Should companies be required to publish all employee salaries?

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Whether salaries should be public information divides opinion sharply, and both camps hold a piece of the truth. On balance, however, I believe mandatory publication would do more good than harm. Supporters of transparency point to a stubborn fact: pay gaps survive in darkness. Where salaries are secret, women and minorities routinely discover, years too late, that they were paid less for identical work. Norway and some public sectors already publish pay, and their wage gaps are measurably narrower. Transparency also disciplines management, because arbitrary favouritism becomes visible and must be defended. Opponents argue that salary is private, and that publication breeds resentment among colleagues. This concern is genuine but overstated. What most employees resent is not a colleague's higher number; it is the suspicion that the number is unjustified. Published pay attached to published criteria, such as seniority, performance and scarcity of skills, converts suspicion into an explanation. The discomfort of the first year of transparency is the cost of decades of quiet unfairness ending. In conclusion, I support required publication, ideally introduced in bands rather than exact figures to soften the transition. Privacy is a real value, but it has too often served as the camouflage of inequity, and a fair workplace has little to hide.