Court Sides With Workers Fired for Sharing Their Pay

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled on May 26, 2026 that a software company broke federal labor law when it fired an engineer for creating a salary spreadsheet his coworkers used to compare pay. As HR Dive reported, the case, Vermont Information Processing, Inc. v. NLRB, reaffirms a right that many workers do not realize they have: in most private-sector jobs, you can talk about what you earn without being legally fired for it. At Metaintro, we track the labor news that shapes your paycheck, and this ruling is a useful reminder that pay transparency is not just a workplace trend. For most American employees, it is a federally protected activity backed by decades of law.

What Exactly Did the Court Decide?

The dispute centers on Vermont Information Processing, a Colchester, Vermont software firm that has operated since 1972 and employs nearly 600 people building software for beverage makers and distributors. According to the National Labor Relations Board record and reporting by Human Resources Director, the trouble began in February 2022 after engineer Christopher Bendel met with his supervisor to discuss how a company restructuring would affect his role. The meeting went poorly. Later that day, Bendel messaged a coworker and floated the idea of starting a salary spreadsheet so engineers could see how their pay compared. The spreadsheet was then shared with several other engineers on the team.

Events moved quickly once management found out. As Vermont Public documented, the company disabled Bendel's accounts and fired him within roughly 90 minutes of discovering the spreadsheet, then terminated three coworkers the next day after an IT review surfaced the group's internal messages. An administrative law judge ruled the firings unlawful in July 2023 and ordered back pay, and the labor board affirmed that finding on November 5, 2024. The company appealed, setting up the federal court showdown.

The D.C. Circuit upheld the core of the board's decision regarding Bendel, agreeing that firing the person who created and shared the spreadsheet violated federal labor law. The court rejected the company's arguments that Bendel was let go for disrupting the restructuring, misusing company technology, or being disloyal, treating those explanations as pretext rather than the real reason. At the same time, the court did not give the board a clean sweep. It vacated the finding for three other employees, ruling that the board had improperly expanded the case to cover broad conversations about workplace conditions when the original complaint focused only on the spreadsheet itself. The court said the board had "stretched the charged conduct beyond its breaking point" and that it had "prejudicially erred" by not giving the employer fair notice of what it had to defend against.

Is Talking About Your Pay Actually Legal?

For most private-sector workers in the United States, yes. The right to discuss wages with coworkers comes from Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, a 1935 law better known for governing unions. Section 7 protects what the law calls "concerted activity," which is two or more employees acting together to improve their working conditions. Comparing salaries to figure out whether you are being paid fairly falls squarely inside that protection, whether or not a union is involved.

This is the legal backbone of the Vermont Information Processing ruling. The salary spreadsheet was a classic example of concerted activity: multiple engineers pooling information to understand their pay. When the company fired the worker who organized that effort, it ran into a wall of established labor law. The U.S. Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have long signaled that pay secrecy policies can run afoul of federal rules, and this decision adds another federal court voice to that chorus.

There are limits worth knowing. The protection generally covers rank-and-file employees, not supervisors or managers who have genuine authority over others. Independent contractors and certain agricultural and domestic workers fall outside the act entirely. Public-sector workers are covered by separate state and local rules rather than the federal labor act. For the large middle of the workforce, though, the right is real and enforceable, and a violation can lead to reinstatement and back pay, as the labor board ordered here.

Why Do Employers Keep Trying to Stop It?

Pay secrecy benefits employers in a simple way: when workers do not know what their peers earn, they have less leverage to negotiate. A spreadsheet that lays everyone's salary side by side can expose gaps that are awkward to explain and expensive to fix. That is why some companies still maintain informal cultures, or even written policies, discouraging pay talk, even though blanket bans have been on shaky legal ground for years.

Those gaps are not hypothetical. According to the Census Bureau, women working full-time, year-round earned 80.9 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024, down from 82.7 cents the prior year, the second straight annual decline in that ratio. The bureau also notes on its Equal Pay Day page that the gap persists across most occupations, and the Equal Pay Act makes unequal pay for equal work unlawful. When salaries stay hidden, those differences are far harder for any individual worker to spot, let alone challenge.

Reporting from OnLabor and coverage of the case by outlets including Law360 note that disputes like this one are increasingly playing out over digital tools. Workplace chat apps, shared documents, and group messages have made it easier than ever for employees to compare notes, and just as easy for employers to see those conversations happening. The Vermont Information Processing case is a preview of how courts are treating that new reality, where a casual message asking "want to start a spreadsheet?" can become the center of a federal labor dispute. The momentum is also moving toward more openness, not less. A growing number of states, more than a dozen jurisdictions plus Washington, D.C. by recent tallies, now require employers to post pay ranges or disclose them during hiring, part of a broader pay transparency push that legal observers expect to keep expanding through 2027. Against that backdrop, punishing workers for doing privately what the law increasingly forces companies to do publicly looks more and more out of step.

