Is Labour Market Power Fair?
We’re breaking down recruitment pay secrecy and lack of employer wage transparency using our new State of Recruitment SA infographic. Employers enjoy unrestrained freedom in labour markets during recruitment, however, these freedoms are unlawful and should not go unchallenged.
Pay Slip Ban SA has a public manifesto addressing income inequality in South Africa and advocating against rising employer monopsony power.
PaySlipBanSA tackles employer bullies who use unfair information advantages to trap job seekers in wage negotiations that violate their Constitutional right to fairness.
Monopsony power is when employers try to control labour markets and assume rights they’re not legally entitled to.
Everybody is entitled to fair labour practice.
S23.1 SA Constitution
Information Gap
Employers claim job advert pay secrecy is fair.
What happens when applicants apply to a job without knowing how much the employer is willing to pay? Employer pay secrecy disadvantages job seekers and raises the cost of job seeking and recruitment.
Pay secrecy deters applicants, which means if job adverts were transparent, recruiters would receive a wider pool and better-qualified pool of candidates.
Pay secrecy feeds the myth of unavailable or unskilled workers. The truth is that intelligent candidates simply don’t tolerate this duplicitous B/S and don’t apply. They can help bring about justice.
Job Advert Pay Secrecy
Evidence suggests patterns of unequal pay are initiated in the way a job advert signals the vacancy to job seekers.
An iniquitous process begins with job adverts that are secretive about pay or contain ambiguous terms such as ‘negotiable’ and ‘market-related salary’.
When an employer asks applicants about pay without being upfront about an offer, they create what lawyers and economists refer to as an asymmetric information advantage.
Asymmetry means two sides are unequal.
Information asymmetry refers to one side of a negotiation having more information than the other. According to S23.1 Constitution, this is unfair and must be challenged so that violations result in consequences.
Job Seekers not Slaves
In our democratic South African economy, everyone is equally entitled to pursue better economic opportunities.
Job seekers are not slaves and are entitled to negotiate wages individually or through bargaining councils.
As wages are ‘negotiated’ within a range acceptable to a potential employer, claiming ‘negotiable’ without providing the range makes the term meaningless. We have the right to know the salary range upfront, ‘negotiable’ must be fair.
Stating ‘negotiable’ is irrelevant in a democratic and free labour market, it’s like saying hot water is hot.
Anyone accepting the term as an informative statement denies their human right to dignity and labour market fairness. You are not a slave, and deserve a fair shot at a fair salary.
‘Negotiable’ is used to keep an actual pay range undefined and to increase the opportunity for unfair and unequal pay.
Market Related Pay
Like it’s evil twin ‘negotiable,’ is a term to cloud the truth.
‘Market-related pay’ suggests employers base an offer on existing unequal wage patterns.
Income inequality is spiralling out of control, logic points to employers’ habitual use of unequal pay to benchmark offers, thereby perpetuating, not addressing income inequality.
ADD YOUR VOICE HERE. MAKE RECRUITMENT FAIR
