Should you know your coworker’s salary?

“Sharing salary details has long been one of the great taboos in Corporate America, ranking even higher on the list of ‘what not to do at work’ than getting drunk at the company Christmas party or crying during your performance review. But for more and more employees, it’s not just an office no-no. A new paper by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (hat tip to Leadership Lab ) found that almost half of all workers in the U.S. ‘are either contractually forbidden or strongly discouraged from discussing their pay with their colleagues,’ making it harder for employees to discover whether they’re being discriminated against or not. ”