do you think life would be better or worse generally if everyone's salary was availab

CLAPTON

I like the idea of seeing what tax people pay in relation to salary

and how much benefit people are getting

I'm sure it would decrease the amount of tax avoidance and decrease the amount of benefit fraud

Running_Horse

With a little Googling you can see the salary of many American city public workers online. You can even search by name. But then they tend to have a more direct link and accountability between taxpayer and government.

Generali

Another one in favour. Transparency is good.

michaels

I am definitely in favour of the logic although I also can see the 'no one else's business argument.

I think it would be fair to see how much benefit each person receives as this is paid out of taxation so is not 'private'.

Fifer

michaels wrote: »

I think it would be fair to see how much benefit each person receives as this is paid out of taxation so is not 'private'.

Yes it is.

Marine_life

Much, much worse. You would end up with people making judgements about things they know fcuk all about......oh, wait....

atush

It would make life worse, and crime higher.

It would also increase dissatisfaction by some.

Just look at recent murders of older people. It would increase if the local scum knew that scruffy little old man down the road was rich.

vivatifosi

I don't agree. It's up to companies what they pay their workers and how they structure their entire package - not just salary.

Public sector employers should and do publish wage bands. Furthermore it is possible to work out the average salary of large companies anyway - they file the number of employees and their wage bill and you can divide one by the other. It's easy to find out who the good payers are as well as the bad, and the best within industries. It's in published industry ratio reports as well as within databases such as FAME which can be found in good business libraries such as the City Business Library and the British Library IP and Business Info section. There are also HR benchmarks published for job types that enable people to see whether they are paid a fair wage for their job.

Owning and running a business is tough. It's up to the owners how much they pay their workers providing their employment practices are legal. Some will share their information will staff, others won't, there certainly shouldn't be a duty on them to share private information with the world as a whole. In the case of small businesses it is entirely up to them. Why place an even bigger regulatory burden on them?

PasturesNew

vivatifosi wrote: »

It's in published industry ratio reports as well as within databases such as FAME which can be found in good business libraries such as the City Business Library and the British Library IP and Business Info section.

Never heard of them. I didn't even know there were such things as business libraries.

vivatifosi wrote: »

There are also HR benchmarks published for job types that enable people to see whether they are paid a fair wage for their job.

Where are they then? Seen a couple of rubbish ones on the Internet, but that's all.

vivatifosi

PasturesNew wrote: »

Never heard of them. I didn't even know there were such things as business libraries.

They tend to be in big cities Pastures, though larger counties without the centre of population but with the overall mass of population will also have them. For example you would also find them in places such as Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and larger counties such as Hertfordshire. In reality you would probably have to drive some way to get to one from where you are.

PasturesNew wrote: »

Where are they then? Seen a couple of rubbish ones on the Internet, but that's all.

A lot of the good ones are paid for and so would need to be bought rather than read over the internet, but people who are employed by companies could ask their HR team what benchmarks they use and to see them.

Here are some that are available on the internet. Some you may need to apply for:

http://www.robertwalters.co.uk/files/salary-survey/uk-salary-survey-2011.pdf
http://www.top-consultant.com/Top-Consultant_Salary_Report.pdf
http://www.cvscreen.co.uk/freesalary.html
This one's a bit older but it's specifically for IT jobs:
http://blog.theitjobboard.co.uk/resource-library/candidate-resources/salary-benchmarking-tool/