I hadn’t realized until I read “this piece”:http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/09/23/walkout-at-the-university-of-california/ in _Cosmic Variance_ that you can scope out the pay of every employee of the University of California who earns more than $100,000 by “searching an online database”:http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/ucpay/. I imagine that my ignorance is not shared by senior academics within the system, who are able to see what their colleagues are paid at the click of a button. I’m curious as to what effects (if any), this has on intra-department relations. Departments usually keep relative pay levels secret, for fear of arousing envy and resentment among scholars who consider themselves to be underpaid relative to their colleagues (merit pay increases and efforts to match outside offers may lead to significant divergences). So what happens when the books are opened (at least among a select subset of academics). I could imagine that this might cause internal bickering. I could also imagine that it might give rise to a social norm that no-one discusses their colleagues’ pay (even when they know damn well what it is) with reference to their own so as to avoid unpleasantness and fractiousness within the department.
