Via grewlike @ Flickr
Thanks to the The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, which President Obama signed into law last week, a new 180-day statute of limitations begins with each discriminatory paycheck a company issues. The statute of limitations used to be 180 days after the company decides to pay an employee unfairly (unbelievable, isn’t it?). Now, once you find out you’re being paid unfairly, you have 180 days from the time of your last paycheck to bring a suit against the company.
But first you have to find out you’re the victim of discrimination. Lilly Ledbetter only learned she was being paid less than her male peers because an anonymous co-worker tipped her off with a note. According to Ledbetter, she was told on her first day at work never to discuss salary with anyone.
Talking money is a long-standing social taboo; in some situations there’s good reason for that. In others, it can leave you in the dark and hurt your bottom line.
Companies benefit from the culture of secrecy regarding salaries. If nobody knows how much their co-workers earn, nobody knows whether mistakes are being made, whether discrimination is taking place, or whether they need to be more assertive next time they’re up for a raise.
A couple weeks ago, 20/20 ran a piece on pay transparency. Personal finance expert Suze Orman is for it. She thinks colleagues can protect and empower each other by sharing their numbers and confronting a boss with major discrepancies. But plenty of others are against it, explaining that passing around salary information within companies only leads to hurt feelings, envy and confusion.
The New York Times Style section is not written with us plebes in mind, but according to this article from last spring, 90 percent of people over age 35 think you should never let your co-workers know how much you make, whilst 85 percent of those under 35 agreed with that statement (exactly-35 year olds were not surveyed). At the same time, apparently, “young people” (those under 35?) are very forthcoming about salary with everyone but their colleagues.
So what’s a girl to do? I am not necessarily shy about what I earn, but how does one go about turning their workplace into an open and honest environment?
I feel like all the workplaces I have ever worked in have had set incomes with annual payraises that I believe are the same for everyone. The concept of a merit-based raise is pretty foreign to me. Is that just a non-profit or government thing? Then again, maybe that’s what Lily thought too.
I’m in an environment where all of my management colleagues are women, so I would never earn less than one of them based on gender. When I earned my promotion and raise last year, two of my coworkers who were already at my current level took me aside and told me what they earned and urged me to lobby for that salary when my promotion was completed. (Which I was too chicken to actually do, so my anecdote does not have a charming end.)
I am in complete agreement with you and Suze Orman. I work in a business where pay scale for my job varies wildly–from as little as $70k to as much as $150k for the same title–so when I have gone job-hunting it was crucial for me to know what others made at my prospective employer’s, so I could negotiate accordingly.
IMO, women are culturally discouraged from saying “this is what my work is worth and this is how much I want to be paid.” We are taught–much more than men–that it’s in poor taste to discuss money and to brag about/compare salaries. But that, of course, is what allows companies like the one that employed Lilly Ledbetter to get away with underpaying her. Transparency is the only way we can ensure pay equity.
Becky, I also think that it is different in non profits. There is a feeling that we are all in this for service and it is in poor taste to demand a raise when we all know full well what the budget is and how tight it is. This is perhaps why nonprofits are way disproportionately staffed by women, especially the kind of tiny, poorly remunerated kind I traffick in.
@BeckySharper: “women are culturally discouraged from saying “this is what my work is worth and this is how much I want to be paid.””
Yes. Yes. Yes. And I think the main reason I did not push for a salary equal to my coworkers (I’m making $5-$7K less than them, which is a fair chunk of money!) is that I really had this fear that he would turn around and fire me. Completely irrational but also gendered. I had announced my pregnancy at work in the three week gap between when he offered the promotion and when he told me what my new salary was. And I looked at my pregnancy as a career liability, which I’m sure my boss did as well. Hence I felt unsure if I should push for more money and be on equal footing with my coworkers.
I really wish people were more transparent about things. When I was offered my job, they offered me a certain salary. I had know way of knowing if it was a good offer or not.
“from as little as $70k”
Sob. I wish I was paid so poorly! Hehe, just teasing.
sarah — i know right? in my dreams.
@funnyface: I’m guessing that what they offered you was not the most they were willing to pay. In most negotiations, the opening bid is usually a starting place and you have some room to negotiate it up. Maybe not a lot of room, but usually around 10%, I think. Employers often make money off the fact that prospective employees are too timid/desperate to say “Okay, thanks. I had $$ amount in mind, could you match that?” I now realize that early in my career, I left money on the table by not asking if that was their final offer.
Yeah, I probably should have tried to negotiate. I regret that now. But after 3 months on unemployment, all I really cared about was that the job paid more than $200 per week, and I jumped at the chance.
I now realize that early in my career, I left money on the table by not asking if that was their final offer.
Which means you’ve left exponential money on the table ever since. This is always my biggest fear – setting the bar too low at the start. (Self-employed, though, so it’s a little different.)
I’ve solved it personally by retiring (at least for now) and monitoring and worrying if my husband has set the bar too low in his career. Yeah, he’s thrilled with that.
