A campaign against sideboards on pay transparency

Plus medical tourism, unionizing security guards and some recommended reading

You shouldn’t need a Magic 8 Ball to know what a job pays. That was the theme of a law firm’s campaign to kill attempts to put sideboards on a newish state law that requires pay transparency in job ads.

Employers are obliged to list salary ranges in job postings per state law that took effect in 2023. A trio of bills in Olympia would have raised the bar for candidates to sue their prospective bosses. That’s a response to a cottage industry of lawsuits.

The first, from Rep. Osman Salahuddin, D-Redmond, would redefine job candidates as applicants with “genuine intent” in the given job. You can read the Redmond Democrat’s proposal as a sort of deterrent against insincere interviewees piling onto class-action lawsuits. House Bill 2377 says the quiet part out loud in Section 1: “…the law should not incentivize opportunistic litigation by individuals who have no genuine interest in employment.” The proposal would, per the bill, protect employers from getting sued over innocent typos.