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The bonus blind spot in US pay transparency

美国薪酬透明法的奖金盲点

There’s one day every year that Matt, a trader at a Wall Street bank, both anticipates and dreads. On this day in January, Matt and his colleagues are summoned – one by one – into their line manager’s office to be told their annual bonus.“It’s an age-old ritual and a huge deal,” says Matt. “In one number, I’m told whether I’ve done a good job or failed.” 

马特是华尔街一家银行的交易员，每年一月份的某一天会令他既期待又害怕。这天，部门经理会将马特和同事们挨个叫到办公室，告诉他们年终奖事宜。"这是一个惯例，也是一件大事，"马特说。"一年工作的好坏全看年终奖多少。

Matt works in Manhattan, where pay-transparency legislation is slated to come into effect in November. The New York City-wide law will require employers to include a salary range and position description in each job advertisement. Research shows that women and minority workers tend to ask for less money when applying for jobs, so publishing pay ranges is one strategy that several cities and states have adopted to try to stamp out inequalities.

马特在曼哈顿工作，该城市的薪酬透明制立法预计将于11月生效。纽约市的法律明文规定，要求雇主在招聘广告中说明薪资水平和职位描述。研究表明，女性和少数族裔工人在求职时往往不求高薪，因此部分州和城市选择公布薪资水平，以试图消除不平等现象。  

But the law’s definition of salary does not include all forms of compensation; benefits like insurance are excluded, as are commissions and discretionary forms of payment like the stock and bonuses that make up a sizable portion of Matt’s annual pay cheque. Other pay transparency laws, such as the new legislation in California, also omit these types of compensation from their definition of salary.

但法律层面的薪资并不包括所有形式的报酬，比如，保险等福利被排除在外，佣金和股票、奖金等（公司）可自行决定的付款形式也并未包括在其中，而这些都是马特年薪支票中的重要部分。其他薪酬透明法，如加利福尼亚州的新立法，也在其对工资的定义中省略了这些类型的补偿。

In industries like banking, insurance, technology and real estate, significant chunks of compensation are discretionary. So, while human-resource professionals and academics have generally applauded the movement towards pay transparency as a means of remedying inequities, they are also warning of a significant risk: the narrow scope of many of the new laws may actually render them ineffective, because major proportions of people’s compensation are not covered.

在银行、保险、技术和房地产等行业，公司可自行决定的补偿有很多。因此，尽管人力资源专业人士和学术界普遍赞扬薪酬透明化运动是纠正薪资不公的一种手段，但他们也警告说有一个重大风险：许多新法律的范围狭窄，实际上可能使它们失去效力，因为人们的大部分报酬没有被包括在内。

And, in industries in which pay gaps are the most dramatic, the law’s bonus blind spot might even exacerbate existing divides.Across the US, a slate of new pay-transparency legislation broadly falls into two categories: laws, like New York City’s, which require transparency at the point of advertising a position; and laws that force employers to publish information on the mean and median salary that they pay certain groups of employees, often broken down by gender and race. In September, California passed laws mandating employers of a certain size to do both.  

而且，在薪酬差距最大的行业中，奖金的法律盲点甚至可能加剧现有分歧。美国新推出的一系列薪酬透明法大致分为两类：像纽约市这样的法律，要求在发布职位广告时保持透明度；以及迫使雇主公布他们支付给某些员工群体（通常按性别和种族分类）的平均工资和中位数信息。9月，加利福尼亚州通过了法律，规定一定规模的雇主必须做到这两点。  

The latter type of law particularly can provide some evidence for how different groups of workers progress within a company, and whether imbalances – dictated by race, gender or sexual orientation, for example – exist.

后一种类型的法律尤其可以提供一些证据，说明不同群体的工人在公司内的发展状况，以及是否存在不公现象，如由种族、性别或性取向决定的不公现象。

材料来源：BBC

翻译：Gleen