I also think it is really stressful to be constantly monitoring one’s income and considering the market. I tend to think about money like, do I have enough to pay my bills? Am I saving enough? Not, “don’t I deserve to be paid more?” That’s another reason transparency makes sense — then it’s not like the only people who get raises are unrepentant capitalists who are willing to demand it. That seems to reward people who are kind of assholes in the workplace, and deny reward to nice people who do their work well regardless of their income.
Yes, jdregent. My thought was, will I be able to meet my needs on that? With a heavy side of, “you should be grateful to even have a job right now.” I didn’t even consider “am I being paid what I deserve?”
@labeled: Yes! A big part of the reason that I left my last job was that I realized that every future salary was going to be based on what I was making at that job, so I was fucking up my earning potential for the rest of my life. The corporate world will do that to you, easily. Fortunately, I managed to reset the bar when I got this current job b/c it gave me a 60% pay raise, but I was very lucky that I was able to do that.
Obama mentioned this when he said in his Ledbetter Bill speech that pay inequity was causing women to lose over $200k over their lifetimes. Which is dreadful.
There are most likely thousands and thousands of Lilly Ledbetters out there, who don’t even know it. And that’s the problem. How do we get to the point where salaries are made public within companies?
$200K, dreadful, indeed. You truly ARE lucky to have reset that bar.
@SarahMc: Damned if I know. Because like it or not, transparency does poke at another hornet’s nest: hierarchy issues. .dramatic.shudder.here.
@SarahMC: Legislation maybe? But can you imagine the agonized howls of Big Business? I think it’s going to be cultural change that makes the difference: people–not just women, either–feeling empowered to simply ask and assert themselves on this issue.
Sadly, the current state of the economy makes me think people will be more desperate than ever just to find work and less willing to ask hard questions about what their work is really worth.
All the talk of figuring out salaries and asking for raises makes me really glad to be in a union. I get what I get, and I know everyone else at my level is getting the same thing.
sarah — it seems relatively simple just to pass a law requring them to post them up on a board, like they do with union notices and health regs. some social problems just aren’t rocket science, just a matter of lack of political will. we may not be able to solve all the problems with pay equity, but transparency seems simple enough to implement.
meant to add that I don’t think cultural change/individual empowerment will ever resolve the issue sufficiently. There will always be shy or whatever people who won’t do it and it will never be fair that they are denied raises because of it.
I’ve never had a job that paid salary, but I do have an anecdote to share from when I worked for HR at Target. I filled in for the district admin for two months during the hiring of new store executives and had to calculate their paychecks. Their starting salary was between $35k and $50k, supposedly based on how much retail/business experience they had – but 90% of these new hires were straight out of college. Without fail the men were paid more. I wasn’t allowed to talk about pay with them and no one talked about it with each other so none of the women knew they could ask for more.
The military publishes their pay charts, both for base pay and cost of living expenses that differ depending on where you live. I kind of like the lack of negotiation.
also (sorry to be running my mouth so much) i think that transparency is an easier win than legislating redistribution or other wage controls (as I would prefer). The idea of “an open marketplace of information” is a very market-friendly idea that business does not have much of a philosophical leg to stand on in opposing it.
I suppose the way to do it would be through the law.
One woman featured in the 20/20 segment owns a company and has held meetings where she wrote her employees’ names & salaries on the board and invited discussion. She ended up changing some poeple’s salaries afterwards (some up, some down!). I can’t even imagine being in that scenario but I know I don’t like the way it is now.
Ledbetter is great and all, but it accomplishes nothing if people never find out they’re being discriminated against.
JD, consider this place your mouth’s racetrack.
In my previous life as a magazine journalist, whenever I had a job interview, these are the rules I would follow:
1) Try to never even mention money until they offer you the job. If asked what my current salary was in a first interview, I would say “I’d rather not say at this point, if that’s alright”; if pushed, “I’d really rather not say”. Usually, people wouldn’t ask a third time. If they did, though, I would add 5 grand (UK pounds) to whatever my salary actually was. Depending on your industry, you could add more – magazines are a pretty small club, so salaries don’t vary that much within a sector.
2) If they ask what your salary expectation is, say you expect to be paid fairly for the job. If they push you, see above. Basically, ALWAYS ask for more than you want, by at least 5 grand (depending on industry), that way, you will probably get 2 grand more than you actually wanted.
3) Once they offer you the job, whatever salary they offer – DO NOT ACCEPT. Instead, look a bit crest-fallen, and say you’ll have to think about it. When they ask what you were expecting (they will), say 5 grand more. They will negotiate you down to 2 grand more. Win!
All of the above is subject to variables, of course – how in-demand your skills are, how well you hit it off with the interviewer, etc. But basically, through experience, I learned to play hardball. Don’t ever worry about what the interviewer thinks of you – they know it’s all a game just as much as you do, and they will actually respect you more if you know how to play. And I speak as someone who has done a lot of interviewing, too. If someone was a pushover, I would think they might be too passive in the job, therefore FAIL.
