Supervisor sent out email to everyone with the title of it being “CONFIDENTIAL” and all that was attached was our pay and pay increase for the year (It was bad ya’ll).
My understanding is that it’s illegal to try to prevent employees from speaking about pay. Marking as confidential sure does imply you’ll get in trouble for sharing it, but not sure if it’s enough of a problem that I should raise it with HR.
Anyone with more experience in the matter have an opinion?
EDIT: I guess some important context is this was added onto some other things they did. Like straight up saying we can’t verbally, and then heavy implication in a team meeting that we shouldn’t talk to each other about it and should bring it up to our supervisors. Of course neither of those were recorded.
I was just curious if this was a big enough deal for them to get a reminder that they can’t do that nonsense. Sounds like it’s not. But I also have OCPD so my sense of rule following is very extreme, and why I decided I should check in with ya’ll before I do anything.
Nope. Youre making a mountain out of an ant hill. The company probably has to mark your pay info as confidential. It’s your personal info, if you want to share it you can, just like medical info. Unless it’s company policy to post everyone’s pay publicly. In that case, everyone’s pay would be posted, but if not, they can’t tell others, but you can.
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Confidential for them to tell other people what your pay is.
Completely free for you to say what it is if you choose to.
Dno if that changes if you’re a contractor of some kind.just my 2 cents. youre being oversensitive. marking ‘confidential’ by some message system != ‘dont tell anyone or else’
It was manually marked as confidential, our system doesn’t put it in all caps by itself.
And what exactly do YOU think confidential means?
i think its not worth yours or anyone elses time sweating.
if you want to share your information with someone else you work with, you are legally entitled, go do that.
picking a fight over an email is just a stupid waste of resources.
I guess I should have added context that they openly are trying to discourage talking about pay, but only ever verbally said so in the past. My biggest concern is my co-workers don’t seem aware that it can’t legally be an enforce dpolicy, and I was wondering if this was enough to throw a fit.
But at the same time I am diagnosed OCPD, so perceived rule breaking of others does an absolute TRIP in my brain. So that’s why I asked ya’ll before doing anything.
So maybe the best course is just to one by one kindly remind people that no matter what middle management say in team meetings, if they want to talk about their pay, they should and legally are protected in doing so.
Of course its in their best interest for you not to, that doesn’t mean they can do a damn thing about it.
You could put up some posters informing folks of their rights… At least if you can do it discreetly enough to not be spotted.
Marking it as confidential in an email is not them telling you that you can’t share your own info. It’s warning you that the info inside the email may be something you don’t want to open when presenting etc.
A lot of companies will try to discourage you from talking about your pay. Unless they actually take action against you (i.e. teprimand/firing) there isn’t anything that you could bring to HR or a court.
Your reaction seems extreme for what would be typical corporate policy (i.e. confidential on an email like that).
Confidential is a wrong way to label that. It’s
PII: Personally Identifiable Information. So they must protect it so people don’t forward it and expose stuff like addresses and SSN. But it’s YOUR piiy do you can share it freely. And what you’re paid isn’t PII. Only other identifying information that probably goes along with it.It’s not illegal to try to prevent you from discussing wages. It is illegal to punish or retaliate against you for doing so. HR doesn’t care.
I have to mark emails I’m sending to others about pay as confidential to protect the company and myself. What you do with it after that point is up to you.
No US employer may legally forbid their workers from discussing their wages or working conditions with one another for the purpose of labor organization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Act_of_1935
Was there other information in there like your name, address, SIN, etc?
As others have said, not a big deal.
HR would probably not understand your concern, and most likely no action will ever be taken from it.
At least you got a raise tho! Congrats on that
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You probably have limited practical ways to do something about it (aside from freely talking to your coworkers, reporting to the NLRB if you’re in the US, and hoping they care), and anything you do does risk retaliation (illegal, but you need to understand that being right doesn’t mean people follow the law, or that the law will be enforced effectively).
Obviously you should be looking for a less shitty job regardless.
(The extra context is important - without it it would be no big deal. In Germany, sending your comp info by email would be illegal because privacy, and the envelope would definitely be labeled confidential).
I would say that you probably shouldn’t talk about what was in that email, but if you just happen to be talking to someone about what each of you makes, let them try to stop you.
