New online pay checker unveiled

PAY DATA

PayWizard is a new free service, launched by the Trades Union Congress and pay analysts Incomes Data Services (IDS), letting you compare your earnings against what other people receive for doing similar jobs.

Employees can also find out what they could earn in other careers, and uncover regional differentials. www.paywizard.co.uk is part of an international project and the first of its kind.

Unions and leading academics in a number of countries are working together to create a series of national online pay checkers. In order to do this, they are gathering pay data through an anonymous salary survey that lets people enter their own details about their job and pay. The data collected will be used to compare pay and conditions in the UK and worldwide.

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TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "This is an exciting and innovative project. For too many people pay has been surrounded in secrecy, making the perfect environment for inequality and discrimination to flourish undetected. This web site shines a light on the issue. It will help employees and unions uncover some of the unfair differences in pay that we know exist, and help people find out what they are really worth."
Alastair Hatchett, head of pay services at IDS, said: "Having access to better information means making better decisions. This is as true for individuals as it is for organisations. We think this project draws on some of the advantages of the internet in a new and useful way. It enables workers to gain access to a continuously evolving source of reliable information on how much people actually earn."

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www.paywizard.co.uk is part of an international research network. The project started four years ago in the Netherlands as a tool set up by the FNV trade union and the University of Amsterdam to help women compare their earnings with those of men doing similar work.

It has since grown into a free service available to, and used by, people in all manner of jobs. With EU funding, the network now encompasses seven other European countries -- Germany, Spain, Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and Italy -- and has already launched in India and China.

New projects are underway in Russia, USA, Brazil and South Africa. The system in each country is the same. Together, a national trade union organisation and a research institute set up and maintain a web site.

In the UK, the partners are the TUC -- www.tuc.org.uk -- and Incomes Data Services -- www.incomesdata.co.uk -- one of the UK’ s leading employment research organisations.

PayWizards in other countries can be found at www.wageindicator.org

Posted 21 January 2005