A survey by GQR for the Trades Union Congress (TUC) shows that almost a fifth of workers (18%) have been told not to discuss their pay with colleagues.
The research also reveals that many workers don’t know how much the people they work with earn. Half of respondents did not know how much top managers at their company are paid – and 53% were given no way at all of finding out about salaries at their workplace.
Only 18% of workers reported that their employer made all colleagues’ pay levels available through an official source.
The TUC is calling on the government to ban pay secrecy clauses in the workplace, strengthen union rights in the UK, and commit to introducing some of the pay transparency measures currently being discussed at the European Union level.
GQR designed and carried out the survey of 2,700 working people in Great Britain, aged 16 and over. Fieldwork was conducted online with results weighted to the national profile by age, gender, region, social grade, ethnicity, educational level and parties’ vote share at the 2017 General Election.
Data tables for the poll are available to download here.
For more information, contact GQR’s London Vice President Peter McLeod, on Twitter @mcleodp or info@gqrr.com.