5y ago
    This law only applies to companies that have operations inside of Colorado.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
Do you expect companies to roll their own credit payment systems? Or their own shipping? Hell, everyone already uses greenhouse and such for job postings anyways, why not let them handle it for you? If IBM wants everyone to use their shitty internal application system but also not del with local laws, that’s on them, not on Colorado.

rsj_hn 5y ago

The thing is that there are fundamental trade offs that you can't escape even if you make laws at the federal level. Laws which add costs to labor means that wages are going to be lower than if those costs weren't there. In a tight labor market that means employers have to go elsewhere, so more outsourcing or they cut back on labor employed. There is a reason why Europe has such high unemployment rates (and comparatively lower salaries) and struggles especially with youth employment. But they have much better worker protections. It's a tradeoff. Now that doesn't mean it's not worth it to pass certain worker protections. But every such protection will have a cost in terms of reducing demand for labor. Maybe the cost is small and the benefit is high, in which case, go for it. But don't pretend that the costs aren't going to be paid if you federalize the law, or that there is some sort of legal arrangement you can make to outlaw economic tradeoffs. The costs will just be paid in a different way. And it's not like everyone in Colorado is suddenly unemployed. Lots of people are hiring Colorado workers. It's just a small decrease in demand for Colorado labor in response to a small increase in employer headaches for hiring people in that state. If those who supported this law didn't expect exactly this to happen, then they were uninformed. I am assuming most people in Colorado knew this would happen and decided to pass the law anyway. Time will tell whether the benefits outweigh the costs, but there are always such tradeoffs.

Ericson2314 5y ago
This is not wrong, but I feel you are hiding the adversity inherent to employee-employer relations. Why is there such a labor glut anways? If it's an immaterial underconsumptionist / keyensian demand-shortfall type problem, how can we boost aggregate demand and broad population purchasing power. If it's some sort of supply glut / too much productivity issue, how can we all work less? Speaking about these issues as if they are "engineering tradeoffs" ignores that the status quo is not static and universal.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > I feel you are hiding the adversity inherent to employee-employer relations. The only adversity inheritent to the employer/employee system is the same adversity inheritent to any buyer/seller relationship. Both want to extract the most from the other while providing the least. Sellers curse when it's a buyer's market and buyers curse when it's a seller's market, and buyers always want it to be a buyers market and vice versa. That's pretty normal and appears in every market, including the labor market. If you are buying flat screen TVs, you need to understand that the flatscreen TV makers are not your friend. They will charge as much as they possibly can. That doesn't mean you hate them, but if you feel personally wounded when they try to screw you over, then you are in for a life lesson. Be wary and avoid brand loyalties. The same with your employer. I don't think this is something I am trying to hide.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    > The only adversity inheritent to the employer/employee system is the same adversity inheritent to any buyer/seller relationship. Sure, but your choice of work far dwarfs any other of those other transactions in its magnitude (and ongoing nature).
  - markrages 5y ago
    I can't find any definition of inheritent. What do you mean by this word?

c_e 5y ago

What am I missing? What about this law (the real one that actually exists, not your hypothetical) is challenging to be in compliance with?

CheezeIt 5y ago
It has to occupy space in your brain. In an ideal world, if you want to make a job posting, you just put up the job posting. Instead, now in Colorado you have to make sure you do it right, or else — this is the crazy part — you get punished.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Punishing employers for trying to hire people is a bad strategy.
rsj_hn 5y ago
I can think of several examples. Here's one. Businesses want to be able to higher high performers or those who the firm knows have other options and can demand a higher wage, which means they must pay them more than they would like to pay the average worker, so the ideal situation is to have multiple ranges, for example one for the average worker and one for the workers they really want to hire. So under this law they'd publish a big range, like this position pays between $X and $2X, but if the firm publishes that range, it makes the average worker think they can get 1.5X -- after all that's the average -- and then they become resentful when they are offered only X. In fact most workers would be upset that they are getting X. Of course you could try to make a different job title -- e.g. Y and good-Y, and then say that Y pays X and good-Y pays 2X. But then you have to explain which job you are applying for and why you are not being promoted to good Y. It's a mess. Particularly in our current zeitgeist when there is an enormous amount of envy and obsession with equality, disclosing real salary ranges is guaranteed to generate lots of resentment and is the last thing the firm wants to do. And God forbid if the high performers are not perfectly distributed along whatever identity category is viewed as most critical, as then you could be open to lawsuits, etc. So think of this as the flipside of the UC System refusing to take SAT into consideration. UC doesn't want any objective measures as inputs for the same reason that firms don't want to disclose objective outputs. It's really the flipside of the same coin -- not wanting to offend those who insist there are no differences between groups by either refusing to collect the data or refusing to disclose the data, which if taken into consideration or disclosed would reveal that there are in fact differences between groups. Now in some cases the firm is in an industry where there is not much difference in employee productivity just due to the nature of the job. If you are serving coffee, then a slow coffee server is not much different than a fast coffee server. Same thing for a property manager. Hospital nurses are generally not paid based on performance, it's so regulated. So in those cases you don't care, you can disclose. But in other cases it's not. So some firms will avoid CO and others wont. I suspect in most industries you do not see really big differences, and so most employers will be fine as they are in the hospital nurse/property manager bucket. But some wont be. E.g. in tech, there are big differences in productivity. Also in sales occupations, there are huge differences in productivity. It really depends on the occupation/industry. Similarly for education, while it may threaten the worldview of UC admins to look at SAT scores, it would not threaten the worldview of a community college to look at GED scores, and so community colleges can still take GED scores into account while preserving the we-are-all-the-same view just as the property management offices, health care admin, and coffee shops firms can disclose salary-ranges and not be vulnerable to charges of discrimination. Of course these are all hypotheticals. If you want data, then look at which industries are the ones more likely to give CO a pass and then take a look at their compensation structures or what type of labor they are hiring to see which firms believe they will be faced with larger costs than other firms. Then there is the issue of special-casing your HR processes for Colorado, which some firms may not find as being worth the hassle.

eyelidlessness 5y ago

It’s only harmful because the people who privately compensate drastically differently on their private whims have the power to just move that pay around geographically. This protection would be much more effective if it wasn’t exploitable by capital mobility.

Kranar 5y ago

When hiring someone from Colorado, you follow Colorado's laws. When hiring someone from Michigan, you follow Michigan's laws. It's not really that difficult for most companies to do this. There are plenty of companies that have offices in multiple states, countries and they follow the laws of the jurisdictions in which they do business. You don't need an entire department to comply with local laws, usually you consult the services of an attorney in the respective jurisdiction or someone familiar with the laws of that jurisdiction and they let you know what you need to do to comply. Despite what you may often hear, getting advice from an attorney is not THAAT expensive.

TimPC 5y ago
This law is slightly different in that it’s about posting. So it’s more like if there is a possibility of hiring from Colorado consult an attorney and follow certain laws. That scales very differently from consulting an attorney after picking an employee from a specific jurisdiction.
- Kranar 5y ago
  This law only applies to companies that have operations inside of Colorado.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

Do you expect companies to roll their own credit payment systems? Or their own shipping? Hell, everyone already uses greenhouse and such for job postings anyways, why not let them handle it for you? If IBM wants everyone to use their shitty internal application system but also not del with local laws, that’s on them, not on Colorado.