8 ms·

This article seems to basically say its already illegal to prohibit employees from discussing pay (NLRA 1935) and it is certainly illegal to pay someone less ba

• throwaway217384 12y ago
  I believe this sometimes happens because women are less likely to counter-offer and negotiate during the hiring process. It sucks.
  • nawitus 12y ago
    So does that mean that companies would favour women as they can be paid less?
    • throwaway217384 12y ago
      Interesting question. I think many, men and women, are still biased against women because they believe they are catty and dramatic or are afraid of increased legal issues (lawsuits). These are obviously not reality either and it too sucks.
      • mistermann 12y ago
        Is "women are less likely to counter-offer and negotiate during the hiring process" obviously not reality also? (Serious question.)
        • SteveGerencser 12y ago
          It is very likely. My wife is a very well respected Engineer in her field and when she was asked to come out of retirement, she retired to start a farm and enjoy the outdoors, they called her back and made what I thought was a very low offer. She was going to accept it because to her it was a work from home gig and was near what she used to make. I said no and helped her negotiate an additional 30% in her rate that she would have simply left on the table because she didn't feel comfortable asking for more.* *Yes, anecdotal evidence but I hear it from her and her female engineering friends a lot. To the point I've offered to help any of them negotiate their contracts in the future.
          • squozzer 12y ago
            You may have found a calling. I hope you consider expanding the scope of your activities beyond your wife's friends. What would make it worth your while?
          • mystique 12y ago
            I agree with squozzer, you should consider expanding your activities beyond folks who know you personally. I really like my work and I work a lot. I have worked in early-mid stage startup and now am working with a pre-series A stage startup. I have never shied away from asking for more responsibilities or climbing up the management chain. I am generally known as the more assertive person in the organization. But when it comes to compensation, I cannot bring it up. Not sure if it has to do with being a female. It would be ideal if there was a 'go to' person who can push me more in negotiating for better compensation.
          • deleted 12y ago
            [deleted]
          • 12y ago
  • cauterized 12y ago
    Which is in part because both men and women's perceptions of a woman become more negative when she negotiates.
    • jrs235 12y ago
      Its even more than that. Our cultural biases lead us to perceive the same traits (e.g. assertive) differently. Assertive males are perceived as confident ans positively while assertive females are perceived as bitchty and negatively. http://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2012/09/04/gossipy-women-egocentric-men-and-the-power-of-perception-in-business-time-to-stop-the-madness/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2012/09/04/gossipy-w...
• pekk 12y ago
  "Don't pay women less for being women" is unenforceable.
  • timthorn 12y ago
    Not true: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-20294633 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-20294633
    • pekk 12y ago
      It really is true, because you can say anything you want (or nothing) about the reasons why you did it, and get away with it. You have to be a total moron not to get away with it. This is terrible and unjustifiable, but that is how it is.
      • Retra 12y ago
        This is entirely a matter of what the law says, and in a discussion about adapting laws, it is a very weak argument. If the law says you cannot lie about your reasons and that you must have them, then there is a means to enforce it. I mean, I could say I didn't rob a bank and get away with it due to lax laws and inadequate technology, but that doesn't mean it is impossible to protect banks from robbery. It means you reform the processes. For instance, if employers went through independently regulated agencies to conduct hiring/firing/pay, then they wouldn't be able to make decisions like that and get away with it.
        • pekk 12y ago
          I'd love the processes to be reformed. But the fact remains that the law has no way to know your reasons for firing or not hiring someone as long as you tell them something vaguely plausible. You'd have to be an idiot.
• rayiner 12y ago
  One of the strongest benefits of salary transparency is the equalizing effect on salaries for women and minorities (and nerds who have trouble aggressively negotiating their salary!)
  • tormeh 12y ago
    You can also join an engineering union. They can usually tell you what salary is common for your CV. Some may also negotiate on your behalf. All offer legal counsel. Depends on where you live, of course.
• tormeh 12y ago
  A solution is to just make everyone's tax reports public. The worst that happens is you get tasteless websites ranking who earns and owns most in your area. Really, that's it. Norway tried it and it got a little too tasteless for our politicians, so now it's a government website thing where anyone you view can see that you've viewed them. You still get some cool stats, though: http://www.dn.no/skattelister/#!/Norge/2013/ http://www.dn.no/skattelister/#!/Norge/2013/ These are the tax statistics for 2013. The table at the bottom is the "top score". Position and name on the left with income, tax and wealth to the right, in that order.
  • UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
    > A solution is to just make everyone's tax reports public. Hell no. I don't want to be targeted be advertisers, penalised by insurers, and become a target for robbery because I have my personal information spread around for everyone to see. There's a lot of personal shit on your tax return. Far more than is even apparent. It can also expose your side business to your employer which could cause issues. I'm all for salary transparency, but tax returns are pretty private forms that contain an extremely high amount of PI, and can be data mined to expose even more implicit forms of PI.
    • charlesdm 12y ago
      I totally agree with this. The potential upside of doing this doesn't warrant the massive downside. Before you know it, you'll be getting bombarded with advertisements. Besides, in the EU, a society where the average person hates it when someone who is not him is doing well, I'd rather people not know how much I earn.
      • wereHamster 12y ago
        > EU [...] a society Don't generalize. The EU has 28 member states, with diverse cultures and social norms. What works in Norway may not work in the southern Italy.
