In Italy the topic has gone by in relative silence, maybe because the effective application of the norm is still quite far away timewise and we shall only get round to it in due course. Or maybe because the EU directive 2023/970, which rules out keeping salaries secret, actually touches on a key aspect of the employer/employee relationship, a crucial interchange which leaves room for a wholly discretional exercise of power. The EU objective is sacrosanct and worthy of merit: to combat the gender pay gap, which still sees women greatly penalised at pay level, the legislators in Brussels have established that workers and their representatives are entitled to receive all available information on wage levels applied in the company, both individual and average. Obviously, companies will be obliged to reveal eventual differences in the salaries of men and women covering the same roles. And not only that: the EU norm foresees that no clauses must exist impeding an employee to make public his/her earnings or to ask for information on what other workers earn, and that salary level must be communicated in the job announcement or, at least, before the job interview. A norm which applies simple common sense? Well, of course. READ MORE