Recently, Reddit user No-Nerve6154 posted to the popular Ask Reddit page to ask people, “What’s something employers would never want employees to know because they would lose millions?”
Obviously, I had to read the answers, and they ranged from genuinely helpful to weirdly fascinating. While employers might not be losing millions from some of these things, they certainly don’t want you to know about them, either; so, naturally, I had to share. Here are some of people’s best answers:
1.”Any time your employer requires you to do something, you should be clocked in.”
“Meetings, trainings, and arriving early to ‘start your shift on time’ should all be considered time on the clock and you should be compensated for it. I’ve heard many managers/bosses in the past tell teams not to clock in for things like brief meetings, which is wage theft.”
—u/wizarddewd
2.”You’re allowed to talk to your coworkers about pay. The amount of people I’ve run into who thinking discussing wages is honestly a crime absolutely blows my mind.”
“Discuss what you make and if you’re not making as much as someone else, question it.”
“I (male) once worked on a team with a woman who had an identical job and more experience than me. Pay raise time: I got 50% more than her. And honestly, she was far better. I told her about it. Management fixed her pay and six months later fired us all.”
3.”Just because something is written company policy doesn’t make it law or legal.”
NBC
“Anything can be argued in a court and policy that blatantly breaks the law or infringes on your rights won’t hold up.”
“My favorite was a hotel I worked at that wanted everyone to sign off on a new drug policy. The new policy prohibited staff from providing drugs, legal or otherwise, or alcohol, to coworkers or patrons, whether for money or free.
The problem was, I was the hotel bartender. So I refused to sign. Pointed it out to the owner, and had a laugh as he tossed them all out.
Every other restaurant staff member had signed it already.”
—u/iordseyton
4.”You can claim unemployment in the US even if you are still working. If they cut your hours enough to the point you’re no longer making the same kind of money you were, you can file for unemployment.”
5.”They actually can afford to give you a higher salary but choose not to.”
E! / Via giphy.com
6.”Most jobs don’t actually need 40 hours a week to get things done. If you cut out pointless meetings and unnecessary tasks, people could finish their work in way less time. If everyone realized that, companies would probably have to pay for actual work done, not just hours spent.”
7.”The value of labor.”
8.”If you work for a large enough company, they literally have a department that pays people just to make sure unions don’t get formed. It’s usually called something like labor relations and the main crux of their job is to assess unionization risk of every move the company makes.”
“Couple that with the tactics company leaders use to disrupt/influence union votes, and it’s apparent that they are all scared shitless of this.”
9.”They don’t want you to know how much value you actually bring to a company, especially if you work in administrative, low-paid positions. These jobs enable companies to make a hell of a lot of money.”
ABC
10.”They don’t want you to know what ‘wage theft’ is and that it’s a crime. Even an inattentive employer can do it by accident. Shitty employers systematize it and steal millions from people.”
—u/LotusFlare
11.”Discussing pay is absolutely not allowed to be ‘against company policy.’ It’s against federal law for them to tell you that you can’t discuss wages.”
12.”They don’t want you to know that unions are a thing they find worth killing over.”
“Unions can seriously challenge employers’ power and force more equitable arrangements. Of course any large organization has the potential for inefficiency and corruption, but decades of propaganda has so many workers convinced that’s all unions offer.”
—u/GlassBelt
13.”HR is not there for the benefit of employees.”
—u/LuDdErS68
14.”You cannot be fired for jury duty. Most jury duty summons will explicitly state this outright on the summons itself. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to your face.”
“And no, at-will employment does NOT supersede this protection here in the US; jury duty is federally protected, even in at-will states. Even if you get fired under different circumstances, the timing alone could subject your employer to the court’s scrutiny (especially in states like Pennsylvania and California), which in many cases will NOT end well for them, especially if they cannot provide a legitimate paper trail.
My friend’s former boss learned this the hard way.”
15.”A lot of ‘urgent deadlines’ are completely made up. They’re just pressure tactics to squeeze more output without paying more.”
16.”Printer ink cartridges cost like nothing to be produced. Nobody seems to care though.”
—u/TomaszA3
“See also: insulin.”
—u/literatemax
17.”Employees COLLECTIVELY hold all the power. It’s why strikes and unions exist in theory. When the hourly people at a company organize against unfair or unequal treatment, boy howdy does that scare the shit out of a company.”
—u/rtthc
18.”How much profit they make off of your labor versus what you’re paid. It’s wild how the numbers stack up when you really break it down.”
19.”Most non-competes are illegal under ‘restraint of trade’ laws. It’s really just an attempt at employers getting folks thinking they are trapped there or would have to move or not work in their field in their area. It’s not legal.”
“Mainly because it allows employers to start abusing employees, freezing wages/promotions, etc. Ask to make it a yearly renewed one with no compete/no fire agreed to by each. I doubt you would get it, but they certainly would respect you knowing exactly what they are asking of you, and expecting the same in return.”
—u/dgrant92
20.And finally: “The dead peasants clause. Basically, the company that you work for gets to take out a life insurance policy on you, the employee.”
NBC
“That way if/when you die they are then able to collect most of what you have been paid throughout the years. Have a great day!”
—u/old-orphan
I don’t know about you, but I find these fascinating. If you have your own ideas about what employers don’t want employees to know, feel free to leave your thoughts down in the comments — I’d love to read all about it!
Source – https://uk.style.yahoo.com/20-things-employers-dont-want-023102416.html?