APU Careers Careers & Learning

Salary secrecy

Like most college students, I used to work during my summer and winter breaks. Perhaps unlike some college students, I used to completely throw myself into my job. Even if I never received a literal pat on the back, I would, every now and again, receive a bonus. One year I learned that I had earned that same bonus as a coworker who (I thought) cared for his or her job very little, a coworker who I selfishly believe was completely undeserving of the bonus he or she received that year (of course, I was horribly wrong). Unsurprisingly, I grew somewhat resentful, and although I maintained the same workload I had all summer, my enthusiasm for my job did dwindle somewhat. A recent study done by the University of California-Berkeley and Princeton University shows that my experience is not only not unique, but that with a lack of salary secrecy comes great workplace peril.

As John Hough of SmartMoney reports, in light the California’s passage of a “right-to-know law” the Sacramento Bee made the decision to post state workers’ salaries on its Web site. The result? Researchers found workers who used the site to look up the salaries of fellow coworkers had one of two responses. If the worker’s “pay was below median for their department, job satisfaction plunged and the likelihood of searching for a new job increased.” In the opposite case—that is, when a worker found out he or she makes above the median—such workers simply shrugged off the findings, or, putting it in more scientific terms, “there was no meaningful change.” In light of all of this, should employers release salary information? The obvious answer would be, “no,” insofar as such information could de-motivate employees. At the same time, however, as Hough points out, secrecy clauses, which some employers tuck into employment contracts, appear to lack legality according to recent caselaw and some state-level regulations.

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