Beg to differ.
There may be many reasons why employees, even doing the same job, are paid at different rates. Employees talking about numbers only is a good way to build resentment among them.
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
I never saw what the big deal is. I mean, it’s easy to figure out what someone makes. Take my workplace for example:
8 an hour starting, .25 raise after 90 days, $.50 raise per year from starting date. $1.00 raise per bump up in the supervisor heirchy.
Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what everyone makes.
I think it depends on the environment you work in to some extent. Like Qadgop, I’m a government employee and my income ( base income, anyway ) is public record. Frankly everybody talks money occasionally at my little facility, to one extent or another. Heck we even casually pass around paystubs and look at how many hours of sick leave and vacation we all have. We talk about how many months and days we have to we retire based on such-and-such formulation. We discuss which overtime hound will break six figures this year. Etc.
So, no - I’m not shy about it at all. However I’m well aware many people regard it as bad taste, so if I’m thinking ( I don’t always 
), I don’t query folks outside the job/family/close friends except in a general way.
- Tamerlane
Considering my SO owned his house before I moved in, that wasn’t really an issue. And in a non-romantically-involved roommate situation, as long as each person is, indeed, paying the rent, what difference does it make exactly how much each nets?
Why is it that no one’s willing to touch this one?
Why would someone want to touch alanak’s penis?
Jim (That’s it, I’m going to sleep before I get any dumber)
I know pretty much what all of our friends make, but we’re pretty casual about that sort of stuff. I wouldn’t dream of asking someone how much they made unless I knew they were like that. It’s a learned behaviour for me because my family was also very free with that sort of information. I’ll never forget the look on a colleague’s face when I asked - in the end she said “I’m sorry I don’t discuss that sort of information.” I was absolutely mortified.
It’s appropiate only if you’re their accountant or if you’re looking for information on “what’s the right amount to ask for this particular position and location”.
I teach in a private school and our pay scales are published.
However to work out someone’s pay, you’d need to know how long they’ve worked at the school, what extra responsiblities they have and what point on the scale they started on.
In the New York Times magazine a few months back, they had someone write to “The Ethicist”. Basically, the question boiled down to someone finding a sheet on the printer with everyone’s salary, and was he ethically allowed to look at it. The ethicist, citing that secrecy about salary by the employer benefits only the employer, replied that not only could he read it, he could and should disseminate it to all the other employees. (can’t find cite right now)
If you know the salary range of your fellow employees, and have been around enough to know their background and skill set, you can at least figure out what you should be worth to the company. If it causes resentment to find out that others, with the same experience and skillset, make considerably more, then maybe it SHOULD cause resentment. Maybe you should be asking your company for more money, or shopping your skills around to another company.
No. And I do think it’s appropriate to answer “None of your damn business.”
There are lots of reasons why someone doing the same job as you gets paid different and not all of them are about you.
Maybe when you joined the company, there was high unemployment and a glut of qualified widget-makers, so you got the standard rate. When Joe Bloggs down the production line joined, the country was in a period of low unemployment and all the qualified widget-makers had gone overseas to work and so Joe got offered a premium rate to entice him to join the company. So maybe Joe earns 15% more than you do.
Should that cause resentment between you and Joe? Not really, it wasn’t like Joe demanded more money, he just joined the company in more favourable circumstances than you.
Pay isn’t just about you as a person. That’s partly why it’s considered confidential.
Found a link to a free cite that has this essay:
http://www.uexpress.com/printable/print.html?uc_full_date=20061015&uc_comic=ethic
Every year the Parade magazine in my Sunday paper publishes their annual salary issue, which shows pictures of a couple hundred people in various jobs around the country, gives their names, and provides their salary. A picture of a smiling Joe Schmo in Seattle, WA makes $53,926 a year as a shop foreman, and so on. I’ve never understood why so many people would willingly provide that type of information to a national magazine, so the entire country would know who they are, what they look like, where they live, and what they make, right down to the last dollar. Blows my mind.
In my last year of law school, whenever anyone would land a job at a law firm, their starting salary as a first-year associate became public knowledge- usually by that person offering it without being asked. I always thought that was strange, but given the fact that we were all kind of in the same boat and pulling for each other to get jobs & start paying off our loans, it was more of a collective victory when someone accepted a good offer.
Today, I’d never tell my peers, whether I work with them or not. That kind of info can only cause problems. One of us will make more than the other, so we’ll each begin weighing our achievements against the other, and someone will end up resentful.
So, then when I ask my boss for a raise, citing Joe’s salary, that could be explained to me. And, I, with that information, could ask that my own company match his salary (we’re doing the same job, after all). If they refuse, I could ask another company to match that salary. If they refuse, then I can keep my current job at the current salary knowing full well that I’m already being paid exactly what I deserve (or else I would have gotten the raise or the other job at the other company).
There was one case where I needed a list of factory personnel and the one I was given included their “level”, which in turn indicates salary range and responsibility level.
Because that was one fucked up company, the information in that sheet included several things that the Labor department should have loved to see - a pity that due to local labor laws I was not allowed give it to them! The three shift managers had levels between 2 (“peon with special training”) and 5 (“shift manager”); the one who was a 2 had peons who made more than he did.
In other companies, where people’s levels matched their responsibilities correctly, I’ve still seen many differences that often weren’t so much in the numbers as in interpretation. For example, the salary you’re offered is always “before-tax”, but people will compare their after-tax with other people’s before-tax. This leads to claims that “he makes half-again as much as I do!”… uh, not if you compare both before-tax salaries, dude. Other people talk about that one month when they had tons of overtime and the yearly bonus as if it was their regular income, thus inflating their worth.
I find it terribly offensive that my SiL assumes I make as much as her brother (who is just out of college and on minimum-wage “practice” contracts and who has the same major as me but at a lower level) and drops hints about “your economic status” but the only way she’d believe I make about twice as much as she does and about 10x what he does is if I showed her my paystub. Which she’ll have to pry off my cold, stiffening dead fingers. How do I know how much she makes? Easy: Lilbro the accountant does Marriedbro’s taxes and her assumptions about his income piss him off too. But if she thinks she’ll find out how much we make with those dagger-hints, she needs a better sharpener.
There was a period when she had all these short-term jobs and she was so happy because she was “making more than the permanent doctors!” Uh, no. In Spain you get 14 pays. But because your contract was for one month, you’ve gotten the regular monthly plus your part of the two “extras”… i.e., your yearly salary (which is exactly the same as the regular docs) has been divided by 12 instead of by 14. But in a year you’d make the same.
It simply is something that people understand so badly that it’s, in general, better not to talk about unless it’s completely relevant and you make sure you’re on the same footing.
And therein lies the problem - the assumption that most people have; that two people doing the same job should earn the same amount of money.
There is no magic ‘right amount of pay’ for a job, there is a range of pay. If you’re both being paid within the range, then the fact that Joe earns more than you isn’t a basis for justifying your increase request.
The ethicist in question is out of his gourd.
So he thinks that the employee has an ethical obligation to disseminate this information? Is he nuts? Does he have any idea how much damage that can cause?
Okay, I’ll bite. Sooooooo, alanak, how long is your penis?
I think it’s inappropriate. The culture I was raised in thinks it’s beyond rudeness. I’ve gotten better about it, but I remember applying for a temp job once and the guy asking me what my current salary was - in front of two complete strangers and the secretary. I was beyond speechless. I wish I could say I came back with a snappy comeback, but I was too shocked. 