Can an employer fire an employee for discussing a raise? You have a great Office Supervisor that deserves additional compensation for her dependable work. You decide to reward her with a fantastic performance review and an excellent raise. But, because not all of your your employees are exceptional and you have only so much money to go around, you would prefer that the Office Supervisor keep her raise to herself and not share this information with her co-workers. As she leaves your office, you tell her: By the way, I would prefer you not tell anyone about your raise. If you do, it may cause a lot of disruption in the office, and hurt other employee’s feelings. Actually, I need to trust that you will not tell anyone in this office or you may lose your job over it.
From an employer’s point of view, this statement may seem like a good reminder, given what you think about the other employees, how fairly you want to compensate the other employees, and how much you appreciate the hard work and dedication of this particular employee over the others, given that cash flow is tight. You know your business and what your limits are, and you just don’t want to deal with all the other employees’ complaints. The bottom line is you want the raise to go to the person who earned it, you believe it is reasonable to ask that some things remain private, and frankly, you don’t want to have to explain yourself.
Can you say this to your employee? The answer is: NO. In fact, it is illegal.
Under the National Labor Relations Act, employers cannot prevent employees from discussing wages, salaries, raises, evaluations, cuts in pay, bonuses, benefits, or anything related to their employment among themselves. Employees may discuss ALL WORKING conditions among themselves and they are free to organize, share information and band together as a group. As taken from the NLRB website:
“The law we enforce gives employees the right to act together to try to improve their pay and working conditions, with or without a union. If employees are fired, suspended, or otherwise penalized for taking part in protected group activity, the National Labor Relations Board will fight to restore what was unlawfully taken away. These rights were written into the original 1935 National Labor Relations Act and have been upheld in numerous decisions by appellate courts and by the U.S. Supreme Court”
More specifically, Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act clearly states:
“Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all such activities.”
You may then wonder, can I as an employer discuss one employee’s raise with another employee? The answer is again: NO.
Whereas employees can discuss all work related information with each other, you as an employer must protect the privacy of every employee, and you are not allowed to discuss information regarding one employee with another employee, unless that employee is a supervisor; and even then, information can only be shared that is relevant/necessary for the supervisor to do the job, and nothing more. For example: An employer and a supervisor may discuss an employee’s bonus only if that employee is working directly under that supervisor. An employer may not “tell” an employee anything about another employee’s bonus. [Read more…]