The Fair Pay Bill: Advancing transparency and equality in employment

At a glance

• The Fair Pay Bill is a bill that has been proposed as an amendment to the Employment Equity Act, 1998 (EEA), (Bill) and is still in the early stages of its passage through Parliament.
• It introduces structural changes aimed at increasing openness around remuneration, such as requiring salary ranges in job postings and allowing open discussion of pay among employees.
• The Bill seeks to prevent salary discrimination by restricting employers from basing offers on a candidate’s previous pay.
• While it promotes transparency, many of its provisions build on protections already found in existing legislation like the EEA and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.

The Bill is a bill that has been proposed as an amendment to the EEA and is still in the early stages of its passage through Parliament. The aim of the Bill is to put an end to salary discrimination and to promote equal opportunity in the workplace.

The main changes that the Bill seeks to introduce are as follows:

• Prospective employers will no longer be able to ask candidates about their current remuneration and cannot base a candidate's salary on their previous salary. However, a candidate can be asked about their salary expectations during an interview.
• Job advertisements and discussions during recruitment, promotion or transfer processes will need to include a disclosure regarding the salary offered for the position or at least a salary range for the role.
• Employees cannot be prohibited from discussing their remuneration with others and accordingly a clause in an employment contract that requires employees to keep salary information confidential is not enforceable. This is not new as the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, 1997 already provides for this.

Although the Bill may promote and enhance pay transparency in the workplace, the proposed Bill is not vastly different from some legislative provisions that already exist. In this regard, there are already equal pay for work of equal value provisions in the EEA, in terms of which a difference in terms and conditions of employment of employees of the same employer performing the same or similar work or work of equal value is unfair discrimination if the reason for the difference is one of the prohibited grounds or an arbitrary ground. This is subject to some grounds of justification for differentiation in pay as set out in the Regulations to the EEA.