Is it really though? Complete transparency in salary ranges also means that every other employer can see exactly what their competition is offering. I can't help but worry that this will lead to a sort of "price fixing" that will actually drive wages _down_.
Competition is good, not bad.
Fairness is better than tyranny, don't you think?
But then in the specific I would also tend to support policies that are good for me, even to the detriment of others.
And since I'm a member of many majority classes... well, there you have my point.
I personally, despite also being in a number of majority classes, prefer to avoid being an asshole because of an accident of birth.
That seems a shaky foundation to build policy on.
It's not a good rhetorical tactic to cede the concept of fairness; better to argue "that thing being done in the name of fairness, is actually unfair".
Hence the previous comment's tautology that fairness will not be an objective good for most people, because (a) most people prefer their own self interest, (b) the status quo provides majorities advantages that minorities do not share, and (c) objective fairness will thus come at the expense of the majority (who are by definition more numerous than the minority).
It's interesting most people are interpreting my comment as a preference, vs an observation.
Companies already buy salary information from brokers. So they already know what the competition is paying and generally try to keep in line with that. And that's pretty much a type of collusion. If everyone seeks to pay "market rates" based on these salary reports, then everyone will aim to pay about the same amount.
There are companies that survey employees for salary information, collect all that knowledge, and then sell it to corporations.
Medium and large businesses already have a very good understanding of the job market and what a competitive salary range is.
Companies might not advertise salary ranges at a few big tech companies, but the vast majority of recruiters tell you the salary range as soon as you talk to them (or you name your price and they say "that will work"). I already totally ignore the bottom 75% of salaries.
The problem tech companies have is that many of them can be disrupted by a few motivated individuals, and there are always new opportunities for them. If you pay enough, you benefit from them. If you don't, somebody else does, or worse, they become new competition.
I'm convinced a primary motivation for hiring in mega-tech companies is to keep people from making startups to dethrone them. You can't legally compete with Google, etc if you've signed a non-compete.
A founder of a now-popular startup worked for Google eight years ago, so what? Let's say Google remembers and decides to pursue action. They'd spend another 3-4 years suing a person who has a mountain of plausible deniability to hide behind. And for what? There's no real gain to Google for this.
in this hypothesis most people working for google are actually not needed, but employed there primarily to waste their time