April 23, 2007
Guru picked up on a story last week that seemed to have dropped below the radar of most media outlets.
A study by German academics - who else - found that equal pay was unfair and penalised workers who put in the most effort. Real fairness would be paying staff according to how hard and how well they worked, our Teutonic cousins concluded.
The study said:
While the participants who were paid individually achieved almost the highest possible performance level, those who worked under equal pay wages produced hardly half as much. In addition, their performance got worse over time.
Guru has been banging on about this for years. Why should dedicated, hard-working individuals (much like Yours Truly) take home the same pay as work-shy loafers who shout louder than others?
This study conclusively proves equal pay leads to falling productivity and workforce morale.
It means that the local government equal pay timebomb that is threatening to explode, with councils having to shell out thousands of pounds to women workers, could simply be avoided.
Council HR directors should just drag all the whinging female workers and their awful union reps into a big room, and quote verbatim from this report. Some kind of self-defence mechanism might then be handy at that point.
Problem solved. Finally the Germans have contributed something useful to Western society apart from bad haircuts, sausages and Black Forest gateau.
