EU to mandate public salary information for all job postings [pdf]

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/698934/EPRS_BRI(2022)698934_EN.pdf

by pimterry • 4 years ago

459 383 4 years ago

europarl.europa.eu

pimterry• 4 years ago

The meat is page 5 under "The changes the proposal would bring". Highlights:

* Job-seekers would have a right to information about the pay range of posts they apply for

* Employers would be prohibited from asking about an applicant's pay history

* Employees would have a right to ask their employer for sex-disaggregated information on the average pay of other workers doing the same work or work of equal value.

* Employers with at least 250 employees would have to report on their gender pay gap and carry out a pay assessment if the gap exceeds 5 % and cannot be justified.

* Compensation would be available to victims of pay discrimination, with the burden of proof placed on the employer and sanctions for infringements of the equal pay rule.

mustyoshi• 4 years ago

How does making salary public and not asking about applicants pay history work? If you tell them your title and employer, can't they just look up what you probably got paid?

the_lonely_road• 4 years ago

I don't believe salaries are public but instead salary ranges alongside job postings. Someone please correct me if I am wrong as the former would be a much more valuable tool for labor.

Under the latter the range for SWE could be 40-80K and so a new employer could possibly find that job posting from around the time you say you were hired but still shouldn't have any idea if you were making the 40k or closer to the 80k. I believe this is intended to curb the market behavior of offering someone a pay you think they will accept rather than offering to pay based on the value of a role.

Turning the difference between those two numbers into cream for upper management to butter their bread is the status quo in America at the very least and likely in all of the western world, but leads to systemic discrimination amongst protected groups with weaker negotiating power.

DharmaPolice• 4 years ago

You would only know what a new starter might be offered, not what someone actually received after a period of time. I don't think the problem is organisations basing salaries on what other employers are offering (that's just market testing) but choosing to pay an individual person more or less based on what they personally managed to negotiate elsewhere. If I'm buddies with my department head and I get an extra $10k because of that, why should other employers replicate that when I move companies?

(Note : I don't really agree with this as it's relying on salary secrecy but I think that's the logic.)

tpm2• 4 years ago

No. Individual personal salary is private information protected by law (at least in our country). Starting salary range in job offers is public, that's not enugh information.

alistairSH• 4 years ago

In the US (I realize the article is about EU), salary information for a given individual is not public* and employers typically will not share it (when queried by a prospective employer, they will only confirm employment history - "yes, Bob worked here for 5 years as a developer").

Several states have implemented similar rules (CO and CA, IIRC). A job listing would typically list either a minimum salary or range for a position. "Senior Developer, $120,000-$150,000" or whatever.

Two upsides to this approach... First, an employee is not limited by their current salary - they can negotiate on their value. Second, it's widely accepted that women and minorities tend to be less aggressive salary negotiators. Those two things together, applied over a career, can make a massive reduction in lifetime earnings for employees.

* Government jobs are the big exception - you can search for most university salaries because most receive government funding. Same for local government offices.

tibbetts• 4 years ago

Large employers already subscribe to services which tell them what you likely got paid at your last job by geo/title/seniority/tenure.

jsmcgd• 4 years ago

I wonder if this will be one of the unintended (intended?) consequences? Normally the best way to get a pay increase is to apply for jobs that pay a lot more. Previously you could apply for a job that paid much more than your current role. Your new employer might assume that you were on something similar or a little bit less. Now employers will be able to see what you were paid previously and will probably not offer much of a pay increase, or you'll have to have a really good reason why you think your salary should be doubled.

Cthulhu_8• 4 years ago

Yes, but they wouldn't get an exact figure because it's a range.

Anyway it doesn't really matter; you apply for a job, if you don't meet the criteria, that's fine. But if you DO meet the criteria but pay you a little more than your previous job, but less than others with the same job, that's going to be tackled by this legislation.

The best they can do is that instead of underpaying you, they will say "You did not pass the interview process for this job".

0xedd• 4 years ago

despite pay gap shown time and time again to be fiction, government monkeys are still dancing to that out of key tune.

boomskats• 4 years ago

Any external references to back up your 'pay gap shown time[0] and time again[1] to be fiction' claim?

FYI I had to read your comment a few times to try to pick out what you're trying to say without getting distracted by the gratuitous vitriol. It might make you feel better but it's not an effective means of actual communication.

[0]: ?

[1]: ?

simonh5• 4 years ago

Overall in developed countries the pay gap has largely been closed over the last few decades, but remaining gaps are not fiction. There are still real and unjustifiable gaps in some employment sectors, especially in a region as diverse as the EU. Pay gaps in some Eastern European countries for example still persist.

moss2• 4 years ago

Sources please

Cthulhu_8• 4 years ago

Can you cite some sources for your statement please?

I mean once this legislation passes, it'll be impossible (hopefully) for a pay gap to exist for the same job - assuming equal hours worked.

tialaramex3• 4 years ago

Employers would be prohibited from asking about an applicant's pay history

Aw, that was one of the fun moments when getting my current job. I moved from private sector to public sector and they're like "You understand that the previous pay you listed is more than our boss's boss, the director of our entire org unit gets paid right?". Yes, yes I do. Which is why when you asked at interview "Why do you want this role?" I didn't say "Because I would like to get rich".

But overall this seems like a good idea. Pay transparency is a known good strategy. I remember years ago working for a huge international corporation I asked about pay transparency at one of those bogus "Ask us anything" board events and the CEO answered and he's like, "My pay is a matter of public record because that's the law here" and I'm like "Yes, and it's fine, you can see that now so why not the same for everybody else?" and of course he just deflected.

How "inability to give a straight answer on anything" and "refusal to make any meaningful decisions" came to be considered good leadership traits is a mystery to me, but I do know how much it pays so that's nice.

dijonman2• 4 years ago

The reality is that not everyone brings equal value to an org. Some are rockstars and others are meh. It’s natural, and you should be incentivized to improve.

rietta2• 4 years ago

Not quite the same, but when asked by a State agency what it would take for to go on full time I gave a number and was told that is more than the Governor makes. My response was well he also gets a house! We had a good laugh together.

jakey_bakey• 4 years ago

This is weird because it's such an easy question to answer.

"Performance management isn't an exact science and if everyone knew everyone else's pay, it would be total chaos and nothing would get done."

marsRoverDev2• 4 years ago

The problem at least in France is that prospective employers will demand your pay slips from your previous job. If you are early in your career, they will use this to depress your wages as much as possible, making arguments like "well, we can't just give you a 40% uplift". So if your first employer screws you, the ones that follow can as well.

