Pay transparency

[EBearhug]

A mail from the Fawcett Society today alerted me to this vote today:

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm141216/debtext/141216-0002.htm#14121647000005

I've always thought there should be more transparency since I went to my manager at a previous employer to discuss pay, and got the response, "You know it's a sackable offence to discuss pay?" How can we ever have the chance of equal pay if there isn't more openness, so people know when they've got a case?

[ToffeePenny]

I can't believe there were any 'noes' in the vote. I hope it goes through - I bet my employer is one of them (we have a similar clause preventing us from discussing salaries)

[ToffeePenny]

Nice find though - that it gets a second reading has lifted my spirits nicely :)

[EBearhug]

I can't believe there were any 'noes' in the vote.

You're less cynical than I am, then! I was surprised it was as few as 8...

[PoinsettiaGordino]

Tht's quite encouraging. I haven't worked somewhere with that clause, but I have worked in a global organisation where I worked closely with colleagues in offices where they had far more pay transparency and always pushed for the same for those of us in the UK

[LightningOnlyStrikesOnce]

I'd second this, and not only for feminists. Though women are underpaid as a class, pay transparency would help anyone who is underpaid. I think that's why it's come to be veiled in secrecy.

In the private sector especially IT (no unions) individual pay deals are the norm. So you can have two people dong the same job and being on very different wages. Its all very well bleating about performance-related but that is not how it's used in, dare I say, most companies - it's used to divide-and-conquer so that the private shareholders can avoid paying decent wages and keep an extra few quid for themselves.

We're abroad and it's taken us two years to figure out that my dh is currently being underpaid by at least a third, possibly 50%.

In the public sector you don't get this problem. I admit it's annoying when you are being paid the same for a job which your colleague barely turns up for, for instance - but that's an extreme case and in general it should be same job, same wage. Or at least broadly so. Pay secrecy helps no workers.

[OmnipotentQueenOfTheUniverse]

Really pleased with this, hope it goes through. Been in the pipeline for a while.

[BarbarianMum]

The organisation I work for has total pay transparity. I can open the budget and see what everyone from the CEO to the office cleaner is paid, how much everyone claims in expenses etc. I can also see everyone's job description and the scoring profile that shows how its assigned to a grade. We don't pay bonuses, or have perks like cars or anything like that.

It's great. There is no jealousy, or rumours about who gets what, or who deserves what.

[ChunkyPickle]

The only people who gain from secrecy are those who want to underpay people.