Talk:Salary/Archives/2012

'Etymology'

The etymology previously read:

'Salari' derives from the Greek root sal-,< !-- http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/roots/zzs00400.html meaning salt-- >

but this appears to be a misinterpretation of the yourdictionary entry. This is the entry for the Indo-European root 'sal-', which ends up as 'sal' in Latin, but 'hal' in Greek. 'sal-' is not the Greek root for salt, it is the Latin root. --Macrakis 7 July 2005 20:00 (UTC)

There was a bit of an edit war on the question of whether the value of salt in medieval barter was etymology and whether it was relevant. I decided that it was rather History, and at first included it there. But on further consideration, it seemed to be that knowing that salt was used in medieval barter was just a weak way of reinforcing the point that people had at some point been paid with/for salt. It seemed to me that the real support of salt-for-work needed to be established in Rome or earlier if it was to be relevant. That's what inspired me to include the pre-Roman reference in Ezra 4:14. In this way, we could establish that salt as pay was a very old/strong concept that the Romans adopted --KevinCuddeback 15 July 2005

I also ultimately agreed salarium might be in the etymology of "worth one's salt" is but that it doesn't work the other way around: being worth' one's salt did is not the origin of the word salary but rather an interesting/notable historical byproduct of salary's origin. I included "worth one's salt" in the history as a way of solidifying the salt-salarium-work connection before going on to the more relevant discussion of the evolution of salaried work--KevinCuddeback 15 July 2005

There is a legitimate dispute on what the origins were of salarium itself. None dispute that salary comes from salarium and that salarium comes from salt's use as payment for work. Pliny was not a particulary careful historian, and was no etymologist. He was writing well after the time that soldier's pay may have switched from being "of salt" to being paid in a solidus coin "for salt". Pliny happened to be writing about water in general as part of a science book (his Natural History), and had gotten to the topic of sea water in particular, which got him onto the topic of salt and he happened to digress into noting the apparent (to him) relationship between salt and soldier pay. But while he came down on one side of things, others make a strong case for other meanings of a payment of/belonging/attributable to salt--KevinCuddeback 15 July 2005

So was there a decision to remove the etymology? I see it deleted now. Poweroid 14:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I reverted the deletion. The etymology should be there. Bascially everyone who has studied salary since Pliny has been intrigued by it. The anonymous IP from which the deletion occurred looks like it has a history of warnings and blocks, so I think it is fair to ask for a better reason from a more reputable source before giving up etymology. KevinCuddeback 15:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Links

Obviously there is a bit of an edit war in the last few versions around a determined effort to get Myplan dot com into the links section. I should disclose something that affects my POV, namely that I am a manager at Salary.com. I try to take off my work hat when writing here, and its a terrible dilemma on the appropriate wiki way of handling the links for this article. Back when I edited the links section (in a very early incarnation), I tried to create as diverse a set of english-language salary sites as possible. At that time, one issue was that a previously-relevant Australian site is now just a plain old job board (if they ever had salary data, it was gone/hidden when I looked). Admittedly, myplan.com is new (to me) and I did not include it at the time. I think the issues with Myplan will be threefold: first the lack of candor on the part of the posters in the link section and second the apparent laying on of SEO keywords in the description (Free and Salary and Calculator, which is essentially what all of the other sites are too, so I'm not sure it is neutral to have descriptions for the one and not the others). It would definitely be the case, however, if one was trying to improve Myplan's search engine ranking, that one would agonize over the position an inclusion of the word "free" (or at least I would). The third issue would be that Myplan is essentially republishing US Bureau of Labor Statistics data (albeit in a much handsomer format) so I don't know the wiki preference for duplicative sources if one happens to be a very cool reworking (in Myplan's case) of a very dull US Government site (the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in this case). Until someone with greater candor and a more neutral POV can characterize the sites linked, I think it better if they have no characterizations beyond country of relevance KevinCuddeback 23 October 2005

Here we are, 1.25 years later and the commercial spam links are still a problem. Disclosure: As noted above, I still work for Salary.com, the world's leading site on salary. You'll also note that I was able to maintain a WP:NPOV while writing much of the article as it still exists today. The most sincere wiki-community approach to links seesms that either a large list of links should be here (with serious thought as to how much value they add) or none, save the most neutral, like the US BLS should. The practice, however, of anymous addition of single, low-value links with an obvious commercial self-interest pages violates the WP:NPOV policy. I removed the "blogspot" link just now because it was clearly a low-value link (like a tip calculator, basically) with high-value Google Adwords all over it. I don't see how promoting that link is neutral--the editor has a direct money-per-visitor interest in promoting that link. KevinCuddeback 14:06, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I removed all but two, and did so in steps to clarify why and for easy revision. --Ronz 02:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

US Law

I streamlined the confusing links to the DOL and went for a direct quote:

"The FLSA requires that most employees in the United States be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek.

However, Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. Section 13(a)(1) and Section 13(a)(17) also exempt certain computer employees. To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $455 per week." Exemption for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer & Outside Sales Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

The and here is critical as only a very select number of jobs in the various categories are exempt just under job duties--BruceGrubb (talk) 11:26, 25 October 2009 (UTC)