What Does the Procedural Part Mean for Workers?

The part of the ruling that went against the labor board is technical, but it carries a practical lesson. The court did not say the three other employees lacked the right to talk about their pay. It said the board had not properly charged the company for those specific conversations, so the employer never got a fair chance to respond. In legal terms, that is a due-process problem, not a verdict that the workers were wrong.

For everyday workers, the takeaway is about how these cases get built rather than whether the underlying right exists. Protection for pay discussions is strong, but enforcement depends on the facts being clearly documented and the complaint being precisely framed. The spreadsheet was concrete and well defined, and that part of the case held up. The looser claims about general workplace chatter did not, because they were not pinned down the same way.

That distinction matters if you ever find yourself in a dispute. Specifics win. A clear record of what was shared, with whom, and why tends to fare far better than a vague complaint about a hostile or secretive culture. The lesson is not that broader conversations are unprotected. It is that the strongest claims are the ones built on concrete, documented activity, and that the board itself can be reined in when it reaches past the facts it actually charged.

What Does This Mean for Your Career?

If you have ever hesitated to ask a coworker what they earn, this ruling is your green light to reconsider, within reason. Knowing the going rate on your team is one of the most powerful pieces of information you can bring into a raise conversation or a job negotiation. Federal law protects your ability to gather that information with colleagues, and a federal appeals court just reaffirmed it.

A few practical steps follow from the decision. First, you can compare salaries with coworkers without legally risking your job for the act of comparing itself, as long as you are a covered employee. Second, keep it professional and factual, since the protection covers concerted activity about working conditions, not harassment or the disclosure of genuinely confidential business secrets. Third, use the public tools available to you, such as government wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to benchmark your role before you walk into any negotiation. The bureau's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program publishes median and percentile pay for hundreds of jobs by state and metro area, which is exactly the kind of neutral baseline that strengthens a raise request.

It is also worth knowing your recourse. If you believe you were disciplined or fired for discussing pay, you can file a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, generally within six months of the action. The Vermont Information Processing case shows that those charges can succeed, all the way up to a federal appeals court, and can end in reinstatement and back pay. Pay transparency is not just a cultural shift happening around you. It is a right you can use, and increasingly, one the courts are willing to defend.

How Does This Fit the Bigger Pay Transparency Trend?

This single case lands in the middle of a much larger movement. Over the past few years, pay transparency laws have spread across states and major cities, employer review and salary-comparison resources have multiplied, and younger workers in particular have grown comfortable discussing compensation openly. The Vermont Information Processing decision does not create the trend, but it reinforces the legal foundation underneath it.

The policy push and the workplace right reinforce each other. Posted ranges tell you what an employer is willing to advertise, while peer conversations protected under Section 7 tell you what people in your building actually take home. Reading the two together is how workers turn scattered data points into real negotiating leverage, and it is why the U.S. Department of Labor frames pay transparency as an equal-pay tool rather than just a disclosure formality.

For job seekers, the combined effect is more information and more leverage than workers had even five years ago. When you can see posted salary ranges, benchmark against public data, and compare notes with peers without fear of automatic termination, you negotiate from a stronger position. The court's ruling is one more signal that the era of pay secrecy is fading, and that the law is on the side of workers who want to understand their own worth.

People Also Asked

Q: Can my employer fire me for discussing my salary with coworkers?

A: In most private-sector jobs, no. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protects employees who discuss wages and working conditions together as "concerted activity." The Vermont Information Processing ruling reaffirmed that firing a worker for organizing a salary comparison violates federal labor law. Supervisors, contractors, and some other categories of workers are not covered.

Q: What was the Vermont Information Processing v. NLRB case about?

A: A software company fired an engineer who created a salary spreadsheet his coworkers used to compare pay, along with several colleagues. The D.C. Circuit ruled on May 26, 2026 that firing the spreadsheet's creator was illegal, while sending part of the case back over how the labor board had framed its complaint against the other employees.

Q: What should I do if I am punished for talking about pay?

A: You can file a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, generally within six months of the adverse action. Keep a clear record of what was discussed and shared, since concrete, well-documented activity is the strongest basis for a claim. Consulting an employment attorney early can help you understand your options.

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