Personally, I would just forge one with a much higher pay level - but most people who play by the rules get screwed royally.

efsavage3• 4 years ago

I once took a break from software and applied to be a cashier at Barnes & Noble (just to get out of the house). It was entertaining to watch the manager hastily scan the application for a $7/hour, 10 hours/week job and then pause and try to find a polite way to break it to me that they weren't going to meet the $180k I made at my previous job.

exdsq2• 4 years ago

Hahaha I got this once - I was working for a startup in the Bay Area remotely from my place in Oxford and then wanted to see what interesting jobs existed in the local area. There is a small cluster of space startups nearby so I applied to one of those through a recruiter. He didn't seem to understand why I was looking to go from a job paying ~$200k to ~$50k (Oxford does not pay developers well at all!) and saying "Because I want to have my code go to space" didn't seem to be a good enough answer.

andy_ppp2• 4 years ago

I read somewhere pay transparency just lowers the amount of pay for disagreeable people who try to earn more. It makes things cheaper for businesses in general because it's harder to get a rise.

Nobody has ever been able to define what equal pay for equal work means because every human being is different (skills, work ethic, ease of working with them, timeliness, negotiation skills, assertiveness, leadership ability etc. etc). So I can understand businesses playing it safe and just paying everybody less than trying to keep people who are good but more demanding of higher salaries.

matwood• 4 years ago

"You understand that the previous pay you listed is more than our boss's boss, the director of our entire org unit gets paid right?"

My response to this comment/question is always "it's not my problem you're underpaying everyone else."

LordDragonfang2• 4 years ago

How "inability to give a straight answer on anything" and "refusal to make any meaningful decisions" came to be considered good leadership traits is a mystery to me

I mean, it's fairly obvious that those are traits which contribute to building the social capital for obtaining a leadership position (which, from everything I've heard, tends to be more important than actually being a good fit for a given leadership role)

See also the Peter principle.

raxxorrax3• 4 years ago

I don't like to share how much money I make and I fail to see the public interest in this information. I would also expect this to have a negative effect on wages overall for different reasons.

hughrr3• 4 years ago

I rather liked it when employers asked about pay history because I used to lie about it. I managed to double my salary in two job jumps!

TedDoesntTalk• 4 years ago

You are lucky they did not use equifaxs https://theworknumber.com/ to get your salary info. Or maybe they did and your salary info wasn’t there. Many of my employers have reported my salary to that database without my consent. It is easy to obtain. There was an article on HN about it within the last month.

marsRoverDev2• 4 years ago

Lots of French employers will ask for multiple months of pay slips so they can screw you in pay negotiations.

tomp4• 4 years ago

Transparency is good, but what about freedom of choice, to enable individuals to act on that information?

Ideal would be outlawing non-competes.

ATsch3• 4 years ago

They are already effectively outlawed in most of the EU. E.g. in Germany, you must be paid at least 50% of your current salary while the clause is active, for a maximum of two years and "unreasonably broad" clauses are invalid.

dgellow2• 4 years ago

What do you mean by freedom of choice here? I don't see how that relates to the topic at hand.

ensignavenger• 4 years ago

What I could not find in the document is how it defines 'equal work' and 'equal value'?

aembleton• 4 years ago

Its a job for lawyers.

Cthulhu_8• 4 years ago

Job title -> pay range. If you do work that does not match your job title (or job description) and your boss refuses to acknowledge it, I'm confident there's existing legal pathways to deal with it - with the help of unions if need be.

trashtester2• 4 years ago

Pretty sure the wording is intentially fuzzy, so the special interest groups can add the meaning after it becomes law.

I would expect them to push for a Marxist view on "value" of work, basically each hour is of equal value, but where you adjust for number of years of formal education, again where the type of eduction is not important. A developer with a MSc from a top college may be compared to someone with an MSc/MA in Sociology, working in the HR department, for instance.

The key alternative is to gauge value based on market demand, but where I live (Northern Europe), those who advocate "equal pay for work of equal value" don't seem to go for that. Instead, they claim that nurses and engineers should have the same salary, as the length of their education is different, at least for people employed by the public.

gigatexal• 4 years ago

I love this. This is amazing. This is going to make salary negotiations a bit more transparent.

ksec• 4 years ago

* Employers would be prohibited from asking about an applicant's pay history

Would they be able to contact previous employer for this information. One of the thing I really hate is the amount of leverage your previous employer has over you.

raxxorrax3• 4 years ago

That is the only good bullet point in my opinion. Otherwise I don't see the positives. It would probably lead to pay depression in any case.

Gareth3215• 4 years ago

Employees would have a right to ask their employer for sex-disaggregated information on the average pay of other workers doing the same work or work of equal value.

This is literally impossible in anything other than rote manual labour. Even then, I'm not convinced this is possible.

mhoad6• 4 years ago

I don’t know this sounds like it maps to a SQL query to me assuming you use consistent job titles and possibly the concept of “grades” e.g Level 1 Software Engineer

Cthulhu_8• 4 years ago

Err, no it's not, big engineering firms (google, facebook, etc) have formalized job titles and 'ranks' and provide a clear path for advancement - and they publish pay ranges for those titles/ranks.

cm20122• 4 years ago

Bullets 1-3 are excellent reforms that should be the case everywhere.

Bullet 4 could end up with bad consequences because there's so many ways to fudge the data. And justification is in the eye of the beholder.

For instance, in digital marketing, direct response advertising roles tend to be higher paid than marketing roles without strict KPIs (brand, organic social, etc.) Direct response advertising, for whatever reason, is split 80% men/20% women, with men and women making the same (high) salaries.

The softer marketing roles make significantly less on average, and are 80% women/20% men.

Can this law distinguish between a direct response marketer and a brand marketer, both of whom may be running Facebook and Youtube ads? Would a giant bureaucracy know or care about these nitty gritty differences in 1000s of industries? I foresee a lot of headache.

craigie7• 4 years ago

Can this law distinguish between a direct response marketer and a brand marketer

Yes that's not equal work. You have to compare two brand marketers.

bufferoverflow• 4 years ago

Job-seekers would have a right to information about the pay range

And there you go, they can just list $1 - $999999, but you won't be offered the higher end of that range.

