Comment by bjornsing
5 months ago
> My question is, isn't this specifically anti-competitive wage fixing? This seems exactly like RealPage but for employee compensation. As far as I know, colluding on wages like this is illegal.
As long as Pave just helps employers look backward in time so to speak I’m not sure I’d call it collusion. But if they enable some kind of coordination between future potential employers, then yes, maybe it is.
In the RealPage case the coordination aspect consisted of providing a recommended rent for the property if I understand it correctly. I guess the equivalent for Pave would be if they gave a recommendation on what compensation to offer.
Companies compare pricing all the time even if it doesn't involve smoke-filled rooms with execs doing tit-for-tat. You don't think your local grocery store knows what the other local chain is charging (or what they're paying their employees)?
Sure. And as I said there’s nothing illegal about that, as long as it’s about historical and current prices. But if your local grocer walks over to their competitor and has a conversation about what the prices (or salaries) should be tomorrow, then that’s illegal in many jurisdictions. The same rules should apply if they use software.
I don't actually know what the letter of the law is in US, much less other countries and depending on public sector vs. private. But, yeah, there's a lot of information sharing both direct and (often) indirect on existing and past pricing on at least the aggregate level and sometimes at a more specific level.
As you say, the boundary is often about what pricing should be next year. But there's often a lot of nudge-nudge-wink-wink given good information about what prices and salaries are today.
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