Assembly Bill No. 168 | Hacker News Reader

Assembly Bill No. 168

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

14 pointsdiggernet11 comments

What problem is the CA legislature trying to fix, and how will they be able to determine if this legislation fixes it?

This has been law since late 2017 and took effect at (I think) the start of 2018. The law has been clarified a bit since then. I'm not a mod, but (2017) should be added probably to the title especially since Assembly Bill numbers are reused each legislative session.

The idea is that employers ask employees their salary history. I believe some studies show that this tends to perpetuate pay bias. Also, most career people will advise against sharing that information.

Interestingly, I work for a movie company, where all work is contracted. For directors, screenwriters, stars, etc. It is very traditional to base pay on your "quote" = what you got paid last time. Now they can't ask what the person got paid last time.

Don’t employers have other methods to ascertain a prospective employers salary or pay history other than asking directly?

Not that it should be any of a company’s business, but if they want that info they can get it. That said many cos. use salary services to inform compensation.

Getting and using a particular candidate's salary history from a third-party source during the hiring process is also forbidden by this law. It doesn't just cover the candidate being asked directly.

Aggregate salary data, not specific to the individual, remains allowed.

Bans California employers from asking for salary history in determining compensation.

Anyone have insight into what the effect of this was? It seems to me that selecting for shrewdness is something that would be a bit harder after a law like this, and I'd be interested to hear what strategies are used to replace that signal in hiring.

It's a bit late to determine shrewdness when you've already extended an offer to the candidate...

Not sure what you mean, why would you wait that long to ask about salary info? Most of the time when I've been asked this in Ontario, it's asked in the introduction, not after extending an offer.

tl;dr: California banned asking for salary information in job interviews.

This happened 10/2017 and took effect 01/2018 though—I'm not really sure why it was posted today.

> tl;dr: California banned asking for salary information in job interviews.

They also prohibited seeking salary information from third parties to affect decisions on whether to hire and for how much.

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