SALARY TRANSPARENCY project – some details

This is work in progress, comments on any stage of this are most welcome.

 

1. Motiviation

Making your salary transparent might help to increase pay fairness, thereby reducing social inequalities (see e.g. Card et al 2010).

How does a transparent system work?

·        Have a look at California, where all state worker salaries are freely accessible to the public. Why not in Greece?

·        In Norway and Sweden, for example, everybody’s tax record can be found online. Why not in Greece?

 

2. Greece: Trend for Judges, Police & DOctors: Up. Trend for academics: Down

Compare the general trend in academia in Greece to the fact that judges, some doctors and police granted themselves subtantial salary increases in the same periode (documents in Greek – English translations on demand).

 

3. My personal Net Income 2007-2013  (University of Athens, formal Linguist – last update November 2013)

Time

Monthly net Salary3

Position

Comments

 

August – November 2013

€ 1,591.184

(excluding χαράτσια2)

Associate Professor

1. Retroactive pay cuts. Effective January 2013, state employees of selected institutions were subject to retroactive pay cuts covering August – December 2012, in addition to further reductions in salaries (5th adjustment so far). Similar measures were enacted November 2011. To my knowledge, there is no other EC country that has ever implemented income laws retroactively. In fact, this practice known as ex post facto laws contradicts most constitutions.

2. Extra taxes/Xαράτσια. The term Xαράτσια ([xar’atsia], pl), which originates with the poll-taxes of the Ottoman empire, denotes two types of extra taxes on income and property the Greek government started imposing on taxable subjects in addition to regular income tax and property tax in late 2011. Introduced 2011 in tandem with a further round of pay cuts (up to 35% at universities), these extra taxes were intended as an emergency measure and initially also levied retroactively. It became clear soon, though, that their main purpose was to further redistribute the burden of paying the cost of civilization from those who in Greece are tax exempt (church, ship owners) or consider themselves tax exempt (Porsche Cayenne driving tax evaders) to lower and middle incomes. The effects are drastic. To exemplify, in 2011, my wife (Elena Anagnostopoulou, Full Professor, Linguistics, University of Crete) and me paid some Euro 3,000. In 2012, the sum rose to 3,500, which amounts to 1.5 times of our combined monthly net salaries. (By the way, property taxes are invoiced by the electricity bill. The consequences for those who cannot pay are obvious.)

3. Salaries/year. De jure, salaries are payed 12 times a year (unlike in the rest of Europe, e.g. Austria: 14 to 16). De facto, additional taxes reduce this by one to two monthly salaries. Thus, yearly net income equals ten to eleven times monthly net salary.

4. End of monthly deductions to accommodate for retroactive pay cuts 2012  (see 1 above).

5. Salary reduction. Retroactive enactment (from August 2011) led to further adjustments November/December 2011.

 

January - July 2013

€ 1,440.531

Associate Professor

 

November & December  2012

€ 1,793.16

Associate Professor

 

October 2012

€ 1,836.22

Associate Professor

 

January – September 2012

€ 1,587.90

Assistant Professor

 

November & December 2011

   € 1,367.501, 5

Assistant Professor

 

2008 – 2011

€ 1,789.68

Assistant Professor

 

 

 

 

STOP: Before you leave this part, please keep in mind that income transparency has its pitfalls. This project is a first stab at trying to establish a base line for discussing salaries at a larger scale. In the end, it will need to include data from a broader section of society. The reason I start here is simply that I am new at this myself and that my knowledge is limited.

          Joining in a transpareny initiative - that is making public what you earn and what you have earned -  can in my opinion help make Greece a better, more just place. It should be self-evident that I am not interested in personal benefits, but try to clarify what the facts are. If you think I am one of the privileged ones whose income is too high for local standards, consider what it takes to be internationally active in academia (here’s my CV) - and judge for yourself.

          Ceterum censeo, I believe that everybody employed by the Greek state is obliged to fulfill international standards in all of their professional activities regarding (i) work ethics, (ii) efficiency, (iii) quality of output, where it applies. At the moment, this is clearly not the case.