Discuss salaries!

In the US, not only is it completely legal to openly discuss compensation with anyone you like, it is also illegal for your employer to tell you not to, or to retaliate against you for doing so. It is a highly protected activity.

Seriously discuss salaries. My coworker was making half of what I was making for doing the same job.

America seems strange for this salary secrecy and individual negotiations. But in my work place in the UK, a group is negotiating higher salaries, and another group (unaffected) is actively talking shit about them and trying to undermine their efforts. This other group speaks of how terrible it is to affect a multimillion £ organisation to strain its finances. Workers holding back other workers is complete bullshit.

I was pulled into a meeting with my director and told we're not allowed to do this. I told her it absolutely was allowed under the law and she looked me in the eye and doubled down, stated that it has been like this at every company she's ever worked at.

My complaint to HR resulted in the HR person telling me that while it wasn't allowed, it was discouraged; which is also against the law.

My ethics report on both of them was "investigated and concluded".

My call to the NLRB resulted in an overworked federal employee telling me I could make a complaint but it was unlikely to amount to anything against a company that size.

Yep, that's why companies try so hard to intimidate people into keeping that info secret. I think most if not every company I've ever worked for has had some version of

• It's against company policy
• It's illegal
• It will just create jealousy

And of course, my responses have always been

• Too bad, it's federally protected
• Liar
• No, your payroll policies do that; same job, same pay

Assuming your manager has the authority to increase your salary. I’m a manager and have 0 power in any say and very limited in what I can do. I’m just paid to babysit my staff to make sure the job is jobbing.

I did this once for an executive assistant. A few months after I was hired me and the assistant were talking and I told her how much I made because i was excited (it was a lot for me at the time). She mentioned she made like half the amount and had worked for 20 years for the company. I coached her on how to ask for a raise and showed her all the other people in the area making more than her and with that ammo she went and got a huuuuuuge raise. I was so happy for her.

Always talk about how much you make. The only reason it's a taboo is because the owner class don't want us to know how much everyone else makes because it's easier to rip people off when they're ignorant. Especially people who are mild mannered since they might not ask as many questions or fight back against pushback.

This is why unions are usually better, especially the trade unions.

Serious question: how do you start that conversation with a coworker if you're not 100% certain they'll be receptive?

Discussing wages is constructive in general, but I am afraid many workplaces remain lacking in adequate solidarity for the tactic to be successful.

Beware of those who will try to bring down others instead of helping to lift everyone together.

I used to work at a shitty company that banned discussing salaries. I never thought anything about it because it was a call center and I just kinda assumed we had standardised salary across the board. One time when having drinks at a friend's house who worked with me but had a higher position, I found his payslip lying around and I was making, I shit you not, about 70% more. Fucking hell.

I have several stories on this I like to tell.

I worked at a startup in NYC that was doing job-search related stuff. Find job postings, get resume advice, that kind of stuff. Someone in the customer service department found an article online about salaries, shared it, and then people were talking about how much they got paid. Management came down hard on this, and said it was a fireable offense to talk about salary. Everyone got real quiet on the topic after that. Was it illegal for them to do that? Maybe! But laws only matter when they're enforced, and a bunch of entry level people making $30-50k a year don't have the means to launch a legal challenge. That's even if there's enough solidarity to try, and the effort won't be scuttled by scabs and bootlickers.

For extra irony, a couple years later the company launched an "Are you getting paid enough?" salary comparison tool.

I worked at a different startup in NYC. This one loved data. Data data data. They had t-shirts made that said stuff like "Data doesn't care about your feelings" or whatever.

People started agitating about salary transparency. They wanted to know how much people were being made, because there was a sense that not everyone was getting paid the same for the same work. Also, some of us had in secret started comparing notes, and found some wide gaps.

Well, the CEO wasn't having it. He said "we have salary bands", but wouldn't provide more detail on the range of the bands, who was in what band, and how it all worked. Just we have salary bands and they're fair.

People didn't like that, so he tried changing tactics. He said, "Who here thinks they're being paid too much money? No one? No one wants a pay cut. Right. So that's why we're not going to release the specifics." As if the only solution to Amy being paid too little is to lower Bob's pay.

This is the same CEO, at the same "we love data" company, that when people brought up studies about four day workweeks being more effective, just shut it down with "We're not doing that."

Management and ownership don't care. They don't care about what's legal or just. They care about power, and profit as a close second. I knew a guy that worked in a factory, and the owner reportedly would say stuff like "If you assholes unionize I will burn this place to the ground, and I don't care if you're inside or not."

There need to be institutions, with teeth, to stop these kinds of things. If ownership even whispers an anti-union sentiment, they should lose everything.

When I transferred to a particular department, I was very open about salary. I never asked anyone else to be too, but it got people talking and a year later half my team quit to get a 25% salary increase at a competitor. Oopsie!

I don’t regret it. 10/10 Would do it again.

I always talk salary with coworkers, but I've discovered that it can occasionally be a liability as some people lack class solidarity and lean into resentment before considering collaboration. Do talk salary, but look before you leap. Reach out the the coworkers you know you can trust first.

Out of college, I got my first job at a decent salary. A woman I interviewed with saw the salary offer they gave me, and then promptly went to HR to demand that she at least make as much as I was offered. She had been at this company for 3 years. It shouldn't be this hard. Women shouldn't have to fight to make as much as men. Normalize discussing salary.

what's funny is that while the institutional gender pay disparity is mostly gone (at least where i work) - there's still a couple of dozen ways women get screwed out of money for doing the same work.

my favorite case from this year was with data engineer position - simple middle level position Pandas Airflow Databricks stack, 3k median. two candidates hired - same skill level, salary - male 3,5k, females 2,7k - why? if you look strictly at the skill assessment reports - you wouldn't even be able to tell where is who. so what the fuck is going on? well, if you look at the HR report - dude been showboating and oversharing about his skills all the way for the ladies and that's good thing that should be rewarded while the lady just laid down the facts as she was asked during the interviews and was deemed distant and not very personable, "she doesn't seem happy to be here" so to speak therefore she is not that good. fucking literally. and then the very same recruitment and human resources specialists wonder why people leave.

I am terrified everyone in this community doesn't comprehend the actual problem.

If you're working for a salary, you have already been robbed.

I was one of 3 people aty office who got any sort of raise this year. It was based on merit. I'm thrilled about the raise, but I feel bad for my coworkers because management sucks. I discussed the raise with my work besties and one is pissed about it and the other is hyped for me.

I'm also faced with the dilemma of being important at work.

Socialize the information

In the same way, I discovered that everyone got paid. Except me. For a month. I left the job, best decision ever made.

Definitely don't disagree with the feeeeemale in the meme but also:

Also it's illegal for them to stop you, talk away.

https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages

I think I first saw this post in 2018.

Totally agree — comparing ranges helps people negotiate fairly. Best move is sharing numbers with context (role, level, location) so it stays useful, not messy.

sometimes it doesn't even benefit the company

as an example, I used to be partially responsible for my team's hourly rates. we hired a proper manager though, and I am no longer responsible for that, and seemingly no longer even involved in that discussion.

as a result, I don't know what some of my team members are paid, which means that I don't know how to properly evaluate them and set expectations for their work output. if somebody is making $5 less an hour than somebody else, I'm going to expect less work product from them, and judge them according to that expectation. but I can't do that without knowing their wage.