I work in Alabama and my employer shared the details of my salary to a customer. I felt that my privacy had been invaded and believed that the employer should have asked my consent before sharing such information. However, my employer insists that they did nothing wrong/illegal. Am I crazy or are employers supposed to keep employee salary info confidential? If I am not crazy, then where can I find the actual laws proving my case? Please help - Thanks!

Illegal. No! Wrong, probably! Your employer pays your salary so what they pay is information they own. They have a right to use that information. I would have to know what the circumstances were that they revealed your salary to say whether they committed a breach of ethics.

Many companies have open salaries, all of the employees of our church have their salaries posted on monthly statements to all of the church members. If you want to go to work for a government agency, their entire pay system is posted on the internet normally.

There is nothing illegal, not normally done but they can post everyone's pay on the wall if they wanted to. In fact to think about it, if you sell lets say insurance, often your pay is postedon a board where all agents have contests and their earnings are posted.

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Originally Posted by tigerpride

I work in alabama and my employer shared the details of my salary to a customer. I felt that my privacy had been invaded and believed that the employer should have asked my consent before sharing such information. However, my employer insists that they did nothing wrong/illegal. Am I crazy or are employers supposed to keep employee salary info confidential? If I am not crazy, then where can I find the actual laws proving my case? Please help - Thanks!

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Thanks for the answers. I'll share a bit more detail to help clarify. I am actually an independent contractor and the employers for whom I am currently working had a customer inquire about a private event and what that would cost. The employer responded to the customer by giving a price for the party - this price is posted on the company's website. When the customer asked if there was any way that they could get a better price, my employer told them that I get paid $x.xx for the non-party work that I provide for the employer and if the customer wanted to deal with me they could ask if I would work for less. I make a good amount of money in my field and because I am an independent contractor I am responsible for supporting myself. I felt that divulging the dollar amount of my current client/employer was an infraction on my rights as a contractor, only because it was done without my consent. Legally and/or ethically does this make the senario clearer and do I have legitimate angst?

Legally you are still out of the box. And I'm not sure there is an ethical problem either. What if the customer asked for an itemized list of the charges? The event organizer would be within their rights to provide a list of their expenses. Why is your rate different from what they pay for paper plates or tables and chairs? You unfer no obligation to cut your rate if you didn't want to.

Plus the fact that they were only giving your hourly rate for that job, doesn't violate your confidentiality. I just don't see a big problem here. What I would do is discuss this with your clients (not employers, if you are an independent contractor) and ask that, in the future, to ask you first if you are willing to negoitiate your price down for this job and either act as intermediary or put you in direct contact with their client, rather then discussing your rates with others.

If I am reading the situation correctly, you are worried that by telling someone else what they paid you, and suggesting that you might be willing to work for less, the person you have the contract with has violated your rights, and made it more difficult to negotiate a price with the new client. But I don't think that you have a case. You are, as you said, an independent contractor. And the other person in the contract is entitled to tell whoever they want how much they paid for the contracted work. You have probably done so yourself... talking to someone who mentions a car repair, for example, and said "oh, my guy charged me X for that. Maybe you should try him." And I have flat-out asked who I was considering using for a recommendation if they haven't been able to accommodate me for either timing or cost reasons. I figure they know the business and the good vendors better than I do, so why not ask for their advice?

Does your contract state that they can not give our your contract info?
May want to start including that