"OH, that's for really special candidates who know Javascript and speak Korean and Farsi"

aborsy• 4 years ago

Honestly, it’s going to be embarrassing with these low salaries when we socialize with non EU colleagues!

stefs• 4 years ago

like whom? americans? londoners? africans? indians? but you're right that 60000 INR sounds like a lot more than 3000 EUR, because, uh, the number is 20 times (!!!) bigger.

invalidusernam3• 4 years ago

It's all relative to cost of living.

dathinab2• 4 years ago

Yes,

though you also have to look into details.

Like as far as I can tell the "actual" cost of living in the US diverges quite a bit from the "surface level" cost you might find when googling ad-hoc.

As far as I can tell this is because (but not limited to) factors like the health system being prone to having high hidden costs, or also small things like you being required to have a care in many metro areas or thinks you are "socially expected" to strive for like owning a house or a more expensive car.

I'm pretty sure similar things apply for other countries, too.

rcMgD2BwE72F• 4 years ago

… until you take into account everything covered by welfare states.

avs733• 4 years ago

to simplify this statement: until you take into account that your taxes are used to provide important government services.

ekianjo• 4 years ago

… until you take into account everything covered by welfare states.

You mean the services that barely work half the time?

nivenkos2• 4 years ago

The salaries are lower before taxes though.

Levitz3• 4 years ago

There ain't no welfare state on heaven or earth that makes enough of a difference for new grads to earn 14-18k yearly (before tax). Good afternoon from Spain.

dijit• 4 years ago

I used to think this (as a euro), then I met an American and he explained that he ended up better off in Europe on a "lower" salary because he hadn't considered the hidden costs of living in the USA.

He claimed (though I'm certainly no expert) that you have to do your own taxes and set aside money for that; he also claimed that "sales tax" had local, state and federal taxes applied, so while it varies from state to state and city to city; it generally ends up being about 18-20%, which is in-line with VAT in most Euro countries.

He made a lot of comments about certain mandatory insurances and the fact that there were no "cost saving" systems, like heavily subsidised childcare or decent enough public transport that meant you didn't have the burden of a car.

Though he said he couldn't imagine living without a car in the US, as it turns you "back into a child". (his words.)

I'm not sure, I don't know everything, but after talking with him I didn't feel bad for being a "poor euro" anymore, because while the absolute "amount" of money he earned was much greater, the amount that he could actually use was lower.

But he also never had any stock grants or anything.. and those are not incredibly common in Europe. So you could be better off anyway. Who knows?

hughrr3• 4 years ago

Colleagues of mine in the US work a lot more hours as well. I think our effective spending power in Europe is much better just on that point as well.

zhdc1• 4 years ago

I used to think this (as a euro), then I met an American and he explained that he ended up better off in Europe on a "lower" salary because he hadn't considered the hidden costs of living in the USA.

This is going to be very situation dependent, but usually the math works out in favor of the US. The EU will generally, but not always, have higher taxes, lower salaries, and a lower total cost of living. However, the difference depends a lot on which region you're looking at. Of course, there are also going to be varying quality of life differences that can't be easily quantified, which is where many parts of the EU come out better.

He claimed (though I'm certainly no expert) that you have to do your own taxes and set aside money for that; he also claimed that "sales tax" had local, state and federal taxes applied, so while it varies from state to state and city to city; it generally ends up being about 18-20%, which is in-line with VAT in most Euro countries.

He was likely self-employed. Income taxes in the US are almost always withheld by the employer. Sales tax does vary depending on the state and local government, but it looks like the maximum sales tax at the moment is a little over 10%.

Though he said he couldn't imagine living without a car in the US, as it turns you "back into a child".

This is true in most areas. It's possible to live without a car in some of the larger cities, such as NYC and DC. However even then it's preferable to have one (which is also true from experience in Europe as well).

khuey2• 4 years ago

The big ones are healthcare, public transportation, and perhaps childcare (my understanding is that this varies a lot from country to country in the EU). Needing health insurance and a motor vehicle for transportation effectively functions as an additional tax on many people.

Consumption taxes in the US generally top out at around 10% (San Francisco's is currently 8.625%) which is noticeably below European VATs. Sales taxes also generally do not apply to services at all, and most places exempt certain basic necessities such as groceries.

drstewart3• 4 years ago

Yeah, none of that is true. There is no federal sales tax, and sales tax in most places didn't ever come close to 10%, let alone 20%. In many states it's 0.

Filing your taxes is free. Maybe you can spend $30 if you want to use turbo tax to do it for you.

Any job with these salary differences provides great health care and benefits.

Cars exist in Europe, I know many software developers there that have them. Why people pretend nobody has them if beyond me. And just like in the US, the closer and more convenient to the city center you are the more expensive it is to live there. Cars are also not as costly of a burden as they are in Europe. Also, most European tech jobs are in cities (London, Amsterdam, Dublin) that have similar cost of living to US cities which you don't need a car in (SF, NYC, Seattle). So it's mostly a moot point anyway.

Finally, we get to a point where there is a REAL cost difference: taxes. The overall burden of taxes will be 10-20% lower in the US, which is a substantial difference as it's a percentage on gross, not an additional fixed fee like many of the above expenses.

If you want to pretend all of that justifies a 6 figure salary difference, more power to you. I've looked into making the move many many times with actual figures and it never even comes close to being close.

HideousKojima2• 4 years ago

He claimed (though I'm certainly no expert) that you have to do your own taxes and set aside money for that;

Unless you're a contractor, small-business owner, or some other sort of self-employed, no. Taxes are deducted automatically from your paycheck by your employer from every paycheck. At the end of the year you need to file a tax return, and you can do this yourself for free. But even most paid tax return services usually only cost ~$50-$150 for the average worker.

he also claimed that "sales tax" had local, state and federal taxes applied, so while it varies from state to state and city to city; it generally ends up being about 18-20%, which is in-line with VAT in most Euro countries. And, as a general rule, a state with higher sales tax will usually have lower (or no) state income tax, and vice versa.

There is no federal sales tax in the US. It does vary from state to state, but it ranges from 0% to ~10%, nowhere near 20%.

He made a lot of comments about certain mandatory insurances

The only mandatory insurances are car insurance (and even then it's only mandatory if you want to drive a car) and health insurance (and even that has only been mandatory since the ACA passed, and all the enforcement provisions of that have been gutted). The cost to an employee for decent health insurance is usually going to range from $0 a month to a several thousand a month, but the average is something like ~$700 a month for an individual to get coverage and ~$1,400 for family coverage.

Public transport outside of major cities does suck, but I don't think that's easily fixable. Something a lot of Europeans don't realize is that the US is way, way, way, way less dense than Europe. The US has 33.7 people per square km, the entire EU is 116.2 people per square km. public transit isn't really feasible because the costs to provide it go up almost exponentially with lower population density.