        • 12y ago
• didgeoridoo 12y ago
  But how else will politicians get to claim credit for Doing Something About It?
• ordinary 12y ago
  If you are an employer despicable enough to systematically be paying women less just for being women, I don't think another redundant law is going to change your behavior. Women don't earn about 18% less than men (OECD median, 2008)[0] because a small minority of employers pay women almost nothing, but because the vast majority of employers pay women (or blacks, or handicapped people) slightly less. Just like laws that prohibit killing don't target psychopaths, laws that prohibit discrimination don't target the KKK; they (should) aim to change the societal norms that your average Joe McAverage conforms to. It's the distinction between institutionalized discrimination and the more intimate personal type. _____ [0] The exact number is not really what's important here, but http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/57/40846335.pdf http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/57/40846335.pdf
  • smm2000 12y ago
    18% number is bullshit debunked many times. When you control for occupation, working hours, etc between male and female - the difference in pay is only 2-3%
    • Karunamon 12y ago
      Not that I don't believe you, but could you link to said debunking?
      • IshKebab 12y ago
        I can't be bothered to find it, but I remember reading the same thing. I'm sure a short search will turn it up if you're interested in reading it.
        • enraged_camel 12y ago
          You can't be bothered to find it, even though you think a short search will turn it up? Interesting.
      • freshhawk 12y ago
        Here are two blog posts with summaries and good links to various studies (I know these are bad sources, but they make the point and were easy to find). http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/gender_pay_gap_the_familiar_line_that_women_make_77_cents_to_every_man_s.html http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/gende... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-ga... The 77 cents on the dollar myth actively shifts attention away from the real issues with gender roles and western culture in favour of a simple outdated narrative that isn't going to help anyone. It's a useful shibboleth though, the people using it are either well meaning but uninformed or interested more in attention/marketing than actual equality.
• rokhayakebe 12y ago
  Is it that women get underpaid or is there more to it? Women and men should also tell every woman they know to negotiate their pay. The first offer is not something anyone has to take, and while this may be self evident here, it isnt everywhere.
  • wyclif 12y ago
    Women engineers should be encouraged to learn how to negotiate salary themselves, or from a mentor. They should also be encouraged to view salary negotiation as a positive part of their soft skills, rather than a necessary evil.
    • rokhayakebe 12y ago
      I think it is women in all fields. I was talking to a lady friend about a job offer she got and advised she negotiate her salary. From her response it sounded as if I was trying to get her to loose the opportunity.
      • learnstats2 12y ago
        You can't really negotiate effectively unless you are willing to lose the opportunity. Your friend might be aware that she has fewer opportunities and therefore be less willing to take this risk.
    • tomp 12y ago
      No need to be sexist. This would be useful for all engineers, not just female engineers.
      • wyclif 12y ago
        I wasn't being sexist. The context of the parent comment was women negotiating pay.
• nickbauman 12y ago
  Just sharing your compensation with your co workers goes a long way toward solving this problem. But it is a social more to not share this information. There's a very rational economic reason why some people are paid less than others for the same job. Leverage. Since WWII, women entered the work force in large numbers _because they were willing to work for less than their male counterparts._ So what was an opportunity for women once has become discrimination. Rightfully so. But it's important to remember how we actually got here. Equality of opportunity often translates into inequalities of outcome for reasons that are neither good nor efficient. So, yeah, sometimes the law can tip the scales to fix this. And that is not a bad thing.
• kaitai 12y ago
  It's not despicable. As a woman, I'll repeat: paying women less for being women is not despicable. That doesn't mean it's good. It's bad. But it's normal and there are a lot of social forces at work. Good, well-meaning people have all sorts of logical reasons to pay women or minorities or handicapped people less. You don't have to be evil to participate in a sucky system. We all do, even the virtuous ones. So, open your eyes and work to change things. As long as we frame bias as something only despicable people have, we will not be able to change anything. After all, we're not despicable, so we can't be biased! Yay. False. Bias is something good people are still steeped in. It's how humans operate. Transparency in pay is a way in which good people can be confronted by their bias. In any one situation, you can argue that a woman deserves less (rationally and justly -- just change the rules for evaluation so she loses [1]). If via transparency and use of data you notice that women are consistently paid less, and that your evaluation criteria keep changing, you can realize your implicit bias and change your actions. [1] http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9120783 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9120783 .
  • forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
    Could you give an example where a good, well-meaning person would have a logical reason to pay a minority less?
    • cbr 12y ago
      Lets say you're hiring a freelancer and you take bids. The lowest bid is from a member of a historically disadvantaged minority, and the reason their bid is lower is because as a member of that group discrimination makes it harder for them to find work. A good, well-meaning person might still accept the bid.
    • tbrownaw 12y ago
      Work that involves in-person meetings with customers who are known to not like minorities. (If they're paid on commission, this will happen even without the employer actively deciding anything.) If that particular minority is strongly correlated to cultural values that clash strongly with the organizational culture. (And said values clash would likely result in slower career progression even if the minority status is deliberately ignored.) There exist conceivable situations where minority (or other protected) status could actually directly affect job performance, or be correlated to something that affects job performance.
• pavel_lishin 12y ago
  > If you are an employer despicable enough to systematically be paying women less just for being women, I don't think another redundant law is going to change your behavior. It might if your employees start suing you and costing you money.