Social Justice and the Salary Scale: A Field Study of a Sample of Public Sector Employees in Anbar Governorate

Abstract

Every society strives to achieve, through various approaches and mechanisms, some of which relate to the civil service, Here, the state attempts to achieve justice through the Salary scale it has established to determine the salaries received by its employees; however, the problem with the current Salary scale for employees in Iraq has two dimensions: one relates to the current salary level, which cannot keep pace with the continuous rise in prices and the cost of living, and the other relates to the significant disparities and gaps in salaries between ministries and non-ministerial bodies; despite employees having equivalent qualifications, we find that each ministry has a different salary scale to the others, which creates a sense of injustice amongst a large number of employees and a perception of a lack of social justice, as indicated by 67 % of the research sample comprising 150 employees in Anbar Governorate. Indeed, some of them even attempt to find ways to transfer to ministries where salaries are higher than elsewhere, such as the Ministries of Oil and Foreign Affairs, The field findings of the research also showed that 89 % of respondents believe that the proposed Salary scale in Iraq will be closer to social justice than the current Salary scale . More than 40% of respondents believe that reducing the salaries associated with so-called "special grades" and high-ranking positions is a crucial step toward achieving such equity; a significant number of them also emphasized that the decline in the real value of salaries contributes to the emergence of administrative and financial corruption. To achieve the social justice that is the focus of this study, it is essential to adopt a new salary scale that significantly narrows wage disparities, while ensuring fairness for lower-paid employees within the Iraqi public sector.