Partners: Watershed for Channel 4; distributed by Warner Bros International Television Production
Length: 1 x 60 minutes
Aired: July 2012 (Channel 4, UK)
Rights available: Worldwide, format and finished
Just as the first rule of Fight Club is to not talk about Fight Club, discussing salaries with co-workers tends to be a “no go” zone for casual conversation. For this social experiment, Charlie Mullins, managing director of Pimlico Plumbers, takes a page from an actual 1950s workplace experiment, in which his entire workforce has to reveal to each other what they’re making. From there, once the pay discrepancies are exposed, the workers have to come together, both to devise a pay scale that’s fairer to all concerned, and in cross-department pairings that give glimpses into what each job entails. Will the experiment pay off?