Colorado House passes bill to limit surveillance pricing and wage setting (coloradonewsline.com)

by jprs 63 comments 127 points
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63 comments

[−] jrochkind1 49d ago

> Republican Rep. Chris Richardson, an Elbert County Republican, argued that the bill is too broad and could regulate standard analytic usage in the workplace, such as a human resources software that recommends a pay band for employees based on performance.

He does not think this is is just selling it further? Oh no, it might prohibit software automatically determining my wages, how could we even have a society if we don't let computers figure out the least they can pay me without me quitting.

[−] Balgair 48d ago
Oh man the Colorado GOP is a complete mess these days.

One of the frontrunners for the governorship is just spouting straight antisemitic garbage: https://www.9news.com/article/news/politics/gop-gubernatoria...

Edit: He withdrew this morning and is running for the GOP chair now.

Bobert is quiet these days but I'm sure she'll ramp up after her primary closes.

The various school boards are perennial sources of my idiocy. My (former) board would go into public meetings and just openly and freely admit to crimes.

The county commissioners in DougCo recently decided to fine the victims of shoplifting from r not reporting it. No, you didn't read that wrong.

So, in summary, the GOP and many, but not all, of their state level membership aren't really sending their best these days.

[−] tzs 49d ago
How do you get from "pay band [...] based on performance" to "least they can pay me without quitting"?
[−] cobertos 49d ago
Why would corporate software be incentivized to recommend a pay band any higher than the least the employee would take? The incentives are not aligned
[−] tzs 48d ago
Choosing a pay band based on performance and setting the pay bands as low as they can losing all their employees are orthogonal.

Suppose you are an employer and you have 5 junior engineers. You wish to promote one to senior engineer, which includes a move to a higher pay band. How do you decide which one gets the promotion?

Most companies are going to decide which one to promote at least partly based on performance data. Do they consistently finish things on time? What is the defect rate in their work? Do they work well with others? Do they need a lot of help compared to their peers or are the who their peers turn to when the peers need help? Does their work show skill above what would normally be found in junior engineer work?

From what has been quoted by or about the objects that one representative had it is that he thinks the bill has been written too broadly and could be construed as prohibiting using job performance data like that in deciding promotions.

[−] margalabargala 49d ago
Most companies want not the least an employee will take right now, but the least that will keep that employee around rather than jumping ship.
[−] jrochkind1 48d ago
I think most people getting a paycheck get there on their own, and this guy is accidentally helping to sell the bill.
[−] LocalH 48d ago
current and historical capitalist trends, that's how
[−] thegreatpeter 49d ago
“I absolutely agree that consumers and wage earners should not be exploited by the use of their data,” he said. “But it’s still overly broad and it’s still overly vague in very important parts. And I believe it’s overly simplistic in its definition of wage setting.”
[−] thayne 49d ago
I like the idea, but I'm not sure how enforceable it will be in practice. It seems like it would be relatively difficult to prove a company is using surveillance pricing, and companies may just accept the risk of paying a fine.
[−] kotaKat 49d ago
Is this the "electronic ink pricetags bad" thing that the UFCW keeps peddling because "it takes clerk work away"?

I still don't understand how they think we're going to change UPC pricing live per-person in the physical retail environment. Does the price tag change depending who looks at it? What if two people look at it at the same time? They obviously both can't be surveillance priced at that moment. The UFCW is mad they don't understand they can re-skill the worker that was trained to stick little paper labels up that they can now maintain pricetag batteries and hardware instead.

[−] throwaway85825 49d ago
It would be better to just mandate disclosure of the algorithms and data for all prices determined by algorithm.
[−] Sephr 49d ago
Going to be interesting to see how this affects Uber prices in Colorado. afaict Uber heavily engages in surveillance pricing but claims otherwise, deferring to 'discount' terminology.
[−] danny_codes 49d ago
Very good news. Capitalism is going off the rails and needs to be heavily reigned in.
[−] IG_Semmelweiss 49d ago
seems incomplete. There's no point in banning anything, if anyone can just do something banned, flout the law, with no consequences.

and -at least in this article- the consequences seem noticeably missing

EDIT: Althought the article does not include it, the bill (linked from the article) does.

[−] pugchat 49d ago
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[−] jrochkind1 49d ago
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[−] OptionOfT 49d ago
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[−] eru 49d ago
Sounds like the usual populism. I guess in practice people will route around the insanity.