I'm not sure, I don't know everything, but after talking with him I didn't feel bad for being a "poor euro" anymore, because while the absolute "amount" of money he earned was much greater, the amount that he could actually use was lower.

Even after accounting for things in Europe like free healthcare, the actual amount of spending power the typical American has is actually still far, far greater than that enjoyed by the typical European. The metric you can look at to see this is consumption: ~$38,000 per capita for the US in 2017, vs $28,000 for Switzerland, $23,000 for the UK, etc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...

PPP and other factors make a one-to-one comparison difficult, but Americans have far more spending money left after taxes, and that combined with them making more money in general makes Americans far more wealthy. Especially in the software dev industry.

omginternets• 4 years ago

I've worked several years in in London, Paris and now the Northeastern USA, so I think I am in a position to draw some high-level conclusions. In a word, your friend is not wrong about there being hidden costs in the US. However, for many high-education jobs, American employers pay significantly more. In pure monetary terms, a software developer will be much better off in the US.

I think it's really hard to have this discussion without some hard numbers. Note that this is a simplified analysis. I am not accounting for the various deductibles (social security, etc.), state taxes etc. I have restricted the analysis to roughly-comparable cities, but it seems to hold at the national level as well.

Currency conversions are left as an exercise to the reader :)

====================================

Median salary for a senior developer

- Paris: 65k € (Paris) (n.b.: some sources say 45k €, but this does not match my experience)

- London: 90k £

- New York City: $160k

======================

Tax Brackets in France

Up to 10,225 € 0 %

From 10,226 € to 26,070 € 11 %

From 26,071 € to 74,545 € 30 %

From 74 546 € to 160,336 € 41 %

Above 160,336 € 45 %

==================================

Tax Brackets in the United Kingdom

Up to £12,570 0%

From £12,571 to £50,270 20%

From £50,271 to £150,000 40%

Above £150,000 45%

=================================

Tax Brackets in the United States

From $0 to $9,950 10%

From $9,951 to $40,525 $995 plus 12% of the amount over $9,950

From $40,526 to $86,375 $4,664 plus 22% of the amount over $40,525

From $86,376 to $164,925 $14,751 plus 24% of the amount over $86,375

From $164,926 to $209,425 $33,603 plus 32% of the amount over $164,925

From $209,426 to $523,600 $47,843 plus 35% of the amount over $209,425

Above $523,600.99 $157,804.25 plus 37% of the amount over $523,600

There are many reasons to pick one place to live over another, but it's very difficult to argue against the enormous economic advantage to working in the US, even with the "hidden costs".

With regards to health insurance in particular, it's important to point out that the quality of care on the upper end of the spectrum is far better than anything I've ever had access to in Europe. I pay $1.2k/month in health insurance and pay nothing out of pocket for: dental, vision, emergency care, ambulance transportation, extended stay in hospital, mental health services, etc. I have a $10 copay for all medications. Waiting times for appointments are on the order of single-digit days. If you make the median income for a senior software dev in NYC, that leaves you with about $145k.

Concerning cars, they are far more affordable here than in Europe, especially if you buy a reliable used car. I drive a 2000 Subaru Legacy with about 125k miles on it. It costs me about $850/year to insure. I pay about $100/month in gas, so let's round that up to $1,500 per annum. Last year, I spent $1,236.57 in maintenance & repairs. Total cost of ownership: approximately $3,600 per annum. If you make the median income for a senior software dev in NYC, that now leaves you with $141,400.

College education? It's wildly variable, but let's take the pessimistic case of sending your two children to an Ivy League school that costs $75k per year. Let's be even more conservative and factor in an additional $25k in non-tuition costs (room & board, meals, books, pocket money, etc.). That's a total of $800k for two BAs. Assuming you have twins who go to college at the same time, that leaves you with 18 years to accrue those savings, or about $45k/year. Taking the leftover salary, that leaves you with about $96k. For comparison, my education in an American "public Ivy" school cost about 36% of this figure, which would leave you with about $125 in gross annual income. There are tax deductions for tuition fees, and many scholarships available for good students.

It bears repeating that there are many good reasons to prefer living in Europe over the US. Economic analysis is not the only relevant analysis. But, it is very difficult to argue that the cost-of-living breaks even for the overwhelming majority of STEM jobs, or jobs requiring post-secondary education. If you have a college degree, you will almost certainly have more money in the United States than in the European Union, by a significant margin. There is a reason the Brain Drain exists.

craigie7• 4 years ago

Also I bet his healthcare costs were a lot higher in USA.

mtmail• 4 years ago

Related "Pay Transparency: European Commission proposes measures" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30429182 It's still a proposal not a mandate or requirement yet.

JCM93• 4 years ago

These laws don’t have the effect people think they will in tech given that “salary” is often a small part of someone’s overall compensation.

A role might say it has a $150,000 “salary” but if someone has say $300,000 in RSUs on top of that then they’re really making $450,000 with a $150,000 “salary”.

Eg in the US employers must publish the “salary” for certain visa applicants, but those numbers are often only a small fraction of total comp because they exclude equity-based compensation. Given that different companies give different cash/equity mix in their comp plans this leads to a lot of misleading data points about the pay of various companies. One company many look like it it’s more (because it does in cash salary) but actually the total pay relative to others is much less (eg because they give out less stock).

tux3• 4 years ago

Sounds like that creates two incentives, one the one hand to mention directly in the job posting whether salary will be a small part of someone's overall compensation, on the other hand this might also incentive companies to push the salary/stock ratio up to appear more competitive.

JCM93• 4 years ago

Given the wide availability of more complete data points on total comp packages from other sources (eg levels.fyi) it’s unlikely a “government mandated salary database” will add any net new information in many cases, and per above that government salary data will likely be misleading at best.

I do get that the optics look good though and it makes politicians feel like they’re doing something.

soco2• 4 years ago

Maybe it would be useful to remember that the "options-based tech payment" is more a US thing, more a certain US area thing and even more with a certain type of employers. Not saying that it doesn't happen in Europe, but we're talking a small minority possibly overrepresented on HN.

xdennis• 4 years ago

We don't really have startups in Europe. We're only paid money.

consp• 4 years ago

I work at one in a building filled with them in Europe. N=1 though but it refutes your claim.

dbbk• 4 years ago

That's such a ludicrous statement I can only assume you meant to say something else

tpush• 4 years ago

RSUs aren't much of a thing in most of the EU.

mr_aks• 4 years ago

I'm from EU and in my country, RSUs are considered a kind of salary and taxed in the same manner so perhaps they will have to be mentioned as well? The idea is that you can get paid for your work by different means, money being only one of them.

