I’ve been in several payroll projects (IT). Payroll calculation and structure have many factors, even when you are only calculating gross pay and won’t take into account taxes and social security to calculate net amount. But it is quite common that in companies with no unions or sectors whith several collective agreements plus very different employee profiles that payroll change from one person to another.

For the same job you can have the same base salary, but different position complement. That could be because for some places is more difficult to fill a vacancy. Other times, while the job description and responsibilities is the same, one of the employees is new and the other have been in the company for a long time. Ironically, it is quite frequent that the new employee makes a lot more money, since the old one might have started as a junior and even with rises is earning way below market prices. That is an HR problem, but very real. Sometimes with profiles with great demand collective agreements are way below market rates and there is where the pay gap comes along, because since there are no two workers completely equal, the manager might arbitrarily decide to offer less money two one candidate than other. And it is based on his personal percepcion of the employee value. And he might be wrong, is completely subjective. But it happens.

And here there is also another thing at play, since many managers consider that women are less likely to change jobs, they offer less rises to ensure retention.

I mean, wage negotiation have many factors and is not as straightforward as people who think in “collective agreements” imagine. The idea of two people earning the same is naive at best. If it were true, they would publish wages on the employee portal for everyone to see and you won’t need a law to be able to discuss your wage. Ironically, HR managers discourage this discussion. They don’t want employee to have that data.

More information on this on “HR lady” or ask a manager. Those are two divulgative blogs. Once you understand payroll calculation, you won’t be that surprised about wage gaps. XD