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Isn't that because wage-fixing requires collusion? ie in a world where salary bands were required to be publicly available, company A and company B independentl

by tqi 4y ago

Isn't that because wage-fixing requires collusion? ie in a world where salary bands were required to be publicly available, company A and company B independently deciding they want to stick to around the median would not be collusion/wage-fixing. Under the same conditions, if company A reached out to company B and said "lets set salaries at the median" that would be wage-fixing. How they came to know what that median value is is irrelevant.

behringer 4y ago
That's it exactly. I asked my company recently if they are trying to get ahead of the going rates in order to acquire and keep talent. The answer was no but it's hard for me to call this collusion when they're using data even consumers may get access to (although certainly debatable as to the accuracy compared to big business.)
CPLX 4y ago
What’s the definition of collusion? If everyone brings their salary info to a secret meeting and writes it in a chalkboard and then uses that chalkboard to set their salaries it’s obviously collusion, and cases like that have plenty of legal precedent. If instead of walking the numbers over to the secret lair the communicate via an API and the chalkboard is a digital database and GUI has anything substantive changed? And your premise is ridiculous. Of course how they came to know each other’s salary info isn’t irrelevant, it’s the collusion part. There’s a long long history of this kind of stuff with prices that are completely public. There’s a Matt Damon movie about it. It’s not some novel concept it’s a time honored way to break the law.
- tqi 4y ago
  I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. My point is that sharing salary band info is orthogonal to wage fixing (which you seem to agree with) > If everyone brings their salary info to a secret meeting and writes it in a chalkboard and then uses that chalkboard to set their salaries it’s obviously collusion, and cases like that have plenty of legal precedent. The how of "set their salaries" is the difference between wage fixing or not. ie a company sharing / receiving of salary info (aka getting market reference points) and deciding that it wants to be at the Nth percentile is not wage-fixing. Wage-fixing would be if that company got together with another company (or companies) and agreed to stay at the Nth percentile.
  - CPLX 4y ago
    > sharing salary band info is orthogonal to wage fixing No it’s not. Privately communicating with direct competitors about pricing is invariably the first step of an illegal price fixing conspiracy.
    - tqi 4y ago
      > Privately communicating with direct competitors about pricing is invariably the first step of an illegal price fixing conspiracy. Sure, and having a drink is invariably the first step to drunk driving. That doesn't make having a drink = drunk driving. To be clear, I'm not defending the practice or saying it's never illegal. I'm saying sharing is not sufficient in and of itself. This article may be more convincing than an internet rando: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/wage-fixing-or-flexing-pay-transparency-laws-create-challenges https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/wage-fixing... > While wage fixing is easy to spot, a more subtle and related antitrust problem springs from wage disclosure: the mere agreement among employers to exchange wage information, even if they don’t agree on the actual wage itself, CAN lead to liability IF the information exchange negatively effects wages. > Antitrust can be complex, but even a simple agreement on wages is a violation. Proof can come by the agreement itself without proof of competitive effects. > An agreement between or among employers to exchange wage information, even if employers do not agree on the amount, can be illegal if that exchange resulted in lower wages.
      - CPLX 4y ago
        > Sure, and having a drink is invariably the first step to drunk driving. That doesn't make having a drink = drunk driving. Well yeah, but it sure as hell ain't orthogonal. If you see a bunch of people sitting around drinking heavily at a bar with their cars parked outside and someone says hey what does any of this have to do with drunk driving you might raise an eyebrow. Kind of like when you see a bunch of people who are supposed to be in direct ruthless competition with each other sharing lots of detailed price information. The link you posted just reinforces my point that this is also how the law tends to look at these things.
nullc 4y ago
Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm, eBay, and Adobe got caught explicitly colluding to fix wages (some somewhat hesitantly, e.g. Apple threatened to use its patent portfolio against Adobe if they didn't participate). Their internal communications made it completely clear that they knew what they were doing was illegal, too. They were fined a small fraction of what they saved for the wage fixing (and essentially nothing to the total impact which included people far beyond these companies due to market distortion-- when the scheme collapsed and my pay went up something like 20%, even though I didn't work for any of the involved companies). So why shouldn't anyone else do the same?

by tqi 4y ago

behringer 4y ago

That's it exactly. I asked my company recently if they are trying to get ahead of the going rates in order to acquire and keep talent. The answer was no but it's hard for me to call this collusion when they're using data even consumers may get access to (although certainly debatable as to the accuracy compared to big business.)