JCM93• 4 years ago

RSU value at vesting is taxed like salary in the US too (gains post vesting would be taxed less at capital gains rates if one doesn’t immediately sell).

tombot• 4 years ago

It’s a change for all job postings, across all industries and roles across the EW. Not just the privileges few who work in the western North American technology bubble

a_chris• 4 years ago

I'm sorry by Europe is not USA. We have no RSU and little to zera extra compensations. Salary is just salary. Please don't undervaluate this law proposal if you don't know what you are talking about

marginalia_nu• 4 years ago

Speak for yourself, I've had both RSU-like arrangements and bonus payouts on a similar order to my annual salary working in Europe.

dathinab2• 4 years ago

While lot of forms "paying by with stock" or "bonus based on partial profit margin" and similar a not quite legal in many parts of the EU it's not that bonus payments and similar don't exist they are just less common and more constraint.

qaq• 4 years ago

Working in Ireland RSUs are very much a thing here same as in US

M2Ys4U• 4 years ago

When you take a look at the job market in totality, hardly anybody is paid in anything other than salary.

Jiejeing• 4 years ago

You do understand that there is more to the workforce than engineers at SV startups and big tech, right?

throw0101a2• 4 years ago

Ontario, Canada had this but it was repealed. :(

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-ontario-job...

Federally regulated industries in Canada have to do it:

* https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/news/...

brummm• 4 years ago

Of course it's fucking Doug Ford...

mrmuagi• 4 years ago

Doesn't seem like it was repealed from the first link, just not yet applied due to pushing it out into the future?

Although the personal emergency leave days and minimum wage freezes do not inspire confidence.

throw0101a2• 4 years ago

A technical manoeuvre: passed by the legislature but did not received royal ascent from the lieutenant governor (or something akin to that effect).

Raed667• 4 years ago

Is there anything in this text that would prevent a company from posting offers with very large ranges?

"this position salary can be from €35k to 75k€ depending on multiple factors"

Such ranges would render it pointless

lentil_soup• 4 years ago

I'm not sure. If you can afford to be picky such a large range might be a bit of a red flag.

Also, if I'm looking for something close to the top of the range the possibility that I may get a way lower offer might put me off. Specially if I'll need to fight the company to get the top of the range salary.

LanceH2• 4 years ago

I can think of some unusual situations with a really small company. Say you're looking for people who can do two tasks and those two tasks either don't come along in the same person or take too much time for one person. So you're looking for two people, but you're also looking for one of them to be senior and head up the team -- you don't care which one.

I feel like this comes up in the sub 10 people startup situation. You need someone to work on anything that comes through the door, and you need junior guys to just pick up the grunt work and do tasks.

astaunton• 4 years ago

I would think that it will be benchmarked and compared against the same role/roles in other Europen countries (taking in to account cost of living etc).

So as an example Junior Software Engineer / Developer in one European country may be 35-45k salary but could be 30k-40k elsewhere (where property prices / food prices etc are lower).

This would also may it easier for job applicants to know what the expected pay scale is before interviewing (in my experience recruiters often contact people with roles that would be below their salary expectation e.g. software developer with 10 years experience being sent a role with a salary scale equivalent to a recent graduate)

new_here• 4 years ago

I think this is going to be the natural side-effect. I remember seeing Monzo posting salary ranges of £40k - £100k for certain positions. So for the right person they'll make a plan but they can also lure in more candidates and low-ball them when making an offer at the end of the process.

quietbritishjim• 4 years ago

That doesn't work very well because if you have a large range then most candidates would be disappointed if they got towards the bottom end, even if that made pratical sense. Maybe you could mitigate this by making the range even larger at the bottom end, below the minimum that you would ever pay, but then you'd put off the best people (who are the people that you most want to avoid putting off).

yoden• 4 years ago

Why would the best candidates be put off by a low minimum? Their salary isn't going to have anything to do with the minimum.

If anything, the best candidates should prefer a wide range. That would mean there is more opportunity for them to distinguish themselves beyond just "years served".

Glawen• 4 years ago

Why dismiss the proposal based on how companies can avoid it? I like this proposal because it is a step towards transparency. It is not perfect, as any law, but the small steps are compounding over time.

glofish• 4 years ago

It is not as much about dismissal of the proposal - they are just pointing out a trivial mechanisms to bypass it, all the while making us all worse off.

I for one suspect that better the "equality enforcement" gets the less ability a company has to reward a better worker over worse ones. This applies to both men and women.

When everyone is "equal" it just means more productive people subsidize the work of less productive ones. Which at least today can be rewarded.

JanSt2• 4 years ago

* Employees would have a right to ask their employer for sex-disaggregated information on the average pay of other workers doing the same work or work of equal value.

IanCal• 4 years ago

If an applicant cannot get the high end for that position then it seems reasonable to counter. Also, it'll just look stupid to applicants.

35-75 would also help rule out the role for quite a lot of people.

Double_a_922• 4 years ago

I assume the range has to be based on actual salaries that are being paid in that company for similar positions.

tgv• 4 years ago

Such ranges would render it pointless

Employers will pull shenanigans, surely, but it's a start. And when the lower bound doesn't compare well with competing offers, the employer might risk losing the best.

CommanderData• 4 years ago

Then we have more regulation to prevent said shenanigans.

We either do nothing at all and leave the marketplace to the forces of favoring the employer or the other way around.

cloverich2• 4 years ago

The reality (based on my current interviewing) is open roles already have this range, and it is relatively wide. But by not disclosing they can get you lower. Say range is 170-220, you are coming from 170; they offer you 170 and you negotiate 180. You feel good and got a bump, but employer could have gone higher.

But not all employers are offering the same range. I ask up front now and select the higher paying ranges to start, then ideally you get an offer from multiple of them at the same time, and you know how high you can push it. By simply going back and forth between them they negotiate for you. Obviously that is a luxury, but by merely knowing the range, even if wide, you greatly increase your ability to land a higher paying job.

ajsnigrutin9• 4 years ago

If they post 170-220 they can afford 220, and everybody will be hitting the upper margin of that.... this means that they'll advertise 140-190, you'll get 180, and be happy, even though they had a budget for 220, if they couldn't get you to do it for 180.

mchusma• 4 years ago

I don't get why pay range guidance isn't just completely standard. I have pretty much always had them and it's really helpful to weed out bad fits. As a job searcher, it also helps me to understand what opportunities to look for, and save everyone time. I don't think this needs to be regulated, but I feel it's a good practice period. The best reason I can think of for not displaying it is because of some other regulatory concerns. Removing regulatory barriers could maybe help here.

blunte• 4 years ago

Such ranges would render it pointless

They would surely make current employees ask, "So what do I have to do to move from my 45k to the theoretical 75k max?"

