> The law opens any employer up to dozens of lawsuits if they hire people for less than what was advertised.
If it actually does do that, then spell out why that's the case (e.g. what's the penalty for hiring someone for a salary outside the posted range)?
The OP makes it sound like this is only to address certain information asymmetries in salary negotiation:
> Currently, New York City employers are allowed to withhold pay information until the end of the hiring process.
> Advocates of the bill argue that this forces applications into unequal negotiations throughout the hiring process without the critical piece of knowledge around salary.
> “Lack of salary transparency is discriminatory and anti-worker,” said Rosenthal. “Every New Yorker should have the right to determine whether they will be able to support themselves and their family when they apply for a job. It is time to level the playing field, and restore some dignity to New Yorkers seeking employment.”
> ...Job postings without salary range information can be reported to the city’s Commission on Human Rights.
Based on the article, I see no reason why someone would be prevented from consenting to pay below the position's current minimum, so long as they have full knowledge that is what they are in fact doing.
>Based on the article, I see no reason why someone would be prevented from consenting to pay below the position's current minimum, so long as they have full knowledge that is what they are in fact doing
As they say, the path to Hell is paved with good intentions, I see no reason why an HR department would take the risk.
When I was in my early 20s I had no degree or real experience. With misguided laws like this I wouldn't of been offered a job. It's not on your employer to pay you 100k for your first job. You endure making a bit less for a while.
Some people seem to think the hand-waved threat of "unintended consequences" should be enough to kill any policy they happen to dislike. It's not.
I'm tired of the broken record fearmongering about unintended consequences, especially when it's paired (as it always is) with no constructive alternative to address the problem in question. It's an unpersuasive attempt at preventing improvement to the status quo.
If you don't have the courage to ask how much the job pays on the first call that's your problem. If you agree to a certain wage that's what you agreed to.
So? The kind of information asymmetry that this regulation addresses is an actual issue, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
> If you don't have the courage to ask how much the job pays on the first call that's your problem.
That's not the problem something like this is meant to solve. Rather, it's probably meant to deal with situations like when an employer low-balls someone who doesn't know what they're worth, and they take the offer because they don't know any better. Eventually someone like that will probably get wise, but this gives them a much cheaper shortcut to that knowledge.
You're free to believe whatever you want. They originally advertised a position which paid about twice as much as what I ended up taking. They expected years upon years of specific experience, I showed them a couple of mobile apps I made and they decided to hire me at a lower rate.
That job changed my life, I'd rather just accept some people are going to make more and some are going to make less then create a dystopia where you need 10 pages of documentation to justify every hiring. There's no way this law is going to work out the way people think it well, if anything it encourages less full-time work. If you run the risk of being audited by a fairness officer, why not just outsource it instead?
Why not lean on consultants more?
As discussed elsewhere, many companies are just not hiring people from Colorado, which has a similar law. I can't find a better example of this not working.
The alternative is no pay, not higher pay. If the employer thinks that you don't meet all the qualifications that they'd like, there are two reasonable outcomes:
1. The most likely => you don't get any offer.
2. You mutually agree to take a lower offer. It's a lower offer, but it's also much, much greater than zero. You got your foot in the door, can develop your skills, earn an income, and make progress in your career instead of continuing to interview.
But they don't need to hire in NYC, and companies look at other regulations when deciding head count.
For example, you'll see a lot of startups freeze hiring at employee #49, since in the US (and other countries), there's a ton of HR requirements that kick in, including submitting IRS documents on magnetic tape.
One of Netscape's early advantages was that since they knew they would hire thousands of people, they skipped over all of the entry-level HR systems and started with enterprise-level systems. It was controversial at the time, but turned out to be the correct decision (the first exec was from SGI, so knew what growth looked like.)
And these are all anecdotes. The unemployment rate has followed the national trend for Colorado, and there does not appear to be a shortage of remote work for software engineers.
For my first salary role I took half the advertised pay as I knew less than half of what they wanted.
With this crap I'd just not get the job.