Good Colleagues,
A group of students in my graduate Compensation and Benefits course had questions about the role of pay secrecy in creating and maintaining illegal pay disparities. Outside of class, they came up with the idea of an annual "Share Your Salary with Your Co-Workers Day" to create transparency in pay within companies and create pressure on companies to fix these disparities.
In their informal conversations with friends and families about this idea, they learned that many people are under the mistaken belief that companies can and will discipline employees for sharing salary information. Generally, in the U.S., they cannot. Companies covered by the National Labor Relations Act may not prohibit sharing this information. Federal contractors may not prohibit employees from sharing this information. Some employers that are not federal contractors and not covered by NLRB (municipal governments and religious schools) may prohibit sharing salary information.
Our goal changed from creating "Share Your Salary with Your Co-Workers Day" to creating broad awareness of the right to discuss salaries with one's peers.
Please help us get the word out. Below is a URL to a LinkedIn poll on this issue with a link to an article explaining the rights of most US workers to discuss their personal salary information. If you have a LinkedIn account, consider sharing the poll with your network.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6771182269060186112
Thanks in advance.
Tim Gardner