I_am_tiberius2• 4 years ago

Great then everyone knows the minimum salary I earn. I always wanted that.

nivenkos2• 4 years ago

It's public in many countries anyway - Norway and Sweden at least have public tax returns.

the-dude• 4 years ago

How many?

I_am_tiberius2• 4 years ago

It's public in many countries anyway

That doesn't mean it's good and it is not public in all countries. I don't consider this a valid argument.

froh3• 4 years ago

What do you mean public tax returns? Public to who?

nix232• 4 years ago

+1 for Switzerland

cbg03• 4 years ago

Is this still true for Sweden with GDPR being a thing?

HideousKojima2• 4 years ago

My last job was for a local government in the US. All public employees in the entire state have their exact salaries (including before and after benefits) publicly available for anyone to see.

protomyth2• 4 years ago

Happens like that on some federal grant program employees. It is a bit harder to get that information though. Many school districts also publish all salaries and that has come up a lot in politics in the US.

protomyth2• 4 years ago

Should make for some great dinner conversation at family gatherings.

65102• 4 years ago

You know its a crap proposal when heroic bragging about equal pay for everyone ends up being about the gender gap only. Age, religion, nationality and the classic: "I don't like you" not included.

65102• 4 years ago

ok, perhaps put a bit blunt.

The result is that people looking for equal reward end up digging though bloated discrimination laws seemingly talking about everyone except them. IMHO if you have to be a member of a protected group or gender it is unequal treatment. It is the exact behavior we were trying to get rid of.

Lets do equality without some being more equal than others.

trabant002• 4 years ago

I find myself at the other end of the equal pay problem - I am equally payed with equally titled but not equally working coworkers. The entire management chain has clearly different expectations from me: I get most if not all of the difficult tasks and my coworkers rely daily on my guidance.

In this quarter discussion with my manager I've been told I can not get a pay raise as it would create a discrepancy with my coworker salaries. As an current EU and formal communist republic citizen I find this worrying to say the least. The only option I have is to work less and browse youtube more. As that brings back communist memories I started looking for another job.

So I guess my question is how do they plan to measure the work part of "equal pay for equal work"?

zibzab• 4 years ago

How is this any different from the normal state of affairs?

You think you work too much and are paid too little? Then leave, this has nothing to do with "equal pay".

seneca• 4 years ago

How is this any different from the normal state of affairs?

They explained that in their post. They aren't getting a raise because it would create a discrepancy with the pay bands. This is exactly the type of bureaucracy being enshrined in law here. It removes discretion and disincentivises those who are capable.

I believe their point is that it's thematically similar to the company policy they chafed under, and were reminded of communism by.

froh3• 4 years ago

Good luck finding another job. This is a problem of shitty management, not transparency, right?

kcb• 4 years ago

I am equally payed with equally titled but not equally working coworkers. The entire management chain has clearly different expectations from me: I get most if not all of the difficult tasks and my coworkers rely daily on my guidance.

Careful with this line of thinking. It is just going to lead to aggrandizing yourself while downplaying and belittling others work. Once you get to that point you become the problem not others.

trabant002• 4 years ago

So no comparison of myself to others is allowed? Regarding work amount, difficulty or results? How exactly do I become the problem? Other than the fact that I'm leaving for another job?

Double_a_922• 4 years ago

So I guess my question is how do they plan to measure the work part of "equal pay for equal work"?

I do hope that the new laws don't directly require that, but that that would just be a positive consequence of having public salary statistics for each company.

I.e. people would automatically start demanding equal pay if they roughly knew how much other people in that company earn. Especially for insecure or less agressive people (e.g. women, fresh graduates, foreigners, shy people,..) knowing exactly what a fair salary is, would give them more leverage / confidence during salary negotiations.

And all that happens automatically, without the government needing to dictate any specific salary requirements.

estaseuropano3• 4 years ago

This sounds like a lie. There is no obligation to pay everyone the same (and neither would this regulation, once it is eventually agreed, create such an obligation).

__turbobrew__• 4 years ago

You should ask for a promotion. Explain how you are taking a leadership role in your team and mentoring your peers. If you get a new title your employer can also cone up with a salary which no longer needs to match your current peers.

BurningFrog3• 4 years ago

I look forward to when every human interaction is finally regulated in law, and we're still not happy.

unnouinceput• 4 years ago

And that's a good thing, no? I mean if we were happy with current state of things we'd still be living in caves. Bickering and not being happy is what drives progress forward. You want it better than current state of affairs, for you/your kids and that makes the human brain jump from riding on horseback to riding in a Tesla in roughly 200 hundred years.

ajsnigrutin9• 4 years ago

We can still be happy with the current state regarding some things, and not happy with the state of other things.

dmitriid3• 4 years ago

Every human interaction? No, it won't be regulated.

(Almost) every human interaction between a company and an actual human? In most cases, yes please.

balozi• 4 years ago

Well...what happens when company lawyers and lobbyist are the ones drafting regulations governing every human interaction with said company?

Cthulhu_8• 4 years ago

I mean they are apparently necessary because people won't stick to the universal "don't be a dick" rule; they'll argue about what defines "dickish behaviour".

BurningFrog3• 4 years ago

What if the people writing regulations are also dicks?

62951413• 4 years ago

Don't worry, even getting close enough to that dystopia will wipe out the society and so not that many people will be left to worry about happiness.

andai• 4 years ago

My admittedly limited understanding of the gender pay gap is that it is based on gender differences in interests (eg. career-wise), differences in willingness to work long hours (especially with age), and differences in temperament, ie. women on the whole having lower assertiveness and thus being less likely to ask for higher salaries and raises.

The "equal work" part takes care of the first two points, ie. the type of work and the amount performed, but it leaves out the negotiation aspect. To emphasize the importance of negotiation: several friends of mine told me their bosses said they could have started with nearly double their starting salaries if they had negotiated better, so this aspect makes a huge difference, at least in engineering.

