[TL;DR – many employers aren't allowed to prevent discussion of salaries between employees, as it's a violation of federal law. My employer told me not to discuss a raise because not everyone is getting one, so I filed an ethics complaint.]
I work for a major corporation. I recently received a random market rate adjustment raise, and was told “don't talk about it because not everyone is getting one”.
Pisses me off they way they do this, and then try to find out “who talked” when such things are discussed. I decided to submit an ethics complaint about it the next day. The text of my complaint is below, anonymized, but really this could apply to almost every major corporation in the USA, as most probably violate this law in some way.
Feel free to copy, edit, and paste for your own complaint (change it up to fit, of course) if you've similarly been told not to discuss salaries and you work for a company that qualifies (any company covered by the National Labor Relations Act).
My Ethics Complaint;
In [CITY], there has been a year’s long standard statement when we receive raises or promotions, etc, related to pay to “Don't discuss this with anyone”. It has been the standard with many managers I've had over many years, and seems to be a pervasive thought process within [COMPANY] management from what I've heard from others about their managers that it's ok to tell employees this.
IT'S NOT OK.
In fact, it's a violation of Federal Law, Executive Order 11246 which states in part: “The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because such employee or applicant has inquired about, discussed, or disclosed the compensation of the employee or applicant or another employee or applicant.”
Recently several employees in [CITY] received a market rate adjustment raise, and were told “don't talk about this because not everyone is getting one.” This is against federal law for them to tell us this, for them to enforce this, and for them to hold this against us if we do talk about it. If they are ashamed of their unethical behavior being found out by those who didn't get a raise, they should give everyone the raise, not ask us to keep their secret. They need to be made aware of our rights as employees to discuss such things, and they should know that they can't in any way hold discussing it against us.
[COMPANY] should immediately notify all of the managers that it's a violation for employers to prevent employees from discussing salaries, pay, etc.
Also, at this point because of how long [COMPANY] managers have been doing this and saying this to employees, they should send out a notification to employees that they have been wrong to tell us not to talk about this, and that we are free to discuss such information amongst ourselves, and they have been wrong to tell us otherwise over the years. Just silently correcting this after years of their actions still leaves employees feeling guilty or like they will get in trouble if they exercise their rights to discuss these things.
If the pay disparities between employees are such that [COMPANY] doesn't want employees talking about their pay, they should FIX the pay disparities instead of violating federal laws to pressure employees with fear of retaliation to keep the information private.