Illustrative image. (Photo: iStock) 
Would you like to know how much I earn?
Would you like me to know how much you earn?
These are essentially the same question, but the answer might depend on where you stand.
It is fascinating to me that in an age in which I can know so much about you, that with just your name I can find out what you do, your views on various things, even where you have been recently, but I won’t know how much you earn.
I think the only person whose full income I know is that of my wife. Literally no one else.
Sometimes this lack of knowing can be really dangerous.
I’m sure you’ve been in an office or worked as part of a team where you wonder if someone who slacks off is paid as much, or even more than you are.
And if they come from a richer family than you do, or if they are not paying black tax, or if they have fewer responsibilities, you might well think that they afforded that new car because they are overpaid compared with you.
There are a few measures that are now coming through both here and in other countries that might well change some of this.
Here the leader of Bosa, Mmusi Maimane, has proposed something that seems very sensible to me.
He is suggesting it should be illegal for a company to demand that you give them a payslip from your current firm, before receiving a salary offer.
It’s happened to me several times that someone has asked me for my current payslip before making me an offer. I’m sure it’s happened to you too.
And this means then that over time, every time you change jobs in the same sector, you end up receiving a salary that is based on what you earned at the start. But if you had been able to start at a slightly higher band, it would be making a big difference to what you are paid now.
The only way to break out of this is to change careers completely.
In the UK, there is a push for people advertising jobs to publish the actual amount (or the salary band) that the person would earn. This would mean that when you applied for a job, you would get what the job was worth, no matter what you are being paid now.
That makes sense to me.
But … and it’s a big “but”. What happens if you advertise for a particular position and get someone who you know will provide more value than the amount that was specified? This can happen quite often, where you get a candidate who you know will really bring value to your organisation.
It would be frustrating to have to say to them “I really want you, but I can’t pay you enough, not because I don’t have the money but because of what was advertised”.
And this gets to a much bigger problem.
When you employ someone, you have absolutely no idea what value they will really bring. Sometimes a person can just have the barest qualifications needed for a job, come in and be tremendously productive. They might even have a big impact on a team in that they are able to make everyone around them more valuable.
But sometimes you can employ someone who has the best interview and the best qualifications, and they can sit around doing nothing.
Often a person can be paid a salary based on the perception of their future value 10 years ago. Because your salary is often based on how much that company wanted you at the time.
If everyone in a team knew everyone else’s salary, this kind of situation might well be avoided. A manager would have to find a way to increase the salaries of those who are paid less.
It would also mean that managers could publicly demand performance from those who are paid more.
Interestingly, this already happens at the very top.
The salaries of the top management in JSE-listed companies are published in their annual reports.
That is how we know that for the 2024 financial year, the CEO of Pick n Pay, Sean Summers, got about R25-million, while Shoprite Checkers CEO Pieter Engelbrecht got nearly R84-million and Woolies CEO Roy Bagattini received about R65-million.
That means that shareholders are able to demand that they add value to the companies they lead.
If we know what they earn, I can’t really see an argument against making every salary public.
It would probably be good for workers, especially those with scarce skills. Because they would now know if they’re being underpaid, and companies would have to pay them more.
And there would be pressure to reduce the pay differential between those who earn the most and those who earn the least.
Surely that would be good for our society.
So then … what do you earn? Do you want to know what I earn?
Who’s going first? DM