One of the most common types of employment-based green card sponsorships requires PERM labor certification. But do employers have to comply with applicable pay transparency laws when making their PERM recruitment efforts? At this point, the answer is, “Maybe.”
When employers sponsor applicants for certain green cards, regulations of the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor require the employers to first try to recruit U.S. workers for the position(s) at issue. The purpose of the requirement is to provide a “labor market test” to determine whether there is a shortage of fully-qualified U.S. workers interested in the position before issuance of a green card to a foreign national.
This recruitment process is known as PERM labor certification, which is short for Labor Certification for the Permanent Employment of Aliens in the United States.
Among the recruitment options, PERM requires employers to post the green card position online and with the appropriate state job bank, and internally and on the employer’s intranet, if applicable. The employer is also required to run two Sunday advertisements in the newspaper in the geographical area from which most qualified U.S. workers would be drawn. In most cases, the PERM process does not require employers to disclose the salaries for the positions. (Salary information must be included only in internal and intranet postings, and possibly state job bank postings.)
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