The Law and Social Norms of Pay Secrecy

According to conventional wisdom, we live in a confessional age where one's sexual practices and mental health history are common water-cooler and dinner conversation subjects. Yet conventional wisdom also tells us that people do not want to discuss their finances. "Money talk" is the last conversational taboo. The American workplace is one arena in which the money-talk taboo has important implications, and in a recent article, Professors Leonard Bierman and Rafael Gely (2004) explore this realm by applying social norms theory to the issue of workplace pay secrecy. This reply essay expands on Bierman's and Gely's themes and explains why further investigation into the relationship between law, social norms, and pay secrecy is required. In particular, the paper argues that discussions of the law and norms of pay secrecy would be enriched by the development of a normative theory of pay secrecy - a theory that specifically identifies the contexts in which pay secrecy is socially beneficial, and sets forth the metric by which social welfare is being measured in evaluating pay secrecy regimes.