This is why unions are usually better, especially the trade unions.
I try and drop subtle hints around the office, like “my family members in unions don’t have this kind of problem” and “friend of mine has a union that got them out of a return to office order”. Feel like I need to go with stronger hints.
“maybe a union might help us? put your email address into this mailing list form if you want to join once I set it up” 👀
Yep. Everyone knows the other person’s pay rate. Heck, you can probably look up most union’s pay scales online even if you’re not a member.
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 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.
I was leading a team of engineers (in contrast to managing). There was another team that hired a cohort of engineers straight out of a boot camp. One of them was a shit-hot Jedi of a woman, so I totally poached her for my team. It helped that my team was working on cool stuff and most people wanted in.
After she joined my team, I asked what her salary was (leads don’t typically have access to pay info like a manager would). She was making $70k while most engineers of her tenure and skill were making $110k to $145k. I went to talk to motherfucking HR about this problematic disparity.
The HR jerkwad had the nerve to say, “Discussing your salaries is a terminable offense.”
“I will give you five seconds to amend your statement.”
He stammered a bit and made some non-committal statements. I went to the division VP, to whom I directly reported. He fixed that shit the next day and got her back pay to her previous review.
So yeah, absolutely discuss your salaries with your peers. And FFS don’t be cowed by these douchebags.
Same job mentioned before. One of the women on our team had been there a little over 10 years, she was just starting at the same place when I left for another job. When I came back to that company she had been through 4 promotions and was making at least 10k less than I was hired for, same role amd same team.
The rule with discussing salaries is that you can do it (and you should do it), but you shouldn’t let your managers know you’re doing it. The law is on your side, but nobody with actual authority wants to support you doing it.
So, if you’re on your way out in a contested wrongful termination case, there’s definitely leverage in pointing to your employer firing you for discussing salaries with your coworkers. But in every other case, you gotta play those cards close to the chest. Nod and smile and agree with every manager who says you shouldn’t discuss salaries. Then do as thou wilt.
That’s not a rule.
That is shitty workplace culture that needs to change.
Imagine living in a place where managers are coerced and/or encouraged to trample employers rights.
That kind of bullshit only engourages the employees to look for a new job. If somebody does a good job in the long run its cheaper to pay them well and keep them in house instead of hiring continually new people and having everytime a coin toss if they even know what they are doing and spending time to train them.
I was pulled into a meeting with my director and told we’re not allowed to do this.
An employer telling employees that they can’t discuss salary is such a massive red flag
Yep. That was when I realized I wasn’t planning on moving up or staying long.
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.
Though everywhere I have ever worked (in tech, in the US) it was highly discouraged to talk about salary.
We’ve been programmed to consider it rude to encroach the subject.
Ironically, the public sector makes salaries available to everyone to view.
Now you know that that is illegal.
Discouraged by whom? Bad passive voice.
Significant numbers of people do believe that it is not social acceptable, and many employers do perpetuate that notion.
If you’re in an at-will state, they can fire you this without saying this is why, and it’s very hard to prove this was why.
Montana is the only state where an employer needs “good cause” to terminate.
Employers have all the power, though. It is they who may reliably hide behind the law for protection. Laws that protect employees are rare to be passed and rarer to be enforced.
You’re not wrong, but it’s worth contacting DoL if you need to on this one.
Worked for a payroll firm and 99.75% of lemmy would be astonished at how powerful the state labor board is. And this was in Florida! Hardly a bastion of labor rights.
“waGe TheFT!”
“Have you called the state labor board and inquired?”
“NOAWW! I’m a victim and I make memes!”
Only our worst client, and only 1, wasn’t scared shitless of a call from the state labor folks. And these clients were rock-bottom, minimum-wage employers like restaurants, churches and thrift stores. Part of our payroll service was protecting the employer from fucking over the employees!
While I’m on about knowing your rights, a $26 legal insurance plan can save you 10’s of thousands with a single use. I call mine every few months.
“Can they do this? What about this? What are my rights? What if I do this thing? What form do I fill out and how?!” Mostly super-simple stuff, but my divorce and child custody cases alone saved me far than I will spend in the next 40 years.
The difference between rich and poor is legal representation. $26/mo.
Support from the state is likely to vary based on local context and the current administrations.
No one should be naively hopeful.
It is most optimal to rely on labor organization for finding individuals with specific relevant experience.
