We live in an information society; However, the one piece of information that is most important to the American worker is a well kept secret. That piece of information is the value of the their labor in the current market.
The bid process for labor is perhaps the most inefficient market on the planet. To get even a single bid, a worker must spend several weeks, and approach multiple employers in long drawn out interview process. This interview process consumes a large amount of human energy and rarely provides the worker with accurate information on the true value of their labor.
Since workers have less information in the negotiation process, it is common for people to make extremely poor decisions, and end up in situations where they are inadequately compensated. Negotiations based on inadequate information not only chear the worker, but often lead to situations where the worker is not as productive as they would have been if they had access to high quality accurate information on the value of their labor.
Entry level employees are left in an even worse disadvantage. Often the only accurate piece of information that an entry level employee has is the minimum wage, and are apt to negotiate their compensation in relation to the minimum wage, than with the prevailing market.
Rather than setting employment rates through a minimum wage, the government should publish going rates for different positions and experience levels for different regions. By giving workers such information, it will be easier to negotiate wages. The fact that companies have conspired to keep wage information a secret has worked to the detriment of employees, and has put them in a severely subservient position. The reason that wages often seem out of step with the economy, is that the business community has conspired to deny important information from workers. Simply providing high quality, accurate information will do more to preven the abuse of employees than any amount of legislation.
A capitalist society does not work when one side of a negotiation conspires to hide information from another. It only works when both sides have reliable information for the basis of the negotiation. Of course, publishing the exact wages for each employee in a company would violate employee's privacy and would cause in fighting between employees. Such an extreme is not needed. There are ways to write algorithms to abstract general information from the payroll that would be useful in the negotiation process. Providing such information might also save a job applicant the time involved in interviewing for a job that she take because the salary is too low.
The index for wages should simply be public information for prevailing skill sets and experience levels by region. It is not good practice to allow employers to compete on how good they are at negotiating down wages. Companies skilled at negotiating down wages, usually are not the most productive companies. It would be better for the economy for people to avoid these organizations, and to let the more productive industries thrive.
Employees should be encouraged to leave such companies and apply their labor where it is most productive. The best way to achieve this ideal is to provide them information on prevailing wages.
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