Staying anonymous is probably best but fwiw, policies which prohibit sharing one's own compensation violate federal law.
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies...
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies...
(I think the only state with a meaningful divergence from at-will is Montana).
From experience (as a bystander), what really happens in a case like this is:
* Employee is terminated
* Employee believes they were terminated for a reason forbidden by state or federal law
* Employee retains an employment lawyer, who drafts a letter demanding compensation for the improper termination, citing specific claims of (say) sexual harassment, complaints articulated to superiors and to HR, and subsequent retaliatory firing.
* Employee does not necessarily prove those claims; they need only demonstrate sufficient facts and allegations to ensure that a lawsuit would not easily be dismissed.
* Employer almost invariably settles.
The two cases where employers don't settle:
* Employer is stupid, and believes that they will pay less to litigate a wrongful termination case than to settle.
* Employer is smart, and has an HR department that keeps excruciatingly careful records of things like sexual harassment complaints, alleged racially-tinged comments, ratio of black/white hires to black/white applications, &c, and is prepared to make it clear to employee's lawyer that the case will cost too much to pursue.
If you've ever wondered why smart employers go fucking apeshit when people make racially-tinged jokes, or why it's not necessarily in your best interests to bring your concerns to HR unless your game plan is to bring a wrongful termination complaint, there you go.
This is also the reason why, despite at-will status in basically every locale where you can hire people, "Performance Improvement Plan" is a euphemism for "slow-motion termination". The purpose of a PIP is to establish in the written record that an employee is a non-performer, so that when they're terminated, the employer can present evidence that there were reasons other than retaliation or discrimination.
The right thing to do is to take the paperwork and say, "thanks, can you give me a few days to review this?" and stall as much as possible while looking for another job.
If you're feeling especially ballsy (and very confident in your ability to find another job quickly) you can say, "I'm not familiar with these at all, and my grandpa (R.I.P) always told me to get everything reviewed by an attorney before signing it, so that's what want to do. Is that OK?"
I was the recipient of a PIP at my last job, went through the improvement process, and at the end of it, my manager signed off that my performance had returned to acceptable levels. I left about a month later.
So why am I not still there? Well, in the process of going through the PIP and asking myself how I let things get to that point, I realized that I was quite capable of excelling at everything I was supposed to be doing, but I just didn't give a shit anymore. My subconscious had already checked out of that job and was telling me it was time to move on.
When I realized that, my reaction was to start looking for another job while bringing my performance back to a good level. We quit on good terms: they "hired" me back to consult on some problems that came up after I left; I helped someone transition into my old position and I have a job better suited to my personality.
EDIT: It's worth noting that in these cases the staff in question also had clear evidence in the form of signed reviews rating them that they were performing well. E.g. the guy I spent most time on a performance improvement plan for was ranked "exceeds expectations" in every criteria three years in a row while I was there, and was given 15%+ raises each of those years. This was in Europe, but for a US company.
There is no self-improvement.
That's leaving aside entirely the issue of how at will employment gives companies confidence to hire since they know they can shed employees if things go south.
If you are looking for an end run try binding arbitration, which allows employers to opt out of the legal system.
Because the employer is at a massive advantage. For an employee having gaps in employment is a major thing when it comes to future employment, and can have massive effects on personal finances. For the employer, losing an employee a bit earlier is rarely a major issue (and if it is, they can generally convince people to stay a bit longer by throwing cash at the problem).
It is less relevant in high-paid positions where employees generally have the ability to put aside more of a cushion, but for lower paid employees it can be dramatic.
There's a reason the long notice periods in large parts of Europe are a direct result of decades of union pressure.
> That's leaving aside entirely the issue of how at will employment gives companies confidence to hire since they know they can shed employees if things go south.
If this was a real concern, then we ought to see a persistent problem of high unemployment across the countries with long notice periods, but to my knowledge we don't.
Maybe for unskilled jobs, but the idea that an employer will hire/fire employees at the whims of the market, and there is zero cost to this process does not apply everywhere. There can be significant cost to on-boarding people depending on the industry / position.
The effect is that by protecting existing jobs you lose out on future ones. Over time this pretty much cuts you out of any industry where there are waves of creative destruction.
It's called court. No provided reason does not imply a lack of reason, and (say) discussing pay on a public forum would certainly be relevant evidence, if highly circumstantial.
What is the flip-side to at-will employment though? Without at-will employment, do employees become slaves that cannot quit their job? Or are there only a small list of "legal" reasons for you to quit your job.