My understanding of the proposed legislation is that the higher (average) salaries, fought for and won by the men, will be given to the women for free (by companies who will be forced to make such information public and fear it will make them look bad). Not saying that's either good or bad, just interesting. Someone please correct me if I'm misunderstanding.

skummetmaelk• 4 years ago

To emphasize the importance of negotiation: several friends of mine told me their bosses said they could have started with nearly double their starting salaries if they had negotiated better, so this aspect makes a huge difference, at least in engineering.

Which clearly means that equal work doesn't pay equally. Surely your colleagues did not do half the work of those who negotiated a higher starting salary? In fact, mandating equal pay for equal work would take care of the negotiation aspect. The tricky part of course is how to measure work accurately.

jimbob45• 4 years ago

Unless you’re on an assembly line, there is no such thing as “equal work”. Several of my colleagues and I share the same title, yet the women with that title objectively produce less than the men and absolutely deserve less pay (at my company).

Is that because of sexism? Or because we judge the individual, not the gender?

This seems like a backdoor for Socialism where this backwards logic is used to justify paying everyone the same rate and so people who are massively productive end up subsidizing those who are useless.

giantg223• 4 years ago

I agree the gender wage gap is generally an issue at the aggregate level due to individual choices.

I disagree with the language you use later in the comment (fought, won, given). Negotiation skills shouldn't drive compensation. Value to the company should. If someone is doing the same work and making the same value, then they are earning their salary. Differences in pay can be explained by documenting the difference in value that is produced - something they should already be doing in performance reviews.

These steps could help anyone negotiate. I'm not a woman and I was lowballed out of college due to a market downturn at the time and my salary has suffered ever since.

dionidium2• 4 years ago

I'm a poor negotiator and started my career with a pretty middling salary at a big company in the Midwest. I also tend to get comfortable in roles and don't advocate for myself well or jump jobs often. What this adds up to is that I'm now mid-career and doing fine, but not making anything like the startling salary numbers you sometimes see mentioned here. But I don't blame anybody for it. Nobody owes me more money. Nobody was ever obligated at any point along the way to offer me more money than I was willing to take. I don't feel an injustice has occurred that needs to be righted by legislation. I don't believe I "should" be given more or that I deserve it in some kind of cosmic, abstract sense.

The status of my salary has an easily articulated and understandable explanation. Nobody did anything wrong and nothing needs to be done to correct it (by anyone but me).

sz4kerto• 4 years ago

Negotiation skills shouldn't drive compensation. Value to the company should.

What percentage of the per-employee revenue do employees deserve? Negotiation is the way of establishing this, and 'value' is only one part of the equation.

Similarly: price of products on the market are not established based on how valuable that product is to the buyer. That's only one factor.

I understand the appeeal of what you're saying, but we don't have many good examples of it working well.

maerF0x06• 4 years ago

less likely to ask for higher salaries and raises.

Of all the apologetics around pay gap, I think this is the one that many people could agree is the least fair. The company knows you're worth more, they can feasibly pay you more, they pay someone similarly skilled and talented more. But they do not simply because of a conversation at the very beginning of accepting a role (and once a year). Talk about an abusive angle. That's like saying to a child "Oh you could have got a PS5 and a game for your birthday, but you only asked for a new game for your ps4"... Employers should be seeking ways to retain talent and underpaying is a ticking timebomb.

The cost of rehiring is MASSIVE:

ad/promotion cost for the role(indeed), at least 100 hours of interview time (across candidates), 1/3rd the salary to the recruiter, 3-6 months of gradual training before they're "highly productive", losing 1-3 months of adopting team's productivity to training that person, losing the institutional knowledge of the outgoing person. Losing the opportunity of having a tenured person to promote into a higher level that is even more expensive to hire for. Not to mention the opportunity cost of the work that could have been done (eg if instead all those resources made your product better)

It's asinine to think someone would risk losing an employee over $20k when those costs above easily amount to 10x that.

Anderkent• 4 years ago

The company knows you're worth more, they can feasibly pay you more, they pay someone similarly skilled and talented more. But they do not simply because of a conversation at the very beginning of accepting a role (and once a year). Talk about an abusive angle.

is this abusive?

the company is not your friend, it is always going to pay you as little as it can that still keeps you working there happily.

agreed that companies tend to fail to adjust comp to actually keep people happy & working there, and in many places this leads to people leaving, but this I would say is exactly because the company doesn't know you're worth more

BadCookie• 4 years ago

From the discussions I've heard among C-level executives at a <500 person company, it's simply accepted that tech people will move to new jobs after a year or two. There's nothing they can do about it, they say, so we just have to scale up our hiring efforts! The thought that maybe they should do something to retain people is not taken seriously. No matter how many times I expressed concern about the potential loss of specific individuals with specialized (won over many years) knowledge of the codebase and the product, my concerns were always met with plans to scale up hiring—despite how little luck they'd had with those attempts so far. Last I heard, they decided to offshore, but assured us they would only accept the best of the best from [foreign country]. I ended up leaving also, so it's no longer my problem. :)

ajsnigrutin9• 4 years ago

But negotiating is a part of doing any business. Lets say your roof starts leaking... you're willing to pay a lot to have it fixed because the consequences will be very bad very very soon... but you still call around, ask a couple of companies/tradesmen for the price, and choose the best price/performance one, while hoping there wont be any heavy rain before they're able to fix it.

If all of them said twice the price, you'd still have to pay... three times the price too. If it's something you're unable to do by yourself, and if not doing it makes it even worse, you basically have no choice. This applies in the same way to job openings.

The no-negotiating theory would just mean that employers would be fighting for women employees if they were indeed cheaper for the same work output, until the competition would bring the prices up to the men levels.

kerneloftruth• 4 years ago

Not every employee in role X is as good as every other employee in role X. The better ones deserve higher pay, which creates an incentive for the others to up their game so that they, too, can earn more.

Why try harder if it's run like romper room?

mhoad6• 4 years ago

That is what bonus structures are for. Where you can pay extra in addition in order to incentivise better outcomes for your business.

wpasc• 4 years ago

What enshrines bonuses from being free from these disclosures and regulations? Any law about pay could be extended to bonuses and bonus disparity becomes pay disparity (unless I'm missing some enshrined, unchangeable, legal exemption/difference between bonuses and pay).

destitude• 4 years ago

How does this work for US companies working for remote workers who can be from the US or EU?

mhoad6• 4 years ago

I think these proposals go a long way towards closing the asymmetrical advantage that employers have when it comes to salary negotiations and generally creates a much better functioning labour marketplace as a result.

estaseuropano3• 4 years ago

@dang, i would suggest to change the editorialized title.

