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Why You Can Talk Pay with Coworkers (and Other Office Falsehoods)


Many companies will say you can't discuss salary with coworkers, ask you to sign documents they promise they'll "never enforce," or will tell you you "have" to resign if they want you out. In reality, none of those things are true, and you should be wary when you hear them. Here's why.

For one, the "you're not allowed to discuss salary with coworkers" myth stems from companies that want to keep pay structures secret—mostly to avoid paying colleagues the same amount, or having to spend time justifying to one employee why another makes more than they do (often for specific reasons like experience, education, or just budget at the time of hire.) US News Money's Allison Green notes:

Companies regularly tell employees they’re not permitted to discuss pay with each other. But this is a direct violation of the National Labor Relations Act, which says that employers cannot prevent employees from discussing wages among themselves. The law, which protects employees’ ability to organize and collectively bargain, reasons that employees wouldn't be able to organize if they were forbidden from talking with each other about pay or other working conditions. (One important note here is the prohibition on banning salary discussions doesn’t cover every employee; it exempts management-level employees, but the vast majority of workers are covered.)

In short, you're allowed to talk salary with your coworkers if you want to, and while a company can threaten you with disciplinary action because of it, you have every right to point out that the law says they can't retaliate against you for it. (They can, however, find another reason to drum you out, of course.)

The other myths are similar—you should always be wary of documents that a company says they'll "never enforce." After all, if they didn't intend to enforce it, they wouldn't have you sign it. This is usually true when a company is trying to cover itself, like in the case of non-compete agreements. As for forcing you to resign, no company can "force" you to resign, although they can say that you should resign before they fire you—but keep in mind that being fired, under the right circumstances, preserves your right to unemployment benefits, while resigning does not. At some of the companies I worked with, we would tell our troublemakers that they had a few weeks to think about resigning, which was code for "you have X weeks to find a new job, please find one so we don't have to fire you."

Check out the full list, with more detail for each myth, at the link below.

4 Things Your Company Might Tell You That Simply Aren't True | US News Money

Photo by Syda Productions (Shutterstock).