Are you someone who likes to know what your colleagues are getting paid? Or would you rather not know? After all, if you don't like the answer, you may end up confronting your employer, which can lead to all sorts of problems.
Some employers are content for their
employees to discuss their pay openly. In others workplaces, however, this sort of thing is frowned upon - largely because it can open a can of worms for an employer, if employees know what each other is earning.
Some employees have genuine grievances about not being rewarded fairly, and some even have grounds to claim discrimination. But others will always think they are worth more than their colleagues, and engaging in a debate about this can result in employers spending large amounts of time trying to persuade employees they are being paid fairly. If they don't succeed, it results in a demotivated employee, or worse still, a resignation and/or legal claim.
For this reason, many employers discourage discussions about pay. Some even put clauses in employment agreements, saying that pay is confidential and must not be discussed with other staff.
The UK government is proposing to ban this practice, on the ground that it will encourage transparency and may even close the gender pay gap. As the stories in this article show, pay secrecy clauses don't do any favours for women's efforts to achieve parity with their male colleagues.
Greg Cain
Greg Cain is an employment lawyer at Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.