I always see "well the employee can always leave at any time too," but is that really something that disappears in places without at-will employment?
You can, of course, not turn up to work. But that might well make you "unreliable" if you ask for a reference later. But it's not a problem, since a new employer giving a three month notice period will expect you to be on one at present.
(The notice period during the first 6 or 12 months is often less, eg 2-4 weeks.)
E.g. in Norway it is near impossible to give less than 3 months notice for permanent positions without providing additional compensation, no matter how junior the position, except for a typically 6 month trial period.
Before I'd moved to the UK, I'd never even seen an employment contract with less than 3 months.
In practice, shorter notice is often mutually agreed on with or without compensation when both sides agree it suits them, but it's very common to serve out the full 3 months.
The following is true for a sizable part of Europe. The flip side(s!) are:
* I can't just walk out on a job, I have to give a 4-week notice (for any reason, though. It can be anything, from "I feel like I need a new challenge" to "I hate ever single one of you motherfuckers"), during which I'm expected to do my job more or less as usual. Everyone understands you're not as motivated, no one plans for major stuff to happen during someone's N-week notice.
* My employer has a small, but very open-ended list of reasons why he's allowed to fire me, which includes things like me underperforming (but he has to give proof that this actually happened -- i.e. he needs to have an actual evaluation process, has to warn me that I'm not performing as expected first and so on), shrinking clients base which means that they literally no longer need so many people and I drew the short stick and so on.
My employer is also required to give me a four-week notice, during which he has to pay me as usual, and he also has to pay for any vacation days I didn't take in this time (the idea being that I could have lounged in Belize instead of working my sorry ass at the office).
Furthermore, if I am being fired, my employer is also required to allow me to go to interviews during business hours (for obvious reasons).
Regulations vary from one country to another, but that's the gist of it. In general:
- Notices are typically 4 weeks for non-management positions and 6 weeks for management positions. The law around here allows these periods to be longer, but not shorter than this, and they're negotiated as part of the contract.
- However, they can be skipped by mutual agreement (i.e. if I want to leave right now and my employer doesn't have a problem with that, we sign an additional paper that says we both agree to leaving without a 4-week notice and I'm out).
- They don't apply for the duration of the test period at the beginning of an employment contract (if there is one). During that period (typically 3 months), both resignations and firings are effective immediately. I did it once, it' a very refreshing feeling :-).
I work for the European branch of a relatively small American company, which is how I've come to know all this. My colleagues from the US are mesmerized whenever they hear about these things.
Basically, if your notice period is 1 month, you can opt to pay the company 1 month's salary instead of having to work that time. If a company wants you gone, they pay you the equivalent wages for the notice period you were required to provide.
I think it's fair because both sides have agreed that $X amount is a fair exchange for the employees services. If those services cannot be replaced with $X then that's really the company's problem for taking advantage of the worker.
This buyout is in addition to any other severance package the worker might be receiving.
Anyways, I think it's pretty nifty as it allows the flexibility of leaving immediately, but also puts in some structure into the situation.
The flip side of this is that it's very difficult to get fired, even if you're not very competent.
Now, your relationship with your manager might be strained, but hey, that's life.
Sparked a lot of controversy. It kinda made me not want to work at Amazon ever. Although I hear that the Amazon experience varies depending on team and location.
It is a tricky issue though. I am sure that a powerful enough company that wanted to throw resources at it could make all sorts of arguments about whether certain parts of the information (e.g. bonuses, vesting schedules, options grants, stock price discounts, relocation provisions) are allowed to be classified as confidential even if basic salary is not.
As a lowly employee, your only hope would be if some national labor union or pro bono legal institute took on your case, otherwise you'd never be able to afford the legal costs to defend your NLRB collective bargaining rights.
With pay secrecy, it's unfortunately still mostly a "might makes right" situation, where rich companies can sort of make up their own rules and at the very least bankrupt you with legal nonsense even if they don't ultimately win. So few people have the fortitude to endure that kind of legal harassment that it implicitly still does censor our ability to talk about pay, even if it's illegal that this is so.
It looks like one of the main criteria is that it has to be a part of a "concerted action" to benefit a collection of employees, and this had historically been broadly interpreted in support of employees with a very liberal understanding of what a concerted action is.
This whole HN thread about it, for example, would almost surely qualify (I am not a lawyer, of course, so that's not a professional opinion and not a form of advice for anyone here), since it is explicitly focused on the whole class of Amazon employees and encourages employees to share for themselves.
I wish I could find the older case about the leaflets. IIRC it was from the late 1970s.