This is an important point. They don’t decide salaries arbitrarily. I spent years working in academia as a researcher and there was an annual equity review/adjustment for all employees. If an entry-level person, for example, was making significantly more money than their similarly qualified peers, the school provided a salary increase to the peers to keep it equitable; no one ever got a salary decrease for equity reasons. I remember my job interview where the hiring manager asked what I wanted to make, he laughed when I told him, and said HR authorized [low end of the range]. HR determines this based on what similarly qualified people at the same level make.