Tell me what you earn!

November 05, 2026

In the interview Hannah Williams argues that people should have the right to know their colleague’s salaries, and are owed an explanation when it turns out that their colleague earns more. In the interview it was not discussed whether the employee would need to justify their own salary if it turns out they actually earn more than their colleague.

The argument that people already obsess over the salary of their colleagues is not convincing. Disclosing salaries will not save time and increase productivity. Once people are entitled to know what everybody else earns, they will obsess over the difference in salary instead. I believe disclosing salaries might have the opposite effect and productivity may go down. A lot of time and money will be spent on justifying higher salaries, and pointless law suits will ensue. In fact, disclosing salaries will over time have the effect of leveling salaries, which will remove the incentive to work more than everybody else, show more initiative, and so forth.
According to the interviewee, the right to know the salary of your colleagues also includes the obligation of your employer to justify the higher salary of your colleague. This begs the question who decides whether the reasons for the higher salary are sufficient. What happens when an employee with a lower salary does not agree with the justification for the higher salary of their colleague? Who is the final arbiter deciding what anybody’s work is worth?
As soon as there is a legal obligation to disclose salaries, unions and political parties will jump on the bandwagon and demand the same across companies. Not may! Will!
I know of three examples of everybody knowing the salary of everybody else: German civil service, German "Tarifverträge" (collective bargaining agreements), and East Germany. All three had and have the predictable result of removing the incentive for anybody to work more than everybody else around them. It is a race to the bottom. In Germany we call this "Beamtenmikado" (pick-up sticks for civil servants). Who moves first, looses!
What happens when I believe I get paid less, but it turns out I earn more than my colleagues. Do I now have to explain my higher salary? What if my colleagues do not agree with my reasons. Should I get paid less or should my colleagues all get paid more?
My employment contract is with my employer, not with my colleagues. My objective is to sell my time, skills and knowledge for the highest price possible, while my employer’s objective is to get it at the lowest possible price. Since I am not the only one able to do the job and the company is not the only place for me to work, over time a fair price for my work should emerge. Unfortunately, there are many effects that go beyond pure market mechanisms, which is the reason why such topics are discussed so contentiously.