The difference might mean that employers tend to believe, wrongly, that transparency laws cover only written or "handbook" rules. Over a third of workers have bosses that discourage salary talk in states without anti-secrecy laws - and over a third have bosses that discourage salary talk in states with anti-secrecy laws.
But employers in states with transparency laws make up for it by imposing informal rules that prevent employees from talking about pay. Fewer than one in 10 workers in states with a secrecy ban report a formal secrecy rule, compared to one in six workers in states that have not passed a secrecy ban. Formal secrecy rules - explicit orders that are sometimes codified in company handbooks, and that often come with specific punishments for violations - are less frequent in states with pay-transparency laws. While the laws are not having a large overall effect on the culture of salary secrecy among employers, they are affecting the types of rules workers said they are subject to.
Impossible shapes cracked#
Just under half of workers in states that have cracked down on pay-secrecy rules remain subject to a formal or informal rule preventing salary discussions, compared to just over half of workers in states without pay transparency laws. The results of our survey, published in a forthcoming Indiana Law Journal article, found that employers were either ignorant of the laws, intentionally ignoring them, or some combination of the two. No other type of on-the-job illegality affects such an enormous share of the workforce. We also gathered information about where respondents worked, allowing us to see whether pay-secrecy rules are less common in states where lawmakers have made them illegal - an indication that those laws are working. The two latter items - active discouragement against discussing salaries and formal rules barring it - are exactly the type of rules lawmakers have sought to prohibit. We asked respondents to tell us whether their bosses made pay information public, allowed employees to discuss wages and salaries, discouraged such talk, or formally banned it. To get at these answers, we surveyed over 4,000 full-time workers in 20 from across the US about their companies' approaches to pay transparency. We wanted to see whether the laws were working as intended: Did employees actually feel comfortable sharing their salaries? Were companies no longer punishing workers for being open about their pay? Was this newfound openness helping to reduce pay gaps? What we found was not encouraging. Transparency laws allow workers to discuss salaries with each other, which should, in theory, help balance the scales back toward employees and prevent these unfair pay disparities. Plus, companies also have major pay discrepancies between workers of color. In 2022, women were earning an average of 82% of what men earned, according to Pew Research analysis, and this gap hasn't changed much in the past few decades. The idea behind pay-transparency laws is fairly straightforward. The (sorry) state of state pay-secrecy bans According to new research that we, the authors, conducted, many companies are still muzzling workers when it comes to pay transparency and many workers still support the hush-hush attitude toward salary sharing. Millennials and Gen Z have a growing distaste for the " last taboo:" Young people are more willing than their older peers to discuss pay with colleagues, friends, or with complete strangers on TikTok.Ĭhanging generational norms and new laws protecting workers' rights to transparency are starting to erode the deep-seated cultural taboo of salary talk, but there is still a ways to go before we can declare a new era of openly talking about salaries. It often indicates a user profile.Īt the same time, more people are willing to discuss salaries openly. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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