Is It Illegal To Discuss Your Salary With Coworkers?

Is It Illegal To Discuss Your Salary With Coworkers? Salary, Wage and Pay transparency helps ensure pay is fair and equalized, but some employers are taking exception to employees sharing their salaries and wages with coworkers. In this video, I discuss if it's legal to discipline or terminate an employee for talking about their salary.

0:00 - intro
0:37 - employer threatens employees
3:12 - the employees respond
8:48 - NLRB guidance on wage discussions
9:36 - union busters
10:10 - your right to discuss wages
11:37 - retaliation
13:48 - if you work for a bad boss
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Royalty-Free Music from Bensound

[SKBottom]

After all these years and all the various videos and articles written about it, I can't believe that this myth persists. It is not illegal.

[m.miller]

I found out my company hires new drivers at a higher wage but doesn’t bring up the old wages of the drivers that have been there. They tell us “ they don’t want us to discuss pay”, and that every employee has their own financial needs.

[izamalcadosa]

I've had several former co-workers quit their jobs because the new hires were getting paid more than them!! It happened at a few jobs in my past several years ago and most recently!!

[williamspeece]

My grandfather always told me “ people will only do too you what you let them. Lived by that model my whole life.

[PaulieK]

Very interesting. I've been told before to not discuss salaries but more to the tune of just a common thing not to do (Corp office roles), but didn't think it was illegal to do. Good on them to call him out.

[christianbaer]

Probably depends on the country. In Germany I can assure you, that you are allowed to, despite what your contract says.

[scorpsinger]

I always assumed it is because they pay other employees who do less work more. I have worked at a company for 3 years and they hired a bunch of new employees and they were getting paid $3 dollars more than I was getting but I had to train them and I got no raise.

[半蔵-xh]

Recently had a new hire at my place that made more than everyone else at the same job title. We took it to management and they raised everyone up to the same level. I don't think even management had much of an issue with it, although there might be some sore feelings.

[笑笑-sj]

Very interesting discussion as always. I am amazed that some employers are still trying to keep this under wraps. Has wage data confidentiality EVER been legally protected?

[patmarek]

The employee response is absolutely hilarious! And them all listing their wages is just cherry on top. Hits close to home as one of my previous employer has had an issue with massive turnover due to absurd work/wage ratio. And poor attempts to silence the internal conversation were thrown out there constantly

[michellehall]

My coworker accepted a counter offer from my company making 10k more. She currently makes 20 k more than me. I was surprised because she put in her notice to leave during our company hiring freeze. She’s getting money!

[MS-bnrg]

You should collaborate with employment lawyers on these types of scenarios, I think it could be an insightful conversation and it would be informative for the audience.

[stevebass]

Everyone should talk about their wages

[JLBribiesca]

I kid you not: a Planet Fitness ad popped up in the middle of the video, right after the subordinates’ letter. The Great Labor Shortage continues to amuse.

[BewareTheLilyOfTheValley]

I also live in an at-will state. When your employer begins to wield that fact as leverage in an argument, which has all the same childish tones of, "I'm an adult and I say so" when parents speak to their children, it's time to start looking for a new job. Even in an at-will state, any employer worth their salt will not fall back on that threat and will give legitimate explanations for their rules.

Good luck to Shelly and the gang at that Planet Fitness, hope "Jer" can be removed from their position. They clearly are a huge bully (but it's a gym, should I be surprised?)

[joe]

It's nice to see the employees call out this manager for his nonsense. Most people don't know much about the labor laws and companies take advantage of them.

[hsharma]

You seem surprised Bryan…but this is a gym. They’re well known for narcissistic bosses. I had one that tried to fire me for not coming in to train a client…during a blizzard…with two feet of snow…when they were a prospective (not an actual) client.

[tubalcain]

I’ve known workers who’ve been terminated immediately for divulging their compensation to other colleagues.
I once had a part-time job for awhile in college in the engineering department at an automotive aftermarket manufacturer doing grunt/I don’t want to do these tasks from the engineers work. A production guy kept needling me asking me what I made. I told him repeatedly to knock it off. Needless to say that job ended mid-summer. Extremely arrogant and narcissistic young engineers (M.E.s). That was many many years ago. As the saying goes “engineers, you can tell them everything, and you can’t tell them anything”.

[josephtesoriero]

Look closely at the document. Legal Percussion, I never heard of it. I heard of Legal Repercussion.

[Klowners]

Funny I found this video...my company has this policy to not discuss pay with employees or other coworkers you will be let go for it