It sounds really hard to pull off, but trust me, it works. The first time I tried it was for a job I wasn’t that bothered about – I asked for 5 grand more and the Editor said yes instantly (and that was 15 years ago, so 5 grand was a lot more). I couldn’t believe it. It was one of those revelatory moments that changed my way of thinking forever. I realized, fuck it, there’s always another job, but there’s only one ME, motherfuckers. You’re lucky if you get me to do your crappy job.
Good luck, ladies.
Sarah, that’s the best sentence anyone has ever said to me! Thank you!
About this negotiation business, yes, I see how it is possible to do it in an interview but what if it is a really high status place that you know a million people are interviewing for, and then you start getting picky about 5 grand? I feel like at my snobby workplace they’d take you out of the running right away. But I could be wrong! Which is why we need a board up in the lunchroom with everyone’s salaries.
And honestly, as much as I know a lot of women are underpaid, I also think there are a shit ton of people (probs men) who are way way overpaid, and if that gets corrected too, more power to us.
And I offer this advice because, unless there is a legal obligation placed on businesses to disclose all salaries, I don’t think we will ever find out what other people really earn, because there will always be those who are unwilling to share that information.
@jdregent: well, like I said, there are variables. But know that companies RELY on you feeling that you can’t negotiate for fear of not getting the job. My point is, first you’ve got to lose the fear and know there are other jobs out there. Because whatever your career is, that is always true.
@jdregent: Also, re: “a really high status place that you know a million people are interviewing for” – well, how about The Sunday Times (UK)? Besides which, ALL companies think they’re the bees knees. And honestly, good people are very hard to find – people who are competent and also fun to work with. And I have a feeling you are both of these things, jd.
yeah the times is a good comparison — still the private/public questions plague me, but i can see how that can also be manipulated to pay me less than they could, even if I’m never going to make market rate for my degree. thanks for the pep talk. i’m more likely to negotiate for more time off than a higher paycheck, but it’s definitely worth thinking about for next time.
I work in a sector of my industry that has perfect pay transparency. It’s great. Everyone should have it. No merit-based compensation, really.
It’s funny how, though, I use a lot of similar arguments to these at work to complain about the general culture being against women in my particular type of workplace. Workplaces generally reward a kind of proactiveness that I often find alienatingly male and/or American…
PM I think it is male AND american. I had a Canadian boyfriend once who was constantly disgusted and horrified by the way merit raises happened. He thought if he kept his head down and did the best at his job he would be recognized, and realized that his shitty coworker made like 15 grand more than him because he asked for raises like every 6 months despite doing nothing to deserve them. I dearly wish I lived in Canada for reasons such as rewards for not being proactive and capitalist in the workplace and not having matching bridesmaids.
and by PM I mean PS. Whoever coined P.Soul, we have to put that into heavy rotation.
My American male boyfriend is exactly the type to keep his head down and his mouth closed at work. He hates his job, in fact, and spends his whole day counting down the hours. Still, every four months or so he gets a bonus of $500 to $1,000, out of the blue. It’s crazy!
Bonus? What is this alien concept of which you speak?
JD, you could always emigrate. We also have a less draconian immigration system such that one could potentially move there and gain permanent residency without having to put in several years of indentured servitude or alternately marry a kind acquaintance or mercenary fuckwad met over Craigslist.
(No, I’m not bitter, why do you ask?)
**remains silent on issue of bonuses**
That’s not SILENCE, PS. Spill.
“According to Ledbetter, she was told on her first day at work never to discuss salary with anyone.”
I had this exact same rule at my previous job and ALWAYS thought it was suspicious. And being the person I am, I always pushed the boundaries of ridiculous rules such as those whenever I could… “Oh but we can’t talk about that can we!” *wink wink*
The other comment I want to make is, I totally adhere to Diziet_Sma’s advice. Absolutely. 100%. I learnt this method many years ago and have used it to great success, up until very recently, when I had to somewhat modify it.
The trouble is, even if you negotiate something appropriate with regards pay and conditions in Poland (where I live) the employer (often with the tacit backing of ‘sheep’ employees) will somewhere down the track, invariably take it away from you. (I’m in a battle with my ex and current bosses for things that were promised in my contracts and negotiations – in the previous employer’s case, documented) – so, trust noone.
Watch your back at all times. (I have also battled every employer bar none – including a major state university – since I came here to live several years ago – I’m bloody exhausted.)
Use whatever means necessary to get what you need. Don’t trust your boss. Don’t expect your co-workers to stand with you. If they do, enjoy it and use it to get yourselves a better deal. It’s all you can do.
I’m a little bitter today, and tomorrow may be the same, but I won’t let them take what I am owed away from me without a damn good fight. Let me tell you!
/end_rant
The Ledbetter Act, sadly isn’t going to have businesses running scared. It’s still contingent upon women to find out they’re being discriminated against and suing their employers, which can take years and their on $$$, while being VERY hard to prove in court. If Obama wanted to do something real to end pay inequity, he might create an office like OSHA that monitored businesses, doing random checks and allowing workers to call in reports.