Its not a fait accompli, its a draft under discussion.

E.g. Proposed EU directive on pay transparency andbetter access to justice for victims of pay discrimination.

Markoff• 4 years ago

When?

macilacilove• 4 years ago

Each EU country is perfectly capable of intruducing such laws if they feel like it. I don't see the benefit of the EU forcing this regulation on the whole bloc.

ThalesX• 4 years ago

I would love to see just how big the disparity is between countries.

gobip• 4 years ago

Just like they can introduce laws to help workers' social protection. Or safety measures. And yet they don't.

beardyw• 4 years ago

I worked in a consultancy in London in the 80s. Salaries of everyone were available and usually pinned on a notice board. It was very liberating.

nbzso• 4 years ago

I never started a conversation with a client or an employer, about work without clear idea how much I will get in return. Usually after taxes on a hourly rate measurement. If a company is not giving this information before the interview is not worth any attention at all. Period.

gzer0• 4 years ago

Is there anything in this mandate that prevents corporations from listing unreasonably large ranges?

For the sake of this example, let's say FAANG is looking for a software engineer and the range for the job listing is: 68k - 600k. Would this be allowed?

I ask because Denver, Colorado has identical mandated restrictions for job listings, and employers are skirting regulations by offering ridiculously broad ranges, putting everyone back at square one.

cbg03• 4 years ago

Candidates will be more attracted towards positions that list accurate ranges. Also, for this mandate there's this gem: "Employees would have a right to ask their employer for sex-disaggregated information on the average pay of other workers doing the same work or work of equal value."

Gasp0de• 4 years ago

If I understand correctly they basically list what other people in the same role in the same company are paid. E.g. the company has 5 junior software developers and they are paid between 40k and 60k€ then that must be listed as the range if a new junior software developer is recruited.

advisedwang• 4 years ago

I'm very interested in this too.

OTOH it can't be worse than no info at all!

realusername• 4 years ago

The lower range still gives some information and will probably be used as an indication of what the company is at least willing to pay.

If they put it way lower than their actual budget, it will scare away the candidates they are targeting.

d0gsg0w00f2• 4 years ago

Also, won't companies just make narrow job titles sometimes only held by one person?

fleddr• 4 years ago

In this proposal, I dislike the very heavy and singular emphasis on gender. In my country, the Netherlands, when accounting for hours worked and the field people work in, the gap is about 5%. Some theorize part of this remaining small gap is men more aggressively negotiating, but I'm unsure. In any case it's pretty much a solved problem.

Even more if you consider the trend. girls/women dominate in higher education and the breadwinner model is soon to be flipped. Add to that the fact that in some fields, women are now favored to balance the headcount in terms of diversity.

Sometimes in extreme ways even. The university of Eindhoven has stopped considering men altogether in their hiring of professors. Imagine being an absolute guru in your field, fully qualified and wanting to passionately teach at this very high level. But you can't...because you have a penis.

None of this is to say that no work remains in this area, but I openly wonder if legislation is proportional to the issue at hand, if there's even an issue in the first place. The legislation seems distrustful of businesses, assuming there's some secret plot against women progressing.

I frankly find this type of regulation insulting and degrading to women and minorities. It creates this image that society is strongly working against you at every level, which is vastly overstating things. It also constantly signals to you that you're a helpless creature with no agency, you require special help with every interaction in society, as you can definitely not make it on your own.

It must feel terrible to constantly be reminded of the fact that just your gender defines you. You're not a talented female programmer that is creative and a great communicator. No, you're a woman. A special case. It must feel even worse to constantly have to wonder where you've been "helped" in your career and if you're just a diversity token. Did you get that raise based on performance or because it looks good on the Excel sheet sent to the EU?

We're even at risk of making nuclear objects out of women. Businesses and male colleagues being scared of them. For example, a recent study showed that female founders do not get useful critical feedback from VCs whilst male founders get harsh but useful feedback.

I guess the VCs are scared. Is this what we want in the work place, male-female interactions not based on good intent but based on fear and mistrust? Imagine being a woman and having a bad week. At the end of the week your male manager says: "best week ever, proud of you". Would you at all feel taken serious?

fulafel• 4 years ago

Heavily editorialized title - for "EU to..." to be accurate it would have to be much further along the legislative process. This is at a draft report stage, not even voted on in committee yet.

nmca• 4 years ago

Many posts here talk about value-to-employer, but I have only ever seen wages driven by best-alternative-to-negotiated-agreement [0]. I find the discrepancy odd.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/best-alternative-to-a-n...

sfg• 4 years ago

Where does contracting fit into all of this? If you leave the formal structure of employment and don't fit into the set job titles of a company (or within, but as a contractor and so a different pay band), then can you effectively work around this?

If so, then will those currently getting paid more move into contracting? They'd probably end up with more pay (even than they get now) if they did, so will we see a decrease in the statistical pay gap within categories based on formal job titles, but an increase in the real world pay gap between those that are actually earning more and less under the current system?

So, it looks better on paper, but - if you care about the difference in pay - it gets worse in reality.

Do we see this kind of thing already in the public sector in any countries? They often have public pay bands, but, as I understand things[1], in many places contractors, consultants, and such like can make better money by working outside of this system. So, transparent and formally equal, but actually less equal.

I wonder, if we'll one day read about this in the economist. How there is a growing real pay gap, and how it differs from the formal pay gap. How legislators are trying to respond, but businesses and contractors are fighting back.

[1] based mostly on anecdote and hearsay, rather than real knowledge, so please correct me!

Edited for styling.

tobylane• 4 years ago

It doesn’t fit in. This is employee protections.

imiric• 4 years ago

For contractors the rate is already negotiated up front IME. Either the recruiter will mention the offered rate along with the role details, or you as a contractor will mention what your rate is.

amelius• 4 years ago

Wouldn't that result in overly broad ranges being advertised?

Katzmann19832• 4 years ago

Money quote: "... more than two-thirds of them have said they are in favour of the publication of average wages by job type and gender at their company (64 %)."

Since when are 64% more than two-thirs?

dang• 4 years ago

Discussed yesterday:

Pay Transparency: European Commission proposes measures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30429182 - Feb 2022 (44 comments)

IIRC, this is a proposal. If so, then the submitted title is inaccurate. Please don't replace titles with misleading ones—that's the opposite of what the guidelines call for:

"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

EU to mandate public salary information for all job postings [pdf]

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