Workers back pay transparency

A majority of workers support radical pay transparency to tackle growing inequality, a new survey reveals.

The YouGov poll of 2,000 full-time staff found that 56 per cent backed making all individuals’ financial information such as monthly income and tax returns open to the public as is done in countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway.

About a third of those surveyed said they opposed the idea, while 11 per cent were undecided. Jobs website Indeed, which commissioned the poll, said they believed this was the first time evidence has been revealed showing wide-scale support for pay transparency.

Pay transparency in Norway has been the norm for more than 200 years — since the early 1800s, every citizen’s earnings are made available to the public. In Sweden, every worker’s pay information can be accessed from tax authorities.

The YouGov survey comes in the wake of recent research revealing the extent of entrenched inequalities in Britain.

Ethnic pay gap

Unite last week called for greater pay transparency to help tackle a yawning ethnicity pay gap that’s seen black and asian minority ethnic (BME) workers lose out on £3.2bn each year as their pay lags behind their white colleagues doing the same work.

The union highlighted the ethnic pay gap when it was revealed last week that a record number of BMEs are in work — the latest figures, however, belie the fact that BMEs are much more likely to be on zero-hours contracts and other forms of insecure work. Black male graduates, for example, face a ‘pay penalty’ of 17 per cent compared to their white counterparts.

Unite national officer for equalities Harish Patel said that pay transparency would be key in tackling racial pay inequality.

“Like reporting gender pay gap data, making ethnic pay gap reporting mandatory would help reduce the pay penalty workers now face simply for being non-white,” he said.

Another ground-breaking report published last week revealed the extent of regional inequalities with the UK. The report, by Lord Bob Kerslake, former head of the civil service, found stark inequalities between the South and the North in a range of key measures, from pay to social mobility to income levels, life expectancy and more.

Commenting on today’s survey, Indeed head UK economist Pawel Adrjan told the Guardian that he believed attitudes were changing toward the idea of discussing pay openly, which has long been considered taboo.

“Perhaps that is in part due to the huge interest that gender pay gap reporting has gathered, but perhaps more so thanks to the new generation of younger workers with different views on money and the workplace,” he said.

‘It started with conversations with colleagues’

The difference pay transparency can make to individual workers was recently highlighted by Unite member and former RBS worker Lucy Williams. In an exclusive interview last month, Lucy told UniteLive how she came to know that she was being paid a shocking ÂŁ31,610 less than her male counterpart for doing the exact same job with equivalent experience.

“I didn’t know the full extent of the pay disparity at first,” she told UniteLive, recounting how she first came to know that something was not quite right with her pay.

“It just started with conversations with colleagues. You realise something is wrong when you learn that your male colleague is the sole breadwinner in his family, supporting his stay-at-home wife and three children. On my salary at the time, I would never have been able to do that. I noticed too that he had been given a greater holiday allowance. It became increasingly apparent that we were on vastly different pay and benefits packages.”

Although Lucy eventually took on RBS in an equal pay claim with Unite’s support and won, it was only through Lucy’s dogged determination to find out the truth about her colleague’s pay that enabled her to challenge such a shocking example of pay discrimination.

Mandatory pay audits call

Unite national officer for equalities Siobhan Endean said gender pay gap reporting, which came into force in April last year, must be more radically transparent to make a difference.

“Gender pay gap reporting as it stands now is little more than a ‘name and shame’ exercise if it isn’t backed up with proper enforcement,” she told UniteLive in April. “What’s more, it’s only a requirement for companies with 250 employees or more — if we want real transparency it should apply equally to all firms.”

“To implement real change, all employers should be forced to carry out detailed pay audits and take action on any disparities they find. We know from the equal pay audits Unite and other unions have negotiated with employers that they make a real difference – it’s time they were made mandatory.”

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner welcomed today’s survey results on pay transparency.

“Tackling rising pay inequality — whether we’re talking about gender or racial pay gaps, or the increasing pay gap between workers and their CEOs — is one of the greatest challenges of our time,” he said. “Radical pay transparency that exposes inequality and applies equally to all, alongside a properly funded enforcement mechanism to take action on pay inequalities, are absolutely necessary if we’re to create a fairer world where prosperity is shared by all. Today’s poll shows workers back making such information public — it’s time government listened.”