What Does Truworths Pay? The MRS Scam

What Does Truworths Pay? The MRS Scam. Welcome to the filthy rich Truworths Market-Related Salary Scam. It looks like Truworths knows how to window dress inequality. Truworths withholds pay information and tricks applicants to attend discriminatory interviews. They don’t disclose salary ranges in adverts claiming its ‘market-related’ offers would be misunderstood and that applicants have a fair opportunity to negotiate at an interview.

Truworths Fashions Inequality: What Does Truworths Pay?

Truworths does not disclose salary ranges in their job adverts. So it’s become a mystery, What Does Truworths Pay?

The Truworths Market-Related Salary Scam

Truworths is a Cape Town-based, South African clothing retailer, with 728 stores in South Africa, and 49 elsewhere in Africa.

Founded as The Alliance Trading Company in 1917, Truworths sells clothing under a number of different brands, including Truworths Man, UZZI, and LTD, employs over 11,000 people, and generates over R18 billion in annual revenue.

In December 2015, Truworths acquired the UK shoe chain Office Holdings for £256 million. (Wikipedia) According to Just-style, the deal went down for R5.5 billion.

What Does Truworths Pay? The MRS Scam

Truworths claims they are entitled to unfair recruitment adverts because job applicants have high salary expectations, not market-related.

They try to assure us their interviews are not based on unfair power and bias, but are in the applicant’s best interests:

Truworths chooses to not disclose salaries with advertisements for employment opportunities so as not to inadvertently and prematurely exclude good candidates from positions based purely on their salary expectations.

Evidence shows that Truworths offers salaries at the lower end of the market range. This suggests they trick candidates to interviews and coerce them into accepting low offers.

Do applicants really experience a fair salary negotiation process, as Truworths claims?

From Dow Jones to MRS Jones: Truworths Market-Related Salary Scam

We got a thing going on! Know that song ‘Dear, Mrs Jones…’?

MRS Jones AKA Truworths Market Related Salary: So What Does Truworths Pay?

According to the Truworths email telling me to back down:

Truworths offers market-related salaries and remunerates fairly based on the requirements of a role, the candidate’s qualifications, skills and experience.

There are a few sites you can visit when you need salary information. I’m only going to refer to two sites and reveal what they show us about Truworths ‘MRS’ claims. (See the reference list below for links)

Note ‘the requirements of a role, the candidate’s qualifications, skills and experience’ does not mean they cannot state a salary range. They’re trying to make a meaningless statement sound like a proven fact. A salary range accommodates the factors they mention.

Good Question: What Does Truworths Pay?

Truworths assumes the public is dafter than them, please don’t be impressed by their stupid response.

While benefits vary from one company to another, it’s important to identify how your skills and knowledge are valued by looking at salary trends. Sometimes companies put a unique job description together for a position that never existed – you then have to research both skill sets and find a happy medium.

Salary ranges are not laws. Ultimately, what you are willing to accept may be lower than what someone else would and the recruiter will take advantage of that.

Truworths Pay in South Africa: What Does Truworths Pay?

According to Indeed, the average Truworths monthly salary ranges from approximately R 2 441 per month for Cashier to R 9 440 per month for Sales Representative.
Average Truworths weekly pay ranges from approximately R 300 per week for Retail Sales Associate to R 749 per week for Cashier.
These salary figures are approximations based on third party submissions to Indeed. These figures are given to the Indeed users for the purpose of generalized comparison only. Minimum wage may differ according to geography and Indeed advises that applicants consult employers for actual salary figures.

R8 224 is the average salary for sales consultants in South Africa.

Truworths Sales Consultant Salaries

Compare Truworths to other companies and see where it ranks.

Who’s lower than Truworths? Truworths Market-Related Salary Scam

Verimark: R3393
Stuttafords: R3802
OK Furniture: R3759
Edcon: R3581
Edgars: R2739

Truworths Store Manager Salaries

Interesting to note a brand perceived as ‘low cost’ pays among the highest salaries.
I’m assuming it’s because they want store managers who help them compete and drive their brand into a massive market challenging other brands. Or perhaps they’re just a lekker better brand to work for?

The 21 salary submissions from Ackermans claim an average salary of around R15 787 p/mth.

Truworths?

With an average offering of R8240, Truworths hardly communicates a similar banging brand imagination, vision or prowess for its people.

Strategically, they are focusing on aggressive international growth and global competition. In this pursuit, they appear to have forgotten that brands are built by people, not products. They are strict about protecting a culture of secrecy!

The next time you step into a sexed up Truworths store, know that it’s all facade from a company that pays low but can afford big ass billion acquisitions on the global market.

Competition and Career Junction Salary Trends for Sales

According to CJ:

Job advertising for Sales Representatives and Sales Consultants continued to strengthen during March 2017. Job seekers within the Sales Consulting field are currently experiencing great employment prospects. However, the job market is very competitive in this sector.

Tough competition means although there are plenty of positions available, the number of applicants are also high. This would mean that recruiters and employers can take their pick and make applicants compete against each other by taking advantage of their ignorance and lack of experience.

Truworths Market-Related Salary Rip-off

Given that Truworths is firmly against revealing their salary ranges for opportunities and their claim applicants don’t understand market rates – we can see how it’s possible that they exploit this ignorance to their own advantage, offering salaries that are among the lowest in retail.

However, given that Truworths says salaries are nuanced by experience and skill level, perhaps Truworths only appoints from among the least skilled and that’s why pay is below market average.

This could mean that Truworths isn’t competing for experts but actually looks at retaining those who have less to offer in the competitive job market. (Strange for such a high-powered internationally focused brand, no? Please let me know in the comments section what you think.)

Accessing Information: Truworths Market-Related Salary Scam

Truworths wants us to believe that withholding information reflects their ‘virtue’ and that an applicant who doesn’t know the information is more likely to be considered ‘virtuous’ enough to be offered a job.

If you ask questions, Truworths won’t like you and you won’t be invited to an interview. I asked to meet with them to debate this topic and was flatly refused.

A third great site to use for pay scale information is https://www.payscale.com/index/ZA

Please research and inform yourself before applying.

Remember that money isn’t everything. There are many low-paid employees throughout South Africa, indeed, the world, who enjoy their jobs nonetheless and use the opportunity to work their way up to a better position or move to another company once they gained experience.

It’s not wrong for a company to try to undercut you – that’s business. They want the best for the least amount of money, that’s why you must be informed before you interview or you will not have strong negotiating power. Companies and recruiters will hide this information as they are not legally required to reveal it.

The problem is that organisations purposefully withhold information during recruitment in order to entice those who need a job to an interview and then prey upon their vulnerabilities, Truworths justifies this approach in their email.

Conclusion

Companies that rely on secrecy breed distrust. In Truworths case it seems they have a reason for such secrecy, a secrecy that reflects the unlimited power business assumes over vulnerable citizens.

For me and many others, the secrecy of salary ranges is not virtuous. Secrets are used to subjugate and to take advantage of individual vulnerabilities and ignorance.

Don’t we deserve better South Africa?