> Also, it's bad for small business owners, because then the large businesses could see what they are paying and much more easily poach employees.

That sounds a bit like (apologies for the strawman): "small business needs to be able to exploit employees to survive."

If small business can't survive without that, perhaps the problem lies elsewhere?

This is a double-edged sword, though.

For employees, working at a large company that has already achieved economies of scale is probably a better paycheck -- they have the budget to be able to pay you better.

For society, though, we definitely don't want those small businesses (which don't have the same efficiencies or economies of scale) to be boxed out by large corporations across the board.

Not that this means that we shouldn't have pay transparency (people can and should be able to make their own decisions), but the inability of small businesses to match the salaries of huge corporations is pretty unavoidable.

I agree, the small business has to bring something else to the table, such as greater scope of responsibility or quicker execution.

Transparent pay is great for the employees, but it's still a downside to the company.

The employee would benefit from more transparency, but that doesn't mean it is exploitation.

Not

> Also, it's bad for small business owners, because then the large businesses could see what they are paying and much more easily poach employees.

I don't follow - to rephrase what you're saying, it's bad for small business owners because their (underpaid) employees will be paid more by (larger) other businesses?

Sounds like the employees of said businesses will overwhelming benefit if what you're saying is true.

Absolutely. It would be great for the employees, just not the businesses.

Ah, I misunderstood - I thought you were arguing that was a downside for an employee. Apologies.

This sounds like grasping at straws, I mean your arguments against pay transparency is that there would be some more meetings and that somehow this would enable big companies to easier poach employees of small business? I don't know where you work, but discussions about salary are such a small blib in the overall number of meetings, that even if (and that's a big if) pay transparency would increase the number of those meetings by a factor 10, it would hardly register for the vast number of employees amongst the flood of other stupid meetings.

And it would make poaching of employees from small businesses easier because they suddenly know about the salaries that they didn't have a clue about before? I don't know what you think the recruiters at of the big players do all day, I would bet they have very good ideas what all the other players pay. If anything it would help small businesses who don't have the money to pay top recruiters.

I agree with everything you said. Like I said, I think it's a good policy, but there are downsides, just not to the employee.