By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady
When BLR’s CEO came out against proposed laws making salaries public after the recent U.S. Supreme Court case on the matter, readers reacted strongly … in both directions.
Recently, I used this space to agree with a U.S. Supreme Court decision that discrimination in pay cases cannot be prosecuted unless the parties file suit within 180 days from their first substandard check. That decision brought calls for a law mandating that everyone’s pay be openly published, so that victims could quickly know they’d been wronged and file suit within that short time window.
While I sympathized with the victim in the suit (she’d received substandard pay for decades), I did support the 5-4 majority’s decision to toss the case. I did so to back the idea of statutes of limitation, which clear “stale” claims that leave the employer on the hook forever. As for publishing everyone’s compensation, that idea would certainly not make our Top 10 list, I said, calling such a move counterproductive.
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The controversy the case ignited nationwide also lit up my inbox. Replies came from those who believe all salaries should be published, those who don’t, and those who just wanted to complain about the pay gender gap, no matter what the situation is surrounding it.
As is our practice, to avoid publishing identifying information, we’ll just call our respondents Reader A, B, C, etc.
Reader A was firmly in the publish-all-salaries camp. “Why should pay rates be hidden?” she asked pointedly. “Afraid all businesses would become unionized? Could a few go down for downright inhumane treatment toward workers? And if they’re uncovered, what’s so bad about that? You must have posted such a comment to get the hard-working female employees’ blood a’boiling!!” she exclaimed (twice.)
Reader B recalled my calling the publishing of salaries counterproductive. “WHY would fairness be ‘counterproductive?’” she asked, then provided her own answer. “Maybe considering the dribble in your ezine about making other employees support ‘women’ who chose to have families, maybe this is the counterbalance!”
Reader C saw benefits in publishing salaries beyond reducing pay bias. “If this were done,” she wrote, “it would cut a lot of office politics plus nepotism, and friends of employers’ pay hikes would be looked at even closer.”
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Reader D asked me if I would have agreed with the Court if the case had been more personal. “How would you feel if your daughter had been intentionally discriminated against for years? Or if it was YOU? Would you really say … better luck next time, or be outraged that this wrongdoing was condoned by a mere technicality?” she wrote.
Reader E felt publishing all salaries might upset people who think they are worth more than they are paid. He mentioned a survey his company did that showed 80 percent of those surveyed considered themselves in the top 20 percent of achievers. “That leaves 60 percent unhappy with their pay recognition,” E wrote. “The only saving grace was that nobody knew what others were making.”
“I would think all HR executives would shudder at publishing wage data,” added Reader F. “Even the most strict … comp system has pluses/minuses within the structure. What one person thinks he/she is worth is not what a company would necessarily pay.”
Reader G saw the matter in a wider political context. Noting that the Court’s sole female justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, showed the intensity of her dissent by reading it aloud from the bench, G noted, “Ginsberg’s vocal dissent is no surprise. Maybe she should step down and allow the president to appoint another sane justice to the Court.”
My favorite reply, however, came from Reader C, in talking about why pay gender gaps are inappropriate, no matter the circumstances. “My utility bills are the same as a man’s,” she wrote. “I don’t receive a discount on my rent for being a woman, so my pay should be the same as a man doing the same job.”
Thanks for all your comments and, well said, Ms. C, wherever you are!
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