I am of a different view. I think that in general, individual salaries should be private. The whole purpose of having a board of directors (elected by the members) is to handle such details in a responsible manner. It is true that some trolls / conspiracy theorists will darkly hint that there is something wrong with this, but it is standard practice for organizations.
I do agree with Craig, though, that for senior staff there is a tradeoff. And in many jurisdictions (US and France for example), the most highly paid few employees must have their salaries public by law. And that can be a good practice.
But for chapters that will end up having 10+ employees, including a receptionist, accountant, public relations person, etc., there is no good reason to have everyone's salary public.
This may vary culturally as well, so local public expectations matter.
On 2/3/12 4:20 PM, Craig Franklin wrote:
I'm all for as much transparency as possible! The only possible drawback I can see is that some people have an (entirely justifiable, in some situations) preference not to have their salary plastered all over the Internet. This in turn might make them less than eager to apply for jobs with a chapter, which in turn means that the chapter might not get the absolute best person for the job.
Personally though, I think that tradeoff is worth it, at least for senior staff.
Cheers, Craig
On 4 February 2012 04:38, Thierry Coudray <thierry.coudray@wikimedia.fr mailto:thierry.coudray@wikimedia.fr> wrote:
I open this discussion as this issue arise for WMFr and its professionalization, and I believe same for others chapters. I would like to know if the foundation or others chapters who have recruited or will do it have define a wage policy and have decide a public transparency for this wages. Wikimedia France had an employee during less than one year before we separated through a negociation.It's salary was not published but easy to find in our accounts as he was our only employee. We then recruited within a short period, 3 employees with a permanent contract and one with fixed-term contractin charge of the fundraising. So it raised the question of wage policy, equity between employees, and transparency of wages. Even more because some of this employees are former WMFr volunteers. In France, the practice is that the wages in charities or NGOs are generally 15 to 20% below market value. Difficult to check for small organizationsbecause in France, it's culturally not easy to speak/disclose personal wage even if things are changing. Difficult also because some jobs in charities are very specific and sometimes do not have their equivalent in the job-market. If a charities or NGOs received more than 50 000 € of public money (from public administration, cities, etc.), the organization has to disclose it's more 3 highest wages, post and name of the post-holder. But most of the time, this disclosure is not easy to find for an ordinary donator as you should do where to find it, most of the time in an annex, lost in the middle of accountings documents. We have discussions on this point on WMFr board, and personaly I'm a for the higher wages transparancy we can, for our members and donators, despite cultural curbs. Thierry -- Thierry Coudray Administrateur - Trésorier Wikimédia France <http://www.wikimedia.fr/> Mob. 06.82.85.84.40 <tel:06.82.85.84.40> http://blog.wikimedia.fr/ _______________________________________________ Treasurers mailing list Treasurers@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:Treasurers@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/treasurers
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