Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026
fikku.com
fikku.com
A very amateur looking site too. Domain registered in 2023. Few Google references to the name. Can't handle HN load. The "About Us" contains a link to https://7bn.org/team , which gives a Cloudflare error and https://7bn.org returns a web hosting "Default Web Site Page"
And 50 upvotes while the site isn't even loading? Hilarious
Setting "showdead" to "yes" in HN profile settings is the red pill.
I recently triggered[0] some LLM-based robot, by mentioning poor air quality in India in scope of reported cancer rates. You can read the first paragraph of all these "[dead]" responses and you'll get the pattern.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41215564 (HN red pill - you need showdead=yes setting in user profile to see this spam)
I mean, even if it was entirely some random Indian poster with no automated assistance, which is still more than plausible, that speaks to a pretty shocking amount of dedication to shit things up that I usually only see on imageboards.
Then add in the obvious signs he tried to use AI at at least some stages, and that's where it gets actually wild to me, because if the posts were even slightly: - more coherent - less irrelevant - less duplicated - timed a bit further apart
I can totally see most undiscerning readers never assuming that was all one person or arguably less than one person with automation.
Looks normal in a text-only browser. Nothing unusual. It appears to be a WordPress blog.
The EU directive:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2023/970/oj
See (32) et seq.
> {...} Given that the main objective of the measure is to reduce salary inequality, companies will have to make salaries or salary ranges for each position public.
In addition, they will have to share with their employees the criteria used to set these remunerations. They will also have to provide information on salary inequalities within the company, broken down by gender.
> {...} As of 2026, employees will have the right to request and receive in writing information about their individual salary and the average salary ranges of colleagues performing the same job or one of equal value. {...} In order to maintain competitiveness and privacy, the European directive sets access limits to the information, prohibiting the request of this information for purposes other than the defense of their salary equality rights.
[0]: https://www.fnv.nl/getmedia/89baa302-e76e-43da-a6f1-3eb983de...
Also, "Employees Will Know How Much Their Colleagues Earn" is a false claim as this only reports salary ranges for the function and the average salary.
2026 is only for the Spanish implementation of this directive. And for Spain, it's only large companies that need to provide it by then.
Laws are created by member states themselves, directives are the "goals" EU sets for the member states. Consider them "specifications" for the members to deal with the implementation of those specs.
Some places in Europe, peoples personal income, fortune, and tax, is already publicly available. But that is not true for the EU.
Of course, this would never happen. In capitalism, fair competition is a given.
If companies treat employees as commodities, which is largely the case, they don't have to collude to suppress salaries. The basic economics of commodities is enough.
The only way for employees to really have any bargaining power is to not be commodities; but trying to do that as employees is swimming against a strong economic current, because companies who can't treat their employees as commodities are in a more precarious business position than companies that can.
In other words, if you really think you're being underpaid as an employee compared to the value you create, your best option is to stop being an employee and become an owner of a company. And as an owner, if you are going to have any employees, you are going to end up under strong business pressure to treat them as commodities, so if you don't want to do that, your best option is to not have any employees in the first place: the owners either do the work themselves or outsource it to the owners of other companies with contracts.
The relationship between employee and employer is fundamentally adversarial, and the employer has all the power in that relationship.
Don't. Regulatory capture is a thing.
> The relationship between employee and employer is fundamentally adversarial
In general, no, it is no more so than any contractual relationship.
However, to the extent that employees can be treated as commodities, that does add an adversarial element.
> the employer has all the power in that relationship.
Again, this is not true in general, but to the extent that employees can be treated as commodities, yes, that means their bargaining power is minimal.
However, this is not something that can be fixed by regulation, because, as above, employers, who, in the cases where employees can be treated as commodities, will be large corporations, can just buy the regulations that favor them. To the extent that they have to accept provisions that they would rather not have, for example minimum wage, limitations on how they can fire people, requirements for "fairness" in compensation, etc., those provisions don't actually help employees; they make us all poorer by reducing overall productivity, so while the relative position of some people might be improved, in absolute terms they are still worse off, like everyone else.
Even if it increased productivity, without regulation protecting employees the profits of that increased productivity are all harnessed by the elites who own the capital, and the workers are all poorer because of that.
If regulatory capture in labor protections was a thing, the large companies would pressure for strong labor protections, instead of always rallying and lobbying against thoae
To the extent that they protect workers who are genuinely productive, of course they don't reduce the productivity of those workers.
But to the extent that they protect workers who aren't genuinely productive (by making them harder to fire, and more generally making it harder to reduce their impact), they do reduce overall productivity.
> without regulation protecting employees the profits of that increased productivity are all harnessed by the elites who own the capital
If you believe the story that's being told about the last four decades or so, this was happening with regulations protecting employees all over the place. So if those regulations are supposed to be preventing it from happening, they're not working.
