Is a business ready to fire employees for disclosing salaries?
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You can be fired for disclosing salaries – this is the explanation given by the Federal Service for Labor and Employment. Disseminating information about a colleague’s salary will result in a fine, reprimand or termination of the contract. The inspectorate explained the need for such measures by the shortage of personnel: employers are allegedly forced to pay new employees more in order to attract them. Is business ready to apply such measures? Daria Fomenko found out.
The number of vacancies on the labor market has increased by at least one and a half times. There are no more resumes or people wanting to find a job – the competition has decreased by a third, the results of 2023 have been summed up in Superjob. Job seekers, according to Kommersant FM’s interlocutors, have received greater freedom of choice, and companies now have to fight for them. The most obvious way is to offer a salary above the market, agrees Sergei Ryzhikov, co-founder of the Bitrix-24 service:
“Salary information is a big problem for employers. Any spread of it creates tension in teams. The problem here is not only with new employees, but even with those who have been working for a long time, but they had some special conditions for going to work when moving from another company.
Competition for employees is high and it happens that you have to offer personal conditions. And, of course, the dissemination of information about such agreements creates not only tension and resentment, but also other difficulties for entrepreneurs.”
Information about equal or even more comfortable conditions for new employees will probably not appeal to old-timers. However, large companies have prepared for discussions and dissatisfaction: almost all of them have long prescribed confidentiality conditions in their employment contracts, notes Yulia Paushkina, head of the Labor Law practice:
“The contract stipulates that such information is confidential and is not subject to disclosure. Information about wages cannot be classified as a trade secret, however, it may be personal data, the disclosure of which may also be subject to disciplinary liability. And in employment contracts, in labor regulations, conditions are prescribed that it is prohibited to disclose wages, and even more so the income of other employees. This is fraught with disciplinary action.”
Possible sanctions for disclosing someone else’s salary are usually immediately spelled out in the document. At a minimum, this is a reprimand; at worst, the employee will be fired. The legality of such decisions was confirmed by the labor inspectorate. However, against the backdrop of the personnel shortage that companies are trying to combat, the measure is unlikely to find application. For example, the owner of the Mr.Doors company, Maxim Valetsky, first simply talks with the offender:
“Unfortunately, they disclose, but as a rule, not their own income, but that of others. We have a negative attitude towards this. It is unlikely that this alone will be the reason for parting with an employee. Usually, if an employee begins to disclose information about other people’s salaries, then he has already entered a conflict zone somewhere. First of all, the task is to find out why the employee entered this conflict zone; first, you still need to talk. It happens that a person is burnt out and tired.”
This year, business does not expect the staff shortage to be eliminated. At least this is what follows from the HeadHunter survey. Over 80% of respondents answered that the problem will remain fundamental. To solve this problem, more than half of the managers intend to pay above the market average, analysts at the consulting company Rosexpert reported. And older employees willing to divulge sensitive information or protest injustice may have to become recruits elsewhere.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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