CPLX 4y ago

What’s the definition of collusion? If everyone brings their salary info to a secret meeting and writes it in a chalkboard and then uses that chalkboard to set their salaries it’s obviously collusion, and cases like that have plenty of legal precedent. If instead of walking the numbers over to the secret lair the communicate via an API and the chalkboard is a digital database and GUI has anything substantive changed? And your premise is ridiculous. Of course how they came to know each other’s salary info isn’t irrelevant, it’s the collusion part. There’s a long long history of this kind of stuff with prices that are completely public. There’s a Matt Damon movie about it. It’s not some novel concept it’s a time honored way to break the law.

tqi 4y ago
I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. My point is that sharing salary band info is orthogonal to wage fixing (which you seem to agree with) > If everyone brings their salary info to a secret meeting and writes it in a chalkboard and then uses that chalkboard to set their salaries it’s obviously collusion, and cases like that have plenty of legal precedent. The how of "set their salaries" is the difference between wage fixing or not. ie a company sharing / receiving of salary info (aka getting market reference points) and deciding that it wants to be at the Nth percentile is not wage-fixing. Wage-fixing would be if that company got together with another company (or companies) and agreed to stay at the Nth percentile.
- CPLX 4y ago
  > sharing salary band info is orthogonal to wage fixing No it’s not. Privately communicating with direct competitors about pricing is invariably the first step of an illegal price fixing conspiracy.
  - tqi 4y ago
    > Privately communicating with direct competitors about pricing is invariably the first step of an illegal price fixing conspiracy. Sure, and having a drink is invariably the first step to drunk driving. That doesn't make having a drink = drunk driving. To be clear, I'm not defending the practice or saying it's never illegal. I'm saying sharing is not sufficient in and of itself. This article may be more convincing than an internet rando: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/wage-fixing-or-flexing-pay-transparency-laws-create-challenges https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/wage-fixing... > While wage fixing is easy to spot, a more subtle and related antitrust problem springs from wage disclosure: the mere agreement among employers to exchange wage information, even if they don’t agree on the actual wage itself, CAN lead to liability IF the information exchange negatively effects wages. > Antitrust can be complex, but even a simple agreement on wages is a violation. Proof can come by the agreement itself without proof of competitive effects. > An agreement between or among employers to exchange wage information, even if employers do not agree on the amount, can be illegal if that exchange resulted in lower wages.
    - CPLX 4y ago
      > Sure, and having a drink is invariably the first step to drunk driving. That doesn't make having a drink = drunk driving. Well yeah, but it sure as hell ain't orthogonal. If you see a bunch of people sitting around drinking heavily at a bar with their cars parked outside and someone says hey what does any of this have to do with drunk driving you might raise an eyebrow. Kind of like when you see a bunch of people who are supposed to be in direct ruthless competition with each other sharing lots of detailed price information. The link you posted just reinforces my point that this is also how the law tends to look at these things.

nullc 4y ago

Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm, eBay, and Adobe got caught explicitly colluding to fix wages (some somewhat hesitantly, e.g. Apple threatened to use its patent portfolio against Adobe if they didn't participate). Their internal communications made it completely clear that they knew what they were doing was illegal, too. They were fined a small fraction of what they saved for the wage fixing (and essentially nothing to the total impact which included people far beyond these companies due to market distortion-- when the scheme collapsed and my pay went up something like 20%, even though I didn't work for any of the involved companies). So why shouldn't anyone else do the same?