Salary Disclosure, NDAs and NCAs

[Blue In BC]

Do you agree that salary info sharing would help Women get what they deserve? If so, what's the downside?

Companies get to decide because there is no salary info sharing. If everyone involved was working with the same information, then the company wouldn't just be able to say here's your salary. They'd have to say Here's your salary because of A B & C. They'd have to say your worth more than employee X and less than employee Y. They wouldn't be able to pay anyone 40% less than someone else doing the same job, unless they could justify it.

No, I don't agree. I've covered that in great detail. In simple terms I believe it creates conflict both with fellow workers and employers.  The downside is that employees can become disgruntled for perceived unfairness which may or may not be true. That's still true even if they get more elsewhere. Employers don't like to have to replace employees leaving. OTOH, you can't make everybody happy. The guy signing the pay check has to make those calls. That's just business.

Are you unfamiliar with annual salary reviews? Employers tell you what they think and / or what you need to get more. Employees don't always agree with that assessment.

[TBURGESS]

No, I don't agree. I've covered that in great detail. In simple terms I believe it creates conflict both with fellow workers and employers.  The downside is that employees can become disgruntled for perceived unfairness which may or may not be true. That's still true even if they get more elsewhere. Employers don't like to have to replace employees leaving. OTOH, you can't make everybody happy. The guy signing the pay check has to make those calls. That's just business.

Are you unfamiliar with annual salary reviews? Employers tell you what they think and / or what you need to get more. Employees don't always agree with that assessment.

If women are being paid unfairly as a group, then there is a systemic problem. I say that's due to lack of accurate salary information. You disagree that accurate salary information would help the situation and suggest it would cause conflict instead.

Conflict is caused by inequality and inequality is caused by companies giving people more or less than they deserve for the job they are doing.

What if it's women signing the pay checks. She decides that all the women deserve more than the men, pays them that way and hides it by telling everyone not to talk about their salaries. In your mind that's fair because she's signing the checks. In my mind, that can't happen if everyone knows how much everyone else makes.

Of course companies hate replacing people. New folks don't earn their way for 12-18 months. It's easier to give them a salary bump and hide it by not talking about salaries. If it gets out, then the company has a problem. If it's common knowledge, then your either gonna have to pay everyone more or lose other folks & that's a good thing for most of the employees.

I'm very familiar with yearly reviews from both sides of the table. "I'd love to give you more, but my hands are tied.". "I know this isn't what you were hoping for, but...". "You're at the top end of the pay band so I can't give you any more". "You did a great job last year, but no ones getting a big raise due to the economy". "The company didn't make a lot of money this year, so we can't give out big raises". "My favorite: I managed to get you a bonus instead of a raise." (Means that all the rest of your raises are based on the original salary) You couldn't say any of that with true salary information that both sides had.

Your value to your employer changes throughout time. When I first started as a programmer, COBOL and Assembler on cards on Mainframes, there were very few people who could do the job and even fewer who could do it well. As time progressed and I took on Mini's and operating systems and hardware the number of folks who could do what I could do were even less. PC's were invented and brought with them Servers, NAS, SAN, DNS, DHCP, etc, and interfacing with the Mini's and the mainframe. My highest earning potential. If they lost me they'd have to replace me with at least 3 folks who each had part of the puzzle.

Fast forward a few years. Everyone coming out of Uni or even High School has PC skills. All kinds of people have Server, NAS, etc experience coming right out of college. The Mini's are gone. The mainframe folks are outsourced to India & the mainframe is outsourced to IBM. It's cheaper for the company to hire youngsters with new knowledge to take care of the PC/Servers rather than keep the grey beards who know everything. Then it became cheaper to outsource the hardware and opsys and customer support staff. Cloud computing (Other Peoples Computers), took away the last of the on site hardware. Instead of needing thousands of competent IT folks, some for each company, you now need a few hundred, some for each Cloud computing team. My IT earning potential is over & I've aged out of the system.

I saw it coming and planned for the eventual aging out. Some folks didn't see it coming, didn't plan, and got blind sided. It just goes to show why everyone should make the most they can while they can. Sharing salary information is one step in not getting taken advantage of by your employer. They won't like it because it will force them to pay the quiet ones the same as the Type A folks. They won't like it because it tips the scales back towards even in salary negotiations and they've enjoyed the scales tipped firmly to their side for years. It's a small thing that can have major consequences for most workers.

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

No, I don't agree. I've covered that in great detail. In simple terms I believe it creates conflict both with fellow workers and employers.  The downside is that employees can become disgruntled for perceived unfairness which may or may not be true. That's still true even if they get more elsewhere. Employers don't like to have to replace employees leaving. OTOH, you can't make everybody happy. The guy signing the pay check has to make those calls. That's just business.

Are you unfamiliar with annual salary reviews? Employers tell you what they think and / or what you need to get more. Employees don't always agree with that assessment.

Over time I think the salaries for all positions would balance out fairly evenly across the league, if one team is squeezing multiple players to save on the cap, the word would get out and they will lose players until they are forced to revise that practice.  If a current player has open access to a CFL salary list they will take notice if they are getting paid well below equivalent positional players and be motivated to advise their agents to take corrective action during future contract negotiations.