Those entities only goal is generating ever increasing profits, all else be damned, no matter the harm they cause to society and employees.
I didn't say I had lots of faith in those entities. I just have even less faith in governments. Given the respective historical track records, I think that's reasonable.
> Those entities only goal is generating ever increasing profits, all else be damned, no matter the harm they cause to society and employees.
Some corporations, businesses, and entrepreneurs are like this. But many are not. The problem is that the ones that are like that are the ones who benefit the most from government regulations.
Also, your implication is that governments have better goals, like respecting people's rights--but those goals are an even worse description of what governments actually do, than your jaundiced description above is of what most corporations, businesses, and entrepreneurs actually do.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/quick-facts-about-s...
(Texas and Florida notably do not, and likely won't for some time due to state politics; they are the second [30M] and third [22M] states by population, respectively)
I've always considered salaries not being public to be better for me because historically I've been able to negotiate well when we get to that stage, but I know that this isn't the case for everyone. I am also aware that employers can pay for previous w2 salary info (assuming the company used a major payroll provider)... and there are other strategies that companies use that gives them an edge in negotiations... but for the most part it seems like making salary info public really only hurts employees at lower compensation levels and will reduce income because the negotiation step will go away. That is workers will no longer be able to benefit from asymmetric information.
It seems like people view this as a progressive measure that will help workers, but I don't see it that way at all. I think it will help SOME workers but the most competent, resourceful workers.
What am I missing? Why are governments (e.g. Colorado, EU) wanting to enact these sorts of directives?
But yes, I do wonder if it will direct a lot of negotiations into the more "benefits" section of the thing.
I don’t know what the equivalent concept is in EU countries (or if there even is one).
I feel discussing salaries is quite common here. At work someone made a spreadsheet everyone fills their salary into if they want, experience, tenure etc and you can see how you compare. It's a great way of leveling the information imbalance that's normally there.
Edit: not sure why I'm down voted. I'm just saying how it is here, don't take it out on me if you don't like the concept, heh!
Every tax avoid-er tries to find deductions from nothing.
I don't want my coworkers to know how much I make because if I'm making substantially more or less than them, it will affect how they perceive and interact with me.
This isn't really an issue, as far as I can tell. I feel in general most people get paid fairly, so if you're doing the same work as someone else the pay won't be that different.
I've always shared and talked salary with my coworkers, both when I was earning the least and the most of my coworkers. When I earned the least, they helped me with how to approach my boss for a raise; and now when I'm the best paid, I help my coworkers get what they deserve.
Or assume you do 2x better work, they initially pay you the same, then you get a better offer elsewhere, and they would want to match, but if they do, you would be getting paid a lot more than your coworkers.
(Note though: I don't think many people acyually check each others tax returns, as that kind of already implies enviousness.)
That's a strange assumption to make. Of course I want everyone to be treated fairly.
> why should I be more loyal to some rich owner
It's not a matter of loyalty to some rich owner (particularly if I'm making much less than my coworkers[1]). It's a matter of getting along in the workplace.
[1] I have, and probably will again, taken positions where I was overtly underpaid because I was getting something else out of the job that I valued more than the money. But (at least in the US), people tend to equate your pay level with your skill level and value, so I certainly wouldn't want my coworkers to know.
I wouldn't directly check it, if they see that I have done so, but if I could have someone else check or similar, I would definitely get it checked what everyone makes. Not specifically because of envy, but it would just be a no brainer thing to do in terms of understanding the market.
Note though that while people in the nordics are highly individualistic, most would never even think about such an idea of screwing over their colleagues. There are good reasons for löneväxling, but this is not one of them
Wealth, Income, Calculated tax
Here's what it says for me (I've censored some stuff with ):
Born: 19** Wealth: 5** *** Postal code/area: **** Income: 4** *** Tax Municipality: *** Calculated tax: 1** ***
The lesser form of abuse would be for a shop to loop up how wealthy a customer is for targeted advertising. But it can also be used to see whose kid is worth kidnapping, and everything in between, like refusing tenants with low salaries.
Also, media gets everything and make lists. "This is what the soccer players make", "top 50 influencers" etc.
I don't think it's abused much. For wealthy kidnappings and so it's easier ways than to brute force names of potentials. Instead just look for CXOs or owners of companies that are doing ok (also public data). Refusing tenants with low salary is already done through credit agencies all over the world, this doesn't change anything in that regard either.
As for privacy: I guess you could say so. But as I said, it's part of the culture so I don't feel most people mind, and it helps us to get paid fairly.
You should also know that any information can be used to triangulate other information.
That’s exactly why people are focused on data privacy.
I’m also not outraged. I just think it’s a perfect example of cognitive dissonance.
Privacy is good in one case. The same privacy is bad in another case. Objectively they’re the same.