[asoneth]

This seems common in my experience.

I am not brave enough to name and shame, but I worked as a low-level manager at a US-based financial services firm and my boss asked us to discourage our reports from discussing pay or bonuses. He seemed genuinely surprised when I pointed out that us doing so would be a violation of labor law. Long-story short, we ran it up the flagpole and the company ended up including it in manager training.