Would full sunshine lists help low-wage earners make more?
Some jurisdictions publish the salaries of top-earning public employees. But this week, we hear from an economist who says everyone's salaries should be on sunshine lists, because it could help those at the bottom earn more.
Sunshine lists publicize the wages of top earning public employees. They can tend to have a counter-intuitive effect on the bargaining processes -- while they're meant to expose over-inflated salaries, they can actually result in pressure for more raises because everyone knows what everyone else makes. You might think that an economist would argue against them then -- but no, Frances Woolley of Carleton University says in fact there should be sunshine lists for ALL workers in Canada, because the ones making less are the ones who would benefit most from the upward wage pressure.