Yeah, my buddy got fired from his job working at a hospital right after going on medical leave for a mental health diagnosis. Easy open-and-shut case of illegal discrimination. Not only has he been in a legal battle over it for several years now with no end in sight, but he’s had absolutely no luck finding jobs at other hospitals in the area, which given his experience is unusual, causing him to believe he’s been blacklisted in some way. For all intents and purposes the US legal system is pay-to-win, and employers are playing with very big pockets.
We are in agreement.
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.
It isn’t just women, although it does affect us more for sure.
I used to work at a small startup making peanuts and a male colleague hired on was making even less. Thankfully, we went against the company policy of not being allowed to discuss salaries (an illegal policy in my state, btw), and managed to negotiate him up a bit.
All-male team here, but my colleague made considerably less than what I was offered as a new hire few years back. We discussed about salary at coffee break and now we all have the same salary and it’s even better than what I started with. I never understood why it’d be a secret that I make 4,5k€/month before taxes.
It’s everyone. Corporations screw everyone as much as they can. You think if they could hire the same equally qualified person for 30% less they wouldn’t do it in a heartbeat? Corporations care more about profits than they do being anti women (barely) otherwise every field would be dominated by low paid women. As OP, best solution is to discus wages openly so no one gets fucked over.
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.
well, sounds like a skill issue on her part at this point.
it’s more of a skill issue on recruiter’s part because you have to cut through bullshit like that. it is less of a problem with dev teams because loudmouths get humbled eventually but it is a huge problem for sales, business development and marketing - it can do a lot of damage. funnily enough - AI tools for candidate screening and chatbot interviews actually help spotting that kind of thing.
Unfortunately, people who sell themselves to the company make more than people who don’t. Hell, sometimes just asking for a pay bump during the hire/on-boarding process can make a difference. Two of the last few gigs I’ve been at have given me 5-10k more a year simply because I laid out my creds and asked for the high end of the scale when I probably would have been given the mid range if I didn’t ask and justify it.
Many people don’t understand that you’re selling yourself to the company, and they’re buying your time and labor. If you present a mediocre product, don’t surprise when you get a mediocre offer. I can’t stand it, but not playing the game doesn’t get you anywhere.
the whole “sell yourself to the company” thing is not what it seems. it has less to do with candidates getting around the idea of self-presentation and more with the overall degradation of recruitment and human resources talent pool. there are lots of people who bear the titles but can’t do their jobs properly. and they look for shortcuts and easy decisions. “selling yourself to the company” is one of them. it’s not a knock on the candidate trying to get by, but if the recruiter whose job is to spot that (among other things) can’t spot that - that’s a problem that makes a mess. hell, most companies don’t even have transparent pay scale systems to clearly communicate who gets what and why so the salaries are all over the place for no good reason and it leads to toxicity and disgruntlement.
You’re also assuming recruiters are involved at all, and it’s not just HR and a hiring manager looking over resumes, which doesn’t match my experience at all. There’s also the explosion of hyper specialization in job roles, so a lot of HR drones can’t do much more than look for buzzwords and see if they think your personality will fit the org.
Just about every job I’ve had was either via resume or word of mouth, and in both cases, there’s not really someone between me and the interview process to handle those items you called out. So selling myself was how I both got the job and pay bumps. The one recruiter I used was good and put me in with a good job that was a good fit (and had a public pay range), and I still sold myself to the company to hit the high end of the range (a guy hired after me makes less than me in the same position, but has a lower skill set).
Selling yourself makes you more money, recruiter or not. It’s fine to blame the system for its failures, but the candidate needs to put themselves forward and advocate for themselves. The only time that isn’t needed is when you have something like a union that sets your pay based on seniority/position/tenure, and selling yourself doesn’t change your rate. Any other situation, and you’re selling yourself short.
Like I said before, I hate the game, but I have to play it. And ignoring the need to sell yourself only hurts yourself, even if it does feel icky in the moment.
And I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong about the degredation of the talent pool, but a lot of that is due to the current work landscape being back to the pre-pandemic state where companies have the upper hand in negotiations, leading candidates to spray and pray, targeting jobs they’re not qualified for (since all of the entry level jobs are being taken away). I got my current gig and the golden years after the pandemic (when we actually had the upper hand for like a year or so), and helping my manager interview for another body is painful with how many people are applying for a mid-level job when they’re a better fit for our entry level.
I don’t disagree about “the nature of the game” but it is not that case. There was no “selling yourself short” in that specific situation - it was the HR screw up, one of the many.
