How To Do A Pay Equity Study At Your Workplace

Minnesota Public Employee Compensation is Under Attack

More money troubles are brewing here in Minnesota. On December December 10, 2010 the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce released its report on public employee compensation. Here's the link on their home page.

http://www.mnchamber.com/

AFSCME Council 5 responded on December 11, 2010. Here's the link to their response:

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4708

Briefly -- it looks like the Tax Payer Association has pegged Minnesota public employee wages as too high and AFSCME Council 5 thinks they are just fine.

Pay Equity Coalition of Minnesota will respond to the Chamber's report shortly after we get a chance to mill it over.

Stay tuned.....

Costco Salaries Online

I've been searching for tools to make payroll processes transparent. I came across this list of Costco salaries -- all posted anonymously. I'm not sure if this was done by an outside third party or if the process is blessed by Costco internally. Either way, it gives employees and potential employees an idea of where they fit or could fit in terms of pay within the organization. I think this is a step forward into instilling transparency into payroll processes -- but the goal - in a completely open payroll process is for everyone to know what everyone earns and why. This is the only way to avoid litigation and build trust into the system. Think Lilly Ledbetter -- who found out she was paid a great deal less than her male colleagues -- from an anonymous note. Ledbetter's salary and those of her male colleagues were so grossly disproportionate to each other that the only recourse for Mrs. Ledbetter was to sue her employer. The problem would never have escalated to that level if her employer were open and honest about pay. Time to stop hiding behind payroll secrecy. And, can we please get rid of pay bands while we're at it! But, that's for another post.

Publishing Employee Salaries - Help Gender Pay Inequities?

In Minnesota local governments report job classes, whether or not the job class is female or male dominated or neutral & pay ranges for that job class. Why? To determine if there are any patterns of paying jobs dominated by women less than jobs dominated by men that are of similar work value. But, what if each individual salary was published like it is for the province of British Columbia?

In the province of British Columbia all 30,000 salaries are published annually. For those of you who wish to see it to believe it check out:

http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/OCG/pa/07_08/Detailed_Schedule_Pymts.pdf

P.S. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that knowing everyone's salary acts as a demotivator. I believe the opposite is true -- not knowing salaries increases the level of distrust between employee and employer and increases the likelihood of pay inequities. This is true for any internal equity issues -- not just gender.

U.S. Senate Hearing Paycheck Fairness

There will be a full U.S. Senate committee hearing -- 'A Fair Share for All: Pay Equity in the New American Workplace' March 11th at 10:00 e.s.t.

You should be able to view the hearing of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee at:

http://help.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=263e16b9-5056-9502-5db9-e17bfa4f6e01

If this doesn't work goto: http://help.senate.gov/
-- and look for the appropriate hearing.