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by illirik 1738 days ago
From the "Why does this matter" link on the first page (https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/about):

"Companies are excluding Colorado from their remote employment opportunities in order to avoid sharing the salary range of their open positions.

In May of 2019 SB19-085, titled the Equal Pay For Equal Work Act, was signed into law in Colorado. It's a fairly short read if you're not familiar with it, but its main goal is enabling pay transparency to allow for people to know if they're being discriminated against with their wages and file a complaint with the CDLE.

The law went into effect January 1st, 2021.

The most visible part of the law has been the requirement for all job listings open to a CO resident to contain a salary range. If you've seen an increase in salary ranges on job postings recently you have this law to thank.

Some companies however have decided that excluding all Colorado residents for a remote job that can be filled by someone in any of the other 49 US states is better than sharing how much they're willing to pay..."

2 comments

I think many of these companies are simply too lazy to have their compliance department review listings, and have chosen to pull them instead. Which still reflects just as negatively on them, but isn't quite the same.

This law is absolutely a great step forward, but I've seen plenty of roles listing pay ranges like "Minimum - $30,200/annual Maximum - $289,200/annual," so I struggle to believe that the actual information disclosure is the issue at hand.

The max is helpful too as I keep running into companies that want to pay 60K or 70K.
I had a recruiter e-mail me once to pitch a 6-month PHP programming contract that expected a Master's degree and 5 years experience that was only going to pay $15/hr.
I pity the poor fellow who must advertise that.
My guess is it has less to do with laziness and more to do with the financial cost of opening yourself up to lawsuits if you can't prove the wage difference isn't due to sexual discrimination.

While I like the idea of forcing these companies to list salary on job posts I'm not sure I agree with the reason the bill was put in place.

If I were a company I'd avoid CO as well. Plenty of other places to pick up employees.

>My guess is it has less to do with laziness and more to do with the financial cost of opening yourself up to lawsuits if you can't prove the wage difference isn't due to sexual discrimination.

Why would they not be equally open to that risk right now? I am not seeing any special connection between publicly listing a pay range and an applicant's gender.

Because the jobs aren't open to CO residents.

https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb19-085

Here's the bill's summary:

>Wage discrimination based on sex - complaints - civil action - exceptions to prohibitions against wage differentials - prohibited acts of employer - employment announcements required - enforcement - rules. The act removes the authority of the director of the division of labor standards and statistics in the department of labor and employment (director) to enforce wage discrimination complaints based on an employee's sex and instead authorizes the director to create and administer a process to accept and mediate complaints of, and provide legal resources concerning, alleged violations and to promulgate rules for this purpose. An aggrieved person may bring a civil action in district court to pursue remedies specified in the act.

Ah, yes, I can see why that would be an issue. I was under the assumption liability possibilities would only start after someone was hired.
Wouldn't it leave them open to "I have above the minimum qualifications and experience and yet your offer is near the bottom of the range, not near the top" discrimination suits (in addition to the status quo risk of lawsuits if the company actually does pay similarly qualified men more)
I do not know if that would be an issue, but I do see CountDrewku's point that the job listing itself might cause problems the way the law was enacted:

https://www.colorado.edu/hr/colorados-equal-pay-equal-work-a...

Salary ranges are typically pretty wide though so I'm not sure how much secret info this will leak.
The advertised minimum pay is what matters, as employers will have to increase the minimum pay to attract more and/or quality job applicants.
Only if the advertised minimum has to be the actual minimum someone at the company is making, and not a theoretical minimum that the salary band encompasses.

Because if it's a theoretical minimum, I don't care about it; I want to know what the maximum is. If it's an actual minimum, I also don't care about it, but the person earning that might.

If a company offers $1 as their minimum, then applications will know they are a joke. They will have to keep moving this minimum up and up to be taken more seriously.

If a company offers $50k as a minimum for a role that most people earn $200k for, then they probably will not get many good people responding to it since who would want to work for a company that could lowball you by $150k? And another company can see that and up their minimum to take advantage.

It just helps weed the garbage employers out quickly. Perhaps it will not be as useful in a situation where employers have all the negotiating power where they can list $1, but at least now there is some time saved.

In theory the minimum and maximum are pretty detached from the actual salary negotiations - since you can bargain up the salary (at least within the range). However, it's like screening resumes by tech keywords - sure that C++ Systems Programmer with 20 years of experience as a senior dev might be able to pick up Java in like a week - but the algorithm didn't see Java anywhere in the resume so into the bin it goes.

This is basically just letting employees do a similar first pass of employers that employers are doing on us - if your salary range is bonkers and your senior dev has a low range of 30k then I'm not working there - I don't care if you offer me 150k, you clearly have something toxic going on with your culture so into the bin you go.