How does making salary public and not asking about applicants pay history work? If you tell them your title and employer, can't they just look up what you probably got paid?
I don't believe salaries are public but instead salary ranges alongside job postings. Someone please correct me if I am wrong as the former would be a much more valuable tool for labor.
Under the latter the range for SWE could be 40-80K and so a new employer could possibly find that job posting from around the time you say you were hired but still shouldn't have any idea if you were making the 40k or closer to the 80k. I believe this is intended to curb the market behavior of offering someone a pay you think they will accept rather than offering to pay based on the value of a role.
Turning the difference between those two numbers into cream for upper management to butter their bread is the status quo in America at the very least and likely in all of the western world, but leads to systemic discrimination amongst protected groups with weaker negotiating power.
In the US (I realize the article is about EU), salary information for a given individual is not public* and employers typically will not share it (when queried by a prospective employer, they will only confirm employment history - "yes, Bob worked here for 5 years as a developer").
Several states have implemented similar rules (CO and CA, IIRC). A job listing would typically list either a minimum salary or range for a position. "Senior Developer, $120,000-$150,000" or whatever.
Two upsides to this approach... First, an employee is not limited by their current salary - they can negotiate on their value. Second, it's widely accepted that women and minorities tend to be less aggressive salary negotiators. Those two things together, applied over a career, can make a massive reduction in lifetime earnings for employees.
* Government jobs are the big exception - you can search for most university salaries because most receive government funding. Same for local government offices.
You would only know what a new starter might be offered, not what someone actually received after a period of time. I don't think the problem is organisations basing salaries on what other employers are offering (that's just market testing) but choosing to pay an individual person more or less based on what they personally managed to negotiate elsewhere. If I'm buddies with my department head and I get an extra $10k because of that, why should other employers replicate that when I move companies?
(Note : I don't really agree with this as it's relying on salary secrecy but I think that's the logic.)
I wonder if this will be one of the unintended (intended?) consequences? Normally the best way to get a pay increase is to apply for jobs that pay a lot more. Previously you could apply for a job that paid much more than your current role. Your new employer might assume that you were on something similar or a little bit less. Now employers will be able to see what you were paid previously and will probably not offer much of a pay increase, or you'll have to have a really good reason why you think your salary should be doubled.
No. Individual personal salary is private information protected by law (at least in our country). Starting salary range in job offers is public, that's not enugh information.
Salaries might be private here, but taxes sure aren't. A recruiter could feasibly walk into the local tax office and ask to see my taxable income for 2020.
Interesting. Taxes and incomes are private in Slovakia for private persons whether they are employed or self-employed or whatever (unless they are a judge or a politician). They are only public for companies.
Yes, but they wouldn't get an exact figure because it's a range.
Anyway it doesn't really matter; you apply for a job, if you don't meet the criteria, that's fine. But if you DO meet the criteria but pay you a little more than your previous job, but less than others with the same job, that's going to be tackled by this legislation.
The best they can do is that instead of underpaying you, they will say "You did not pass the interview process for this job".
