Why Prospective Employers Won't Quote Pay Rates
SemiAnonymous (anonymous@semianon.world.org)
Sat, 14 Dec 1996 06:09:44 -0500
Why Prospective Employers Won't Quote Pay Rates
If a prospective employer announces that it is offering a
certain level of compensation for a certain job opening, then
it can expect to have claims assessed against it by certain
job candidates who, in the employer's estimation, are not
worth the offered compensation.
So let's say an employer would gladly offer $1,000/day to a
white male candidate, but this announcement will invite
equal pay claims from lesser preferred job candidates under
the equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws.
The employer's response to this dilemma is to go mum
on the subject of compensation and to solicit bids
regarding pay from the job candidates. (Don't point to
help wanted advertisements that quote pay rates. These
are just "come-on ads", that is, "bait and switch" ads, and
when you are switched to the real situation, YOU will be
asked to disclose the compensation being sought.)
What is the greater implication of this? Well, remember that
job candidates are on the selling side of a transaction. When
the bidding of prices is strictly limited to the selling side,
the only way that the bidding can go is DOWN! Only buyers
will bid up prices, but if all buyers (i.e. prospective
employers) go mum, then labor prices CANNOT go up.
The multipart treatise on the downward wage equalizing effects
of equal employment opportunity is now available on the World
Wide Web. See url:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3982/
(or, if the above fails try,
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3982/index.html)
(Suggestion: you may find it advisable to use the save
feature of your web browser to save the treatise as text.)
"Government enforced wage equalization will work only in the
downward direction" - despite any initial appearance to the
contrary! And the most shocking thing of all is that the least
preferred job candidate doesn't even have to be awarded a job
for many phenomena to take place!
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