With the never- ending rise of inflation, the idea of equal pay seems to be a very good solution to this problem that continues to trouble many people all over the world. However, thinking more upon the idea, I realized that instead of solving the problem, it would just aggravate the situation and could just cause for the economy to collapse and conflict among people.
In the first place, each countries have different cost of living so if for example, country A's daily cost of living was $10 while country B's cost of living was $30 and both were earning $25 a day, then the citizens of country A will be living a lavish life while Country B would find it difficult to survive and would probably fell in debt. Meanwhile, revenues between different industry sector varies so for example, if company A in healthcare industry was earning $ 1 million in revenue, while company B in construction industry only earns half, while both spends $ 400 k for their employees, company B would probably go bankrupt because aside from employee salary, there would have other expenses such the construction materials they need in order to build buildings.
On the other hand, there would be a complete lack of manpower in different fields. For example, between a doctor that would require many years of study on a medical school and a security guard that only takes a few weeks to months of training, if both were earning the same, then most probably many would rather choose to be a security guard rather than a doctor since they could earn easier and with less effort and with the lack of medical professionals, it would lead to the rise of death rate. Another example would be between the salary of a company's CEO against a regular employee. While I agree that a portion of CEO salaries should be cut and redistribute to the workers, making them equal would make it totally unfair for the CEO because they hold the leadership position and decides every major decisions in the company. Even between the workers of the same position, problems would also arise like in BPO companies where employees work with day, night and graveyard shifts where night and graveyard shifts was harder because access to transportation and most establishments are closed so employees were compensated with night differentials but if this were gone as they made the salaries between shifts to be the same, then n employees would only want to work during day. Also when an extra work that needs to be done overtime suddenly comes, employees would not work overtime if they would only be payed the same with those that work regular hours which might cause transaction backlogs.
This were just some of the problems I could add amongst the many that others discussed and there would probably be more issues to be found if equal pay was actually implemented but this alone was enough to tell that it was not the right solution to the problem. So instead, workers should be provided with the following:
Livable Wage
Jobs should just not be a way for people to earn, It should be a means for they to provide for their families of their necessary needs. Rather than equal pay, the idea was to ensure that workers are living a decent life. This would alleviate the worries of the workers which can contribute to their improved work performance.
Also, instead of a fixed salary, I was thinking that salaries should be adjustable so that it can increase when commodity price was high and decrease when commodity price becomes low. The idea here was so that wage would always be able to keep up with inflation and provides companies to save revenue during deflation.
** Incentives and Increments**
This was not something new but not all industry provide workers with incentives and increments. The idea here was very simple, incentivize the workers if they do extra work for the company or if they work there for a long time. As example, when employees work on holidays, they should received double pay or cash gifts during their birthday.
Employees as they get promoted also got salary increments but there are some employees that cannot be promoted due to their lacking credentials or educational attainment but regardless, they should also be entitled from salary increase if they show great dedication to their work and spent long time to the company.
Mandatory Benefits
Some jobs includes risk and dangers suck as working for the army or a gas attendants that working with flammable substances but regardless of the job, accidents may occur that may not only cost an employee hospital fees but also some time off their work as they need to recuperate. This will result for the workers to face heavy financial burden added to their living expenses during the time that the flow of cash has stopped. That is why it is important to provide workers with mandatory benefits such as social security and healthcare so that they would not need to spend all their wages for this unforeseen situations.
With the proper implementation of the things that I mentioned above, I think it would bring more satisfaction to the workers rather than equal pay and it will be something that companies can sustain but aside from that workers, regardless of their position or job should be valued and respected by their companies because the workers was their biggest asset and without them, no companies can run by itself
That was all for this post. Thank you and see you at the next one!
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