Burnham to force employers to put salaries on job adverts
Andy Burnham says his government will legislate “as soon as possible” to make pay details compulsory in job advertisements, and is telling firms to start now rather than wait. “Whether you’re a young person starting out or a parent trying to support your family, you should know what a job pays before spending your time and effort applying for it,” the prime minister said. Ministers have yet to decide which companies must comply, what they must publish or how it will be enforced.
The “say what you pay” law follows a Cabinet Office consultation launched in July, which the government says drew “overwhelming support”, with more than nine in ten respondents in favour. Fewer than half of employers always publish a salary range and fewer than a fifth a specific figure, according to the CIPD; the jobs site Adzuna says 51% of its adverts carried pay information in September, a share that has been falling. The Treasury minister James Murray called it “an important common sense reform” and said pay “shouldn’t be a guessing game”; the TUC’s Paul Nowak said: “Anyone who’s searched for a job knows how frustrating it is to read ‘competitive salary’.” The CIPD’s chief executive, Neil Carberry, said disclosure was “a good thing” in principle but “more complicated” in practice: “There isn’t always a single fixed figure.” It arrives a week after the equality watchdog said staff should have a legal right to learn what colleagues earn. It is pitched at the nearly one million young people not in education, employment or training, ahead of Alan Milburn’s review of youth inactivity due within weeks. Watch the thresholds: a wide pay band would satisfy the law while telling applicants little.