O’Brien Recruitment advertises vacancies without including pay, followed by a demand for rival employer pay slips from job applicants.
O’Brien Recruitment violates the Constitution
Pay slip disclosures create an imbalance of power and an asymmetric information advantage, meaning it places employers’ interests above those of workers and job seekers.
O’Brien Recruitment uses discriminatory information advantages most likely to ‘peg’ a candidate’s negotiation leverage space.
This leverage space refers to the amount a candidate is able to argue for or justify in wage negotiation. For example, if a candidate was asked about their pay expectations before being told the pay range the employer is offering, they create a limit for themselves if the employer was actually willing to offer more.
If a candidate is willing to work for less than what the employer is willing to pay, the employer has a win. In this, the worker could be agreeing to an unequal wage allowing an employer to practice wage discrimination.
Unfairly demanding pay slips is a sure sign of employer monopsony power. This practice signifies a lack of competition for talent, giving rise to price-fixing, collusion and poaching.
Organisations adopting unfair information advantages during recruitment violate section 23.1 of the Constitution.
The right to fair labour practice is enshrined and nothing can dominate this right – or at least, nothing is supposed to!
Many employers appear to trivialize worker rights during the process of recruitment claiming powers they are not legally entitled to.
Profit Power is Called Monopsony
When an employer tries to control worker wages, they place their profit interests ahead of worker right to pursue competitive, not price-fixed wages.
An employer is not entitled to apply wage discrimination even if it means they get to improve profits. Profit cannot be at workers’ expense – that would be unfair labour practice.
Besides, the Competition Act states that workers, owners and consumers have equal rights in the economy and that their interests must be balanced.
Unfair Information Advantages
Withholding information about pay is an abuse of power.
Income inequality patterns are dominated by racist and sexist outcomes suggesting firms use payslips to spy on rival firm reward systems, to price-fix pay and poach employees.
When job applicants apply for jobs without knowing how much they will be paid, they become vulnerable to race and gender based wage discrimination.
Bring your latest pay slip to the interview
Current employer pay has no relevance to a job applicant’s competency. The notion that all workers are paid their market worth is untrue.
PaySlipBanSA maintains these employers and recruiters obtain pay slips in order to challenge a job seekers pay expectations during wage negotiation.
A job seeker claiming to be seeking at R25k p/mth could be easily disarmed in a wage negotiation if their pay slip indicates they were currently earning 17k per month. This refers to the negotiation leverage space.
The recruiter could argue that they would only be willing to give an R4k increase, not 7k.
Using a pay slip to create the basis for an offer perpetuates race and gender-based wage discrimination.
“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.
Young Women’s Trust chief executive Dr Carole Easton OBE
If you were the applicant receiving the email below, would you feel you’re being fairly treated?
Do you think we have income inequality as a result of this conduct?
Do you believe that if you’re a black woman, this is how black women keep being paid less?
There is a trend to demand pay slips or ‘cost to company’ from job applicants. Kelly, Nurturing Futures and People Solved do the same for the firms who hire them to recruit.
This means that each day rival employer pay is being shared in order to discriminate against job applicants and perpetuate a legacy of unequal pay according to race and gender. This in turn implies collusion between employers who are supposed to compete among each other for talent.
Employers are not entitled to spy on others, nor are they entitled to willingly share competitive compensation information with each other. This violates Competition Law, however, no one has yet legally challenged this conduct.
When applicants declare all their wage information (from pay expectations to pay slips) without the employer or recruiter being upfront first, they are not participating in a fair negotiation and cannot be sure they are not being coerced into accepting an unfair offer.
Recruiters often claim they would never do this, however, income inequality shows that workers are working for unequal pay and further evidence finds that recruiter morality is questionable in developed countries. Read about a study describing how recruiters are willing to break equality laws when they have no fear of consequences.
Pay slip requests are discriminatory as they create opportunities for unequal pay. These disclosures are not protected as recruiters and employers fear no consequences and are therefore free to entrench employer monopsony power.
Dear <REMOVED>
Thank you for confirming your interview which is on <REMOVED>. Please can you bring a copy of your CV, ID, latest payslip and certificates (including Matric) or please email them to me. If there is anything else you believe I should need, please bring this with.
When you get here you will be required to complete an application (short – nothing to stress over). And once you have complete these we will spend time together.
Our address is: O’Brien Recruitment 4th Floor, 50 Riebeek Street (Cnr Buitengragt and Riebeek Street) Cape Town 8001 GPS Coordinates: lat: -33.917992 – lng: 18.420691
Anti-Competition Recruitment
#payslipbansa invites readers to submit recruiter emails.
Please forward emails without any changes, we’ll protect your identity. Information is collected and used to document the massive transgressions occurring during recruitment.
Employers prey upon job seekers and illegally demand their payslips.
When job applicants submit payslips or ‘current cost to company,’ they reduce their negotiating power in the same way you would lose power if you show someone your hand during a card game.
Email friend@payslipbansa.co.za
‘Make it Fair!’ PaySlipBanSA
