$14.50, you?
- Laurella Jose
- May 16, 2020
- 6 min read
I’m an intern right now. Unpaid. Y’all know how it goes. Anyway, I got placed in this tiny box of a room with a girl around my age. Her name’s Shanelle. We’re making small talk and she tells me she’s working on this presentation for future Master’s students in her program.
Apparently, one of them came up to her during a career information session and straight up asked her how much she makes in her position.
Shannelle goes, “How freakin’ rude right?”
I’m sitting there like, “I guess.”
My lack of social awareness prompts me to continue, “but I mean, why is that rude?”
Shanelle’s like: “You just don’t ask people that. It’s rude.”
I felt like Karen Smith from Mean Girls, and I just asked Cady Heron why she’s white.
“Oh my god, Laurella, you can’t just ask people how much they make!”
But how else are you supposed to find out?
Maybe Shanelle’s right. Maybe the way that that particular student came up to her and asked was wrong. But why is it rude to want to know how much I’m gonna get paid? Wouldn’t you want to know whether that pay cheque will support you and your kids? Cover rent? Or in Gen Z’s case, their ten dogs and fifty house plants?
In reality, we’re uncomfortable with being asked how much were paid because it feels like a personal attack. And that’s because we tie whatever number that is to our self-worth. It’s taboo to talk about money like that because it can go one of two ways: either you find out you make more and people start to resent you for it. Or you find out you make less and get embarrassed, maybe even mad. And before you know it, you’re angry tweeting: “This dumbass has the same job title I do, comes in late all the time, turns in rubbish work and gets paid more than me?! Fucking bullshit.”
We’re about to graduate. We’re about to tweet that tweet. And if by a stroke of bad luck, you find yourself working with me when we’re out of here, you can bet your butt I’m gonna ask you how much you make. But hopefully by the end of this little speech, you’ll beat me to it.
Practicing salary secrecy only helps to shift power away from employees, who time after time fall victim to two main things: pay discrimination and wage suppression[1]. Having these conversations uncovers discrimination and equips us to ask for what we deserve. Disproportionately, it’s women and people of colour who get the short end of the stick1. So, who better to enlighten y’all on the benefits of pay transparency than me, a short Filipino woman?
You need not look further than Canada to see how pay transparency helps shrink the gender wage gap. Some of you may be familiar with the sunshine list. It’s the effect of public sector salary disclosure laws. It’s what allows you to look up your professors’ salaries. Research shows that those laws reduced the gender wage gap (which was around 8%) by around 2 percentage points which is roughly a 30% reduction in the gap.[2]
Don’t get too excited, though. Policy is one thing; workplace culture is another. The same study found that, yeah sure, the gender wage gap shrunk but overall, salaries fell. See, the culture around pay needs to change if we want it to work in our favour. The power is still greatly imbalanced against employees. By changing the culture around asking, we can fight wage suppression. Which is – a thing.
The fact of the matter is – employers have growing power over the labour market. They are able to dictate and suppress wages[3]. It’s their game and we’re gonna play by their rules power because we need that part-time job, that unpaid internship, that one shitty associate position that requires the elusive ‘2-3 years experience’ listed in the job posting. I mean, really. Someone in this room, anyone, please tell me why I’m dressing up, going to multiple interviews and answering case studies just to vie for the attention of a big corporation, that mind you, has the money to pay me, but waves a full-time unpaid internship in my face like a carrot on a stick and has me drooling.
When we keep silent about our pay to our colleagues, whose interests does that serve? The person writing the cheques. The person making the decision to low ball you because the first question you ask yourself during your salary negotiation is “am I asking for too much?” and not, “am I asking for enough?”
And they know it too, those sneaky capitalists. Some companies even make policies prohibiting their employees from comparing wages. Because of this, there’s a misconception that it’s illegal to discuss pay. Employees get in trouble for it all the time. But it’s perfectly legal. In Canada, The Pay Transparency Act protects employees in these situations. It prohibits reprisals against employees who discuss their pay.[4]
Knowledge is power, my dudes. When I was looking for articles advising against pay transparency between employees, I couldn’t help but notice that that side is taken by, no surprise: senior managers, CEOs, presidents. They say that asking will create a toxic work environment.[5] But does it? or does it merely expose a toxic work environment? One source even had the audacity to say it’ll hurt your chances of getting a raise! Basically, they say don’t do it, you’ll make things weird. No. You made it weird by not paying us fairly in the first place! It’s demoralizing not because you’ve just found out that Chad makes more than you but because your boss made the decision that you should make less than Chad. They know exactly what would happen if we broke the taboo around discussing pay – we’d ask that we be paid the same as our counterparts, we wouldn’t sell ourselves short when we’re up for that raise and we would finally ask for what we deserve.
Don’t get me wrong, going from “am I asking for too much?” to “am I asking for enough?” is tough. It took me about a year to ask my bosses to get size small gloves. Long story short: I work with a lot of big men and so the gloves on hand to clean the bathrooms were the size of my head. But I got to talking to my fellow petite co-worker about that problem and now I’m cleaning shit up with properly fitting gloves. Small victories. But there are ways to make asking easier, respectful and effective.
Offer up your amount first. “Hey I make blahblahblah, does that sound around right to you?” This allows them to choose whether they want to disclose their pay. Remember that pay transparency should work to your mutual benefit. Make it a constructive conversation. If you find out you make less, ask them about how they negotiated, maybe they have tactics they can share. If you find out you make more, coach them on how to ask for a raise.
Staying silent about our salary hurts us more than it serves us. Instead of helping each other out we are faced to take shots in the dark about the pay we deserve just because we were brought up being taught it’s rude - end of discussion. We need to be able to hold our superiors accountable. We need to take steps towards diminishing the gender wage gap and wage suppression. All you gotta do is turn to the person next to you and ask them how much they make. Go on, do it.
Bibliography
Baker, Michael, Yosh Halberstam, Kory Kroft, Alexandre Mas, and Derek Messacar. “Pay Transparency and the Gender Gap.” Statcan. Government of Canada, Statistics Canada, September 16, 2019. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2019018-eng.htm.
Herrera, Tim. “Why You Should Tell Your Co-Workers How Much Money You Make.” The New York Times. The New York Times, August 31, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/smarter-living/pay-secrecy-national-labor-rights-act.html.
Naidu, Suresh, Eric Posner, and Glen Weyl. “Companies Have Monopoly Power over Workers' Wages. That's Killing the Economy.” Vox. Vox, April 6, 2018. https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/6/17204808/wages-employers-workers-monopsony-growth-stagnation-inequality.
Papandrea, Dawn. “Here's Why Talking about Salary with Coworkers Is a Bad Idea.” Monster Career Advice. Accessed February 11, 2020. https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/dangers-discussing-pay-coworkers.
Stam, Lisa. “Pay Transparency Act Passes.” Employment & Human Rights Law in Canada, May 2, 2018. https://www.canadaemploymenthumanrightslaw.com/2018/05/pay-transparency-act-passes/.
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