May 5, 2008
Guru was mightily impressed with the downright arrogance of the outgoing Italian administration when it posted the earnings of every citizen in Italy on the internet.
And now it seems the UK HR profession is keen to instigate a similar expose in Blighty, starting with their own meagre salary sacks (Alan Warner excluded, obviously), all in the name of 'pay parity'.
And as the one of the department's with full access to the nation's pay packets who could stop them.
Yours Truly sees a flaw in this bid for transparency, however.
When Sheila in admin realises she's been paid less than the lab rats for the past 14 years, she might have something to say about it. And when junior sales staff who bring in six figure deals realise they are only lining the pockets of the legions of middle managers who skew the average earnings figures without making so much as a dent in our poor productivity figures, there could be a full-blown riot.
Guru feels this would be progress, as the equal pay myth could finally be laid to rest, as people realise they are worth much less than they thought.
This pondering set the grey cells a-rattling, and a new theory of workplace economics has emerged from the swamp of ideas that is the blue-tinged brain.
Yours Truly now understands. Equal pay should not be about what workers actually do, but about what they don't do.
After all, full-time workers do more stuff 'full time', ie, if they are having a break, it only eats into a tiny proportion of their 'full time' day, whereas a 15-minute tea break could amount to 20% of the day for some part-timers.
So if you compare the proportion of the day taken up with not doing stuff, it will become obvious that full-timers spend less time doing nothing than part-timers, and therefore deserve their bigger salaries.
Of course, it's beyond Guru's current remit to extend this logic to the realms of women and equal pay. He did try to consult with a female colleague, but could not locate one as they were all in the kitchen area 'multitasking'.
Comments (3)
However as the women are multitasking they are more than likely doing "something" at the same time as doing "nothing". Therefore the summation of the additional "somethings" that they are continually doing (because we all know that women multitask constantly) over and above the lower level of "somethings" that the men are able to do, will cancel out most of the "nothings" that the women are doing as larger portions of their part time jobs. Therefore taking your theory to its logical end most women working part time should in fact get full time pay (or more). Don't you think?
Posted by Sue Hewitt | May 6, 2008 9:57 PM
Posted on May 6, 2008 21:57
Which means that women working full-time should be paid a whole heap more, thereby bringing them up to the same level as men, or beyond, thereby solving the equal pay problem in one fell swoop.
Posted by guru | May 7, 2008 11:36 AM
Posted on May 7, 2008 11:36
With such brilliant logic why hasn't this happened already?
Posted by Sue Hewitt | May 8, 2008 8:50 AM
Posted on May 8, 2008 08:50