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Law of Work Archive

Should Salaries & Wages Be Publicly Disclosed?

by David Doorey September 20, 2008
written by David Doorey September 20, 2008

When I was a graduate student studying labour market economics, I could never understand why economists were so devoted to models that were based on assumptions about the world that any moron could see were just wrong.  Take for example the issue of information.  Classical labour market economics assumes that the free hand of the market will ensure that the marginal productivity of labour equals the marginal cost of labour.  That happens because employees have full information of all alternative job opportunities and will therefore quit low paying jobs if higher paying jobs are available.  This in turn puts pressures on employers to provide competitive packages in order to attract workers, and so on and so on.
The point is that the model assumes employees have full information about terms and conditions of employment throughout the market.  Only then can they make rational choices about what job to accept and how much money to demand.  But any idiot can see that there is not full information about terms and conditions of employment.  Often we don’t even know what our co-workers earn, let alone what people earn at other employers.  So I have always be baffled why economists don’t demand regulation that would require public disclosure of terms and conditions of employment as a market correcting measure (to correct information asymmetries, to speak economic ease).  It wouldn’t cost employers much to produce this information.
We do require conditions of some jobs to be disclosed in Canada:  high paid executives, public sector workers (like professors!), and every unionized job, since collective agreements are usually treated as public documents.  That would suggest that the conditions of work of about 1/3 of jobs in Canada must be disclosed.  But what about the other two-thirds?  Why is that information considered private, and isn’t that secrecy distorting the efficient operation of the markets?  
Well, here’s a story from the New York Times that is sympathetic to the idea of broad-based salary disclosure.  It refers to websites, like Glassdoor.com, that post salary information by company having employees post the information anonymously.  Can anyone make an argument against making wages and salary public information?

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David Doorey

Professor Doorey is an Associate Professor of Work Law and Industrial Relations at York University. He is the Director of the School of HRM at York and Director of Osgoode Hall Law School’s executive LLM Program in Labour and Employment Law and on the Advisory Board of the Osgoode Certificate program in Labour Law. He is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program and a member of the International Advisory Committee on Harvard University’s Clean Slate Project, which is re-imaging labor law for the 21st century

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New on @CanLawWorkForum from Prof David Doorey (@TheLawofWork)

#Uber #WorkerClassification #EmpLaw

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Lots of chatter about Uber announcing it will kind of, sort of treat drivers as "workers" in the UK.

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Good day to reflect back on this recent timely post explaining the PRO Act that would dramatically alter U.S. labor law.

For labor law students:

What changes in the PRO Act are already law in all or parts of Canada?

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A primer for Canadians by ⁦@Harvard_Law⁩’s Jonathan Levitan on what is contained in the U.S. Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO Act) which recently passed in the House south of the border.

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@SCLSclinic and I were so fortunate to represent this client last year. I am thrilled that this decision brings more clarity for family status accommodations rights amidst a pandemic that has tested parents, caregivers, and families like never before. https://twitter.com/CanLawWorkForum/status/1364605259071561730

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New from @RSandill (counsel for applicant), discussing important new "family status" discrimination decision from OHRT:

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