Tag Archives: equal pay meaningless

Why the gender pay debate is misguided and meaningless

The headline pay gap published by companies mandated by regulation is essentially meaningless. It is almost certainly misunderstood by the populace at large, and a depressing soapbox for a certain class of feminist  MP harridans  who make me groan whenever they appear on TV.

{See http://www.equalpayportal.co.uk/gender-pay-gap-reporting/  Now imagine a company which employs 1000 female widget packers at £10 per hour and no men. The board however, is comprised of 5 men and 5 women who receive equal pay of £100 per hour. They all work the same full time hours. The average female wage under metric 1 of the regulations is £10.45, and the average male wage is £100 – enough to cause apoplexy; one can hear Caroline Harris, Welsh Labour MP repeating her tweet mantra ” This is astonishing and immoral. Shocking.” Well, Caroline, no it isn’t, they all get the same rate.}

However, Grumpy takes issue with the figures even when the goal of equal pay for equal job specifications  is promoted. How does this make sense ?    Just because a woman and a man get a different salary for the same role does not mean that this is either unfair or unequal.

This nonsense stems from the public sector, union supported concept of pay for a role, regardless of the capability of the role holder; it is a notion which fosters mediocrity and kills productivity.

Individual  people in the same notional role can perform quite differently in both their output and contribution to team productivity. [Try sitting at the next desk to a mediocre moaner for 8 hours, supposedly doing the same ‘job’, and see how that pulls down all around them.] They may also have vastly different experience in the role, which may well justify differences.

When Grumpy used to  set salaries, there could be several people with the same ‘role’ (job description, grade etc.) but each of whom made a markedly different contribution to the organisation. Since there were no ‘salary bands’, their salary was set on the basis of that contribution – and the gender was not a factor.

For those not performing, reviews and assistance sought to get them to improve, so there was a chance to do better, and receive better reward.

This also meant that people were rewarded and had a career path by doing what they were good at, rather than false promotions to some other task  to which they were wholly unsuited, and being hemmed in by ‘role based’ salary bands.

Finally, if there is one thing guaranteed to motivate good people to start reading the job ads, it’s spending their days with unproductive, negative slackers who got the same pay as them; equal pay for different capabilities  is bad for job retention.