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California passes law requiring companies to reveal pay by race, gender
- gurumeditations 4y agoWhy not other metrics? For example why exclude LGBT people despite centuries of oppression and extermination in every aspect of life at all levels of society, continuing as we speak? Probably because overwhelmingly straight people made this law. But only certain biases get special treatment. This is a problem with these kinds of rules privileging certain groups in the name of equality. Inevitably other groups who deserve ‘reparation’ will ask, why not me too?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> why exclude LGBT people The history of state-mandated lists of gay people cautions against this impulse.
- throw_m239339 4y ago> Why not other metrics? For example why exclude LGBT people despite centuries of oppression and extermination in every aspect of life at all levels of society, continuing as we speak? Does that list has to single out Jews when it comes to race as well? What's even an individual's race? Some label the Californian society imposes on individuals or what the individual claims they" identify" as to begin with? Who decides the race of their employees? the employer? Will employees have to disclose it to their employer? Same with sexual orientation, would employees have to come out to their employer in order to make such list? These laws are inane.
- Ferrotin 4y agoAll LGBT people are descended from straight people, so there is no reparation factor.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoYou cannot know that.
- no-dr-onboard 4y ago> But only certain biases get special treatment. This is a problem with these kinds of rules privileging certain groups in the name of equality. Arguing for LGBT persons in the first half of your comment and then continuing with this is intensely ironic to the point of myself being unsure if that’s actually what you intended.
- cultofmetatron 4y agowell I for one can't see how this might go wrong... \s but in all seriousness, when you make optimize for the metric, the metrics will cease to reflect reality. I can see this easily being used for to prevent people from negotiating as individuals because this will allow companies to blanket drop all salaries in the guise of "being fair."
- esperent 4y ago> this will allow companies to blanket drop all salaries in the guise of "being fair." That's an argument for unions, not an argument against this law.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoNo, it is an argument against bad policy. The law makes sure different ethnicities immediately become competitors. They are because the metric demands it. Hard for someone in public service to understand, I guess. Also an old trick of toxic middle management. How do you keep people below you from eating you alive? Treat some of them better than others. They will focus on conflicts among each other instead of holding you accountable. Wake me up when this increases the compensation of anyone.
- jshzglr 4y agoIt definitely applies to this law. Would you want to be CEO of a company that has a public salary discrepancy between races, especially in this batshit political climate.
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoMaybe they could just raise the pay of all the employees with lower salaries. An extremely simple solution!!! This has the added benefit of improving the material conditions of all those employees too!
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoThe law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1162 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
- egberts1 4y ago“This bill would require the pay data reports to include the median and mean hourly rate for each combination of race, ethnicity, and sex within each job category.”
- jfim 4y agoThere doesn't seem to be any kind of anonymization, so if there's only one person for a particular combination of race, ethnicity, sex, and job category, then their pay will effectively be reported directly. In theory, the state of California is supposed to make sure that that data isn't identifiable, but considering the recent personal data leaks, that doesn't seem like a particularly strong protection.
- egberts1 4y agoThat’s why US Census is dis-aggregated afterward if sample is too small.
- snicker7 4y agoThe law asks for aggregated (mean/median/count) of hourly wage data for each (race, ethnicity, sex) triplet.
- haunter 4y agoThe article is misleading, the law says sex not gender. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1162 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
- rowanG077 4y agoWhy those three specifically? Why not degree. Or years of experience. Or whether someone grew up in poverty. Or LGBTQIA+ split out. I really don't understand the politics here. Isn't this way more likely to sew even more polarisation?
- codefreeordie 4y agoThat's the actual goal.
- feet 4y agoPolarization already exists, this is shining a light on it so people can work to fix it
- jt2190 4y ago> Why [gender, race, and ethnicity] specifically? I suspect that companies are already required to collect this information, so the extra burden from this law is mostly around how to report it.
- tzs 4y ago> Why those three specifically? Why not degree. Or years of experience. Or whether someone grew up in poverty. Or LGBTQIA+ split out. It's only companies with 100 or more employees. That's a big clue that suggests why those categories. The EEOC already requires all private employers in the US with 100 or more employees to annually report demographic workforce data, including race and sex data [1]. I'd bet that California picked those categories, and only those categories, and only made it apply to 100+ employee companies to make it easily fit in with that. [1] https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo-1-data-collection https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo-1-data-collection
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Madmallard 4y agoHow is this reasonable? It is not even a wise business decision to pay based on these things in the first place. Seems really useless.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoThe point is to check that nobody is basing pay decisions on these things.