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Thursday 8 May 2008

Armenia: job announcement with indicated salary info

For the first time in ages, I saw today a job announcement in Armenia with indicated salary information. (well, there may be others too, but it’s something very rare) I always wondered why people would not indicate this one of the most crucial factors in deciding which job to take in their announcements and leave it to speculations, as something 'unspoken', 'guessed'... Is this some kind of false morality thing ("we do not care about money, we care about job"). Or perhaps it's US influence too: it is very common in US to withheld salary info from the announcements.

Only in rare cases when salary is negotiable and pretty high it may be OK to put some sort of vague indications of it. Otherwise, I think it should be a norm. For example, in the UK and Europe salary information is normally an important part of any job ads.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why we go and work? Answer is simple, to get paid.
There are hobbies that we do for our pleasure.
Even if your job pleases you as a hobby would do you still need to get paid.
This makes us wage earning slaves as we have no other option, we should do what the boss says. Maybe that's why in the job announcements everything is written that interests the boss but nothing that is of the prospective employee's interest. They can easily negotiate your salary but no way you can negotiate the work aspects.
It is also a big no-no to ask for the salary figure during the job interview. What, do they think we are working for them because of our humanitarian believes that is, to make them rich?
Based on the current economics school humans are treated nothing more than a resource with a fixed depreciation period. The Capital and Land are also resources.
This is pretty twisted.

ԿԻՆՈՄԱՐԴ said...

I don’t know where you saw the ad and who the employer was; was it a domestic entity or an international corporation.

The salary is not usually mentioned in Armenia as a tax-evasion tactic. In many cases (domestic companies), the nominal salary amount is a small fraction of the real salary. The balance is paid in cash, it remains undeclared and unregistered. The employer and the employee collude to save on social charges and taxes.

This is a very widespread form of corruption, and practiced even by those who complain about corruption!

artmika said...

I am not sure whether that company is domestic or not (never heard of it before) but I would assume it has at least international links. I always wanted to write about that salary in job ads thing so when I saw that ad, it came to my mind again and decided to post it.

Anonymous said...

The employment laws are very good in Armenia e.g. 13th bonus payment, very long matternity leave and the mother can't be sacked withing 2 years of the birth and there are many other such good laws, coming from soviet times.
As a result probably 80% of the employess are not legally employeed. This results explotation of workers e.g. over 40 hrs works without overtime, no paid holidays, no job security and many other things.
Trade unions are weak or dont exist and the employers are mainly the government officials or have links to it.
I support Levon mainly because the establishment of the Trade Unions was in his programme.

ԿԻՆՈՄԱՐԴ said...

I think this is a very interesting post, and hope to see more such posts in the future. But discussions on social and economic topics can be fruitful only if we don’t end up in cliché political discussions.

Hiding the real amount of payroll and other expenses (supplies, etc.) by relying on cash transactions is a way to hide the real business turnover in order to avoid the “attention” of the authorities and eventually paying taxes on profit. Therefore, businesses that are NOT connected to the authorities and do NOT have powerful connections, practice it commonly as a “defensive” measure.

Anonymous said...

hn, How are the laws "very good" if one of the consequences of the very good laws isthat "80% of the employees are not legally employed?"