I’ve worked in only one unionized workplace.
Whenever we ratified a new collective agreement, we’d get a print copy of it. I’d keep mine in a desk drawer.
One thing it included was a wage grid for every position represented by the union. If you knew a person’s official job category, you could look up the range of the salary they made.
Knowing how much your coworkers make—and their knowing how much you make—is a good thing. Here are 6 reasons why.
It exposes wage gaps.
Without knowing what others make, it’s easy for business owners to underpay certain workers based on such factors as gender, race, age, or favouritism. Transparency reveals whether two people doing the same job are being paid differently—and that’s crucial for fairness.
It strengthens bargaining power.
When workers know what others earn, they have a clearer idea of what they should be asking for during raises, promotions, or job offers. It prevents business owners from lowballing individuals who don’t know the “going rate”.
It builds solidarity.
When pay information is open, workers are less likely to resent each other and more likely to recognize when the real problem is unfair company policies—not each other. It encourages collective action, like negotiating together or organizing for better conditions.
It reduces discrimination.
Hidden pay scales make it easy for biased decisions to go unnoticed. Transparency forces companies to justify their pay structures and helps prevent discrimination based on factors unrelated to job performance.
It can lead to overall higher wages.
In workplaces or industries where pay transparency is the norm, wages tend to rise because business owners are pressured to meet competitive standards and treat workers fairly across the board.
It fosters a culture of trust.
Keeping salaries secret tends to breed suspicion and division. Open pay structures show that the business owner has nothing to hide and that it values fairness over secrecy.
But because pay transparency benefits workers, some business owners discourage it.
A 2018 study, for example, found that half of the full-time workers that participated in the study reported that they were either discouraged or prohibited by their employer from discussing wages and salaries.
Which actually seems counterintuitive, given that some research indicates that pay secrecy may actually lower worker performance, and vice versa.
