No Pay Transparency

Why is no salary range included in recruitment adverts from the office of the Auditor-General, South Africa?

If including salary ranges in recruitment adverts is considered fair practice and FAIR being in keeping with S23.1 of the Constitution, why does the Auditor General adopt pay secrecy?

Advertisements containing company beneﬁts, list salary description and advertise more than one position received a larger applicant pool than advertisements lacking these contents.
Kaplan, Aamodt and Wilk : 1991

“We have to break the cycle that traps women in low pay.Women often start work on a lower salary than men, move to a new job and are paid based on their previous wage, as opposed to what they or the role are worth – so they continue to be paid less. Ending this practice is crucial to ending the gender pay gap.
“Our research shows that women are more likely to disregard jobs if they feel their skills don’t match up to them, compared to men who often apply anyway.
Including salary details in job adverts would help women to see that jobs are in fact at their level and give them an idea of where they should be negotiating from to progress their pay.”
Young Women’s Trust chief executive Dr Carole Easton

The AGSA has a mandate outlined in chapter 9 (sections 181 & 188) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.

The AGSA annually produces audit reports on all government departments, public entities, municipalities and public institutions.

They are there to ensure Government performs efficiently and according to mandate. The AG is expected to demonstrate exemplary conduct, yet they advertise vacancies adopting pay secrecy creating an information gap for applicants.

The need to craft a perception of integrity is extremely important for government. Putting pay in job adverts is the right thing to do, why isn’t the AG doing it?

Adopting a pro-poor critical analysis of auditing and within auditing is probably more crucial.

Government’s reputation is in tatters, if the AG continues to audit in the way it has been – nothing in South Africa will change.

A pro-poor audit would place black women central to an analysis as they are the most vulnerable in society and economic markets. When they are key to evaluation of outcomes, we are surely more likely to meet equity targets?

Instead, the AG operates as if classical economic theory is reliable policy and praxis to use as a foundation for audits. You see if you don’t look for conduct perpetuating inequality in an organisations value chain, you’ll always believe income inequality is a natural labour market flaw.

Income inequality and discrimination against job applicants who wish to be fairly interviewed for work can enter an organisation even if they claim to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.

How come the AG doesn’t have perfect scores for Pay Policy and Pay Transparency?

Does the AG Suppress Wage Information?

If you’re applying for a job at the AG, it will be difficult for you to find relevant wage information.

Here’s what we found in a google search that took a few hours! Increasing the cost of job seeking and the time it takes to research an opportunity is most unfair to applicants.