PRESENT TENSE:HAVE YOU been talking about how much you earn? Actually, let's put it another way. Have you been talking about how much you don't earn, how much you've lost, how much your pay has been cut? Because for a nation that really despised any open discussion about our wages – and especially hated anyone who bragged about theirs – we've become far less reserved now that money's leaking from our payslips.
You might have a rough idea of what you earn. So does your boss and someone in human resources. Your partner might or might not have an inkling, depending on the security of the relationship. And that’s it.
You wouldn’t tell anyone beyond that, for fear of breaking that golden rule of Irish social etiquette: don’t talk about your salary.
It does not mean that we are not fascinated to know how much other people earn. Obsessed, even. Or that we haven’t developed subtle, subconscious messages through which the information is communicated in a broad but pointed way. It’s kind of like the way Northerners need only two sentences to divine a stranger’s religion, without actually asking them straight out.
So we have traditionally gained a sense of how well someone was doing through a complex code of nods and winks and verbal clues and mentions of the apartment in Bulgaria and the vroom of the new car three days into the New Year. But these were only clues. Much guesswork remained. And, in the boom times, most people probably guessed upwards.
Maybe this is a peculiarly male thing, or an Irish male thing, but it was natural to presume that someone else is doing better than you. Unless you were Sean Quinn.
It’s the residue of our post-colonial attitude towards brash wealth and we’ve been schooled on the collective resentment that exists for anyone who gets a bit ahead of themselves. But it must also have something to do with the notion of not giving anything away; the tactics of negotiation. Oddly, though, even the recruitment ads here don’t give much away. In the UK, they’ll give you an idea of what the successful applicant will earn, right the way down to the last penny. Here, it’s a bit more hush-hush than that. Come and see us, they say, we’ll talk about it then. Just shut the door and make sure no one’s loitering outside.
When The Irish Times journalist Fintan O’Toole announced his earnings on Questions and Answers – and subsequently on radio – it was one of the most shocking things heard on national television in a decade. If you’d opened the window at that moment, you would have heard a collective gasp carried on the gale. Just as we presumed that television had shattered every taboo, we were ambushed by one we’d forgotten about.
But, here’s the thing: all of a sudden, people are talking about their wages. They may not yet be talking about what exactly they earn, but they are talking about what percentage of it that they have lost or are about to lose. This is the most we’ve talked about our wages for Lord knows how long, and the conversation isn’t about how much, but how little.
It’s natural. Partly because of the way it has been almost universal across the private sector. The Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association this week claimed that almost half of all small and medium businesses have had to cut pay, with an average cut of 13 per cent. So, if you’re in the private sector and have kept your job, it’s something you might be familiar with and you’ll know several people at least who have experienced a five, 10 or 15 per cent cut.
It is a rare moment when having your pay docked is not seen as an awkward, shameful moment, but as something unexceptional.
But what’s more interesting about it is how much more comfortable we are talking about this. It sits fine with us. We’re not embarrassed.
Bill Cullen suggested on the Last Word this week that the reason why many people who could afford 09 cars had stayed away from them is because they didn’t want to be looking too showy in these days of restraint and cutbacks. That’s far from being the only reason why car sales are in the toilet, but there might be something to the observation.
The notion that developed during the Celtic Tiger that we were somehow happier, better people when we were miserable was also nonsense – and we’re getting a sharp lesson now in how much happier we are when we have jobs and money and security – but there is definitely a strain in us that makes us more comfortable doing false modesty. Maybe it’s allowed us to relax a little, because now we don’t have to ham it up so much.
shegarty@irishtimes.com