What i can’t stand is this, for the lack of the better word, gamification of recruitment process when the company makes up some imaginary assessments and bases their decision-making on that instead sticking to tangible facts. And i’m not making assumptions. i had to clean that mess afterwards.
The company’s lack of transparency regarding these things cost them quite a lot. It is specific situation when an impression took precedence over facts for no good reason and it also happened to be discriminatory towards women at the same time.
i can also go on and on how they wasted much of that middle talent by giving them zero upwards mobility with no real career development plan while also demonstrably hiring senior staff externally because “there were no worthy contenders in the company” type of shit. As a result, they rendered themselves into a feeder for other companies in the field with some insane turnover rates but hey - they had 10-year recruitment and human resources professionals with the “legacy of success” leading the charge.
I have a very high suspicion they are pulling same trick to a degree depending on overall background like race too.
Yeah, there is a clear preference in racial hiring which I’m sure affects salary negotiation as well.
probably, but that stuff doesn’t go into reports so i can’t spot it from there.
Seriously discuss salaries. My coworker was making half of what I was making for doing the same job.
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
It will just create jealousy
Ah yes, because if that worker just happened upon others’ salaries, they wouldn’t be jealous.
I always chucked at the jealousy argument, because it’s just another way of admitting discriminatory pay practices. If people are paid the same for the same work, nothing to be jealous about.
I had a manager once argue that equal pay for equal work just inspires people to slack off. I contend that being joblessafter being fired for being a slacker is motivation enough to earn that equal pay by doing equal work.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
Crab mentality, also known as crab theory, crabs in a bucket mentality, or the crab-bucket effect, describes the mindset of people who try to prevent others from gaining a favorable position, even if attaining such position would not directly impact those trying to stop them. It is usually summarized with the phrase: “If I can’t have it, neither can you”.
Seeing as how everything turns Into crabs eventually, is that nature telling us this is the correct logic to have? /s
Carcinization of socioeconomic structure?
Totally agree — comparing ranges helps people negotiate fairly. Best move is sharing numbers with context (role, level, location) so it stays useful, not messy.
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 hope you told them when you left
Serious question: how do you start that conversation with a coworker if you’re not 100% certain they’ll be receptive?
“can you believe they only pay us X to do this shit?”
As someone who detests small talk, this is one of the few times when it is essentially.
First step is learning if they are a snitch. Second is seeing if they can be critical of workplace. Third is bringing up your own salary. Fourth is asking for theirs if they don’t immediately reciprocate on step 3.
In practice there are many ways this can happen. Here is one reasonable example:
Did you see the bosses [insert anything, tie, shoes, car, your pick] today. OmG!
[Wait a day or two for any sign that made it back to your boss. Prepare a convincing cover up story in the event he/she/it is a snitch.]
2-4
Our health insurance is terrible isnt it? I swear its like they pick the cheapest option. [Replace the above with any other unpopular opinion depending on how critical the response is of your workplace you can jump immediately to steps 3-4]
I heard a lot of employers like to pay people differently for the exact same work and I dont think thats right. Thats why I want you to know I make Y. If you make less I can help you argue for more. Do you mind sharing your salary too?
You can sometimes just jump straight to step 3 or 4 if you are feeling confident. But do be aware. You can save someone’s job and the boss will corner them in an office and some of them will still rat you out. Happened to me personally. The above isnt without risk. But do not be afraid of humans, especially middle management humans. They are usually the weakest people I’ve ever met.
When you’re running a place I want to work for you
Unethical LPT: tell the colleague you find most difficult to work with, that you make far more money than you do. If they succeed in getting a raise, you’ll have an easier time getting one, too. If they fail, you know not to bother, and the difficult person will likely leave or be fired soon.
What? Hahahaha
If they succeed in getting a raise
How are you supposed to know if this is the case? Just hope they tell you?
Just hope they tell you?
No, no. That is too unreliable. You can tell whether they got a raise by the odor of their farts. It’s unmistakable.
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.
Being important can be tricky.
I work in a very small city, and I wear a lot of hats. I do plan review, permit processing, GIS, Open Records, vested rights determinations, some code enforcement, am the in-house IT guy, city photographer, and more.
What makes me valuable is my ability to multitask, and if I left it would be very hard to fill all those roles. But I’m also kinda a specialist in keeping plates spinning. My role is essential where I am now, but it’s fulfilled my specialists in each of those duties in other cities. My skills etc isn’t in high demand because there’s only a few cities in the country that have the the extreme development complexity we have while also having a municipal staff of fewer than a dozen people due to the city’s size.
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.
