How Much Do Your Male Colleagues Earn? Bring on the Compulsory Pay Audits

Traditionally, companies have had gag clauses on employees discussing how much they earned with colleagues. It has been a highly secretive way of keeping employees in the dark when it comes to negotiating their packages - useful to companies - but rife for abuse and gender disparities. As discussed in a recent article in Australia's The Age magazine "Women Still Trail in Pay Stakes" : "Many Australians believe women won equal pay in the `70s — but they are wrong," ACTU president Sharan Burrow said. Among the union demands are compulsory "pay equity audits" which would require companies to disclose what male and female employees are paid — including bonuses — at all levels of the corporation. It would be a simple way of changing the corporate culture if people knew what it was that men and women were earning up through the pay scale. Making them part of the reporting cycle for companies would make a huge difference." I think there is a long way to go, but I suspect compulsory pay audits would split the City assunder for all that they would unearth.