Are colleagues allowed to discuss salary?

[Jessesgirl13]

The cut a long story short, im the only female in my team and feel that my male colleague who is at a lower level and less experienced than me may be earning more. He is constantly getting pay rises. Whenever I ask for a pay review I get told that the company hasn’t done well etc so they cant give me anything despite all my appraisals being glowing!

A couple of years ago, after being fed this same line and given a small token gesture, I found out that he’d been given double what I had. When I brought it up with my line manager he told me told me that we shouldn’t have been discussing salary as its not allowed.

Im pretty sure he was wrong about this but it put me and my colleague off discussing things again. My colleague is now leaving and I want to ask him what he was earning. We are very good friends so I know he will happily tell me, but I want to know we can legally discuss it.

So... can I ask him?

What does your contract say?
I would be looking for another job if I was you.

Well they are going to say that as they don't want staff to find out some are on more or less . For me I never discuss salary with anyone only my dh knows what I earn . But some people do , in my last job I saw the salary's and was quite shocked at the difference that some earned doing the same job . Ask him but if he doesn't want to tell you that's up to him .

Doesn't matter what your contract says.
Employeeshave the legal right todiscusspay if they choose to, and it's illegal for employers to ban those discussions.
Ask your colleague. Then raise a grievance for discrimination.

In my company it is considered gross misconduct to discuss salaries and bonus. I am one of 3 women in a team of 11, I earn more than all of them as my basic salary, but this is because we get a pay rise every year so as I have been there the longest I have had the most increases, but I know bonus wise some earn more than me, others earn less. It varies massively in my team but we are all doing the same job, bonuses are performance related and set according to targets. I’m sure if they knew my salary is around £3000 a year higher they would question why, but the answer would be that it’s because of how long I have been there and I started on the same salary as them.
If you are close to your colleague and they will tell you as a friend then I would definitely ask. When it comes to then negotiating your own salary, I would leave that information out - is there anyone in HR you can speak to? If you are being paid less for no apparent reason then this is serious.

@Heymummee

Your company is breaking the law.

Thanks to the Equality Act of 2010, employees have the right to discuss salary for the purposes of collective bargaining or protection – so that if everyone’s being underpaid, people can come together and ask for more.

This law means employers cannot legally discipline anyone for discussing their work pay, and employers cannot legally have any clauses in company contracts that stop workers from talking about their salaries.

This was in the metro last year and they had an employment solicitor explain it all.

Ask off the record and give him the option to refuse easily.
I do discuss with colleagues who are leaving or are disgruntled and/or I get along with. I tend to volunteer mine too (and it's usually greeted with shock on one side). One female colleague who was being seriously short changed, another where I was seriously short changed.

This secrecy around salary only helps those who are being favoured and the company to keep doing this

Thanks everyone! You have all confirmed what I thought.

Just checked my contract and there is nothing in it that says we cant discuss it.

I will definitely ask him, we’ve teetered on the edge of it before so Im pretty sure we can both have an open conversation about it!

The only thing the company can do is ban you from diavuaaing it during working hours. So they may have a policy on that. Ask your colleague outside of working hours to be in the safe side.

I just found that metro article @theinvestigator mentions

metro.co.uk/2018/11/09/can-your-boss-stop-you-talking-about-salary-with-your-coworkers-8122544/

@heymummee it does look like your company are breaking the law.

@theinvestigator funnily enough thats the reason i thought to ask him now. I figured once he’d left he cant get in trouble for divulging his salary to me.

I'm sure the reason all the pay gender gap stuff cane out was through FOI requests?
So salaries must be public knowledge. Maybe not x person earns x amount but rather Senior HR manager salary currently

Interesting!!! I didn’t see that story. Thanks for letting me know, I’ll remember that!

Companies can restrict salary discussions unless it's in relation to seeking information regarding equal pay - under s77 of the Equality act.

Whether they would actually do anything about such discussions if it's not related to an equal pay query is another matter.

This is related to equal pay though. But it would be hard for the employer to prove they weren't discussing it for that reason. Even if the people discussing it are the same sex, race, religion, age and sexual orientation, they could still say they were gathering data to see the general trends at the company

Why would an employer prevent you from discussing it unless they have something to hide?

Yes was just answering ops query and those saying companies can't restrict discussions. Equal pay provisions only apply to comparators of the opposite sex (s64 of the EA)

@Heymummee

I have a question!! Loads of people meet their future spouses at work. If two people from your workplace got together and married each other, would they be fired for gross misconduct since they would most like discuss their salaries for household expenditure?

Good question! We have been told not to talk about it in the workplace because talk of our bonuses got around the business and caused problems, what you do at home I suppose is your own business. There are a few couples in work and they must have spoken about it! Nobody has ever been in trouble for talking about it by the way, we were just told to keep commission and bonuses to ourselves and that it is considered to be a big no no to talk about it.

Bonuses are often discretionary and not part of salary (and one of the ways companies can shaft women over pay, because it's not contractual to pay it.)

Although companies can't stop you discussing pay for the purposes of equality, there's a long culture in some companies of not discussing pay, part of which is because it used to be banned in contracts. Even when you've got colleagues you're usually quite close and open with, when it comes to discussing actual numbers, then they might be deeply uncomfortable about talking about it.

(Although when your colleagues are complaining about having to pay higher rate tax and you have never had to pay higher rate tax, that tells you quite a bit.)

Whilst there's nothing illegal about discussing your own salaries, it's your information you can willingly divulge, be careful discussing others salaries with other people. In your case as you were talking about a pay discrepancy with your direct manager then it shouldn't be an issue, but you can't tell random person Jane that Rod and Freddy said their salaries are x and y without their say so. I've discovered that sometimes people think that means no one can discuss their own salary at all which is obviously wrong.