Talk about your salaries, people! The only benefit of keeping it secret is to your employer who can pay you less and get away with it.
this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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Yes, but the people you talk to have to do the same then.
I was talking to some coworkers a while back and one of them whined that he earned so little. I told exactly what I got and he just goes "oh, then I don't earn the least" and never talks about his salary again.
Like... At least tell me what you get!?
Btw. no one else said anything about their salary so I got exactly zero information out of that interaction.
Did you ask them?
At that point I just didn't want to anymore. It's also been a few years and now I have colleagues with whom I regularly talk about our salaries.
This is easy. Thank him for his advice that helped you get “a big raise,” then work him.
Your coworker is an ass.
That definitely means you earn the least.
(achshually) It only means you earn less than him.
Okay, fair. I got 1 bit of information. 😞
I think a lot about how one place I worked at, when people started talking salaries, Management said that was a fireable offense.
Personally I think everyone involved in saying that should have been barred from management roles for life.
But because most of the people working there were in their early 20s, with no power alone and no organization, they went along with it.
Some years later the company build a salary comparison tool on their website.
Lol, that was literally illegal. Although I don't know whether the NRLB has any bearing anymore.
But by making taking about salaries illegal. It was explicitly considered by the courts to be anti-labor practices. It was used to prevent employees from forming a union.
Unfortunately, laws only matter when they're enforced and people have equal access. It's easier to management to just break the law and, in the unlikely event someone challenges it, deal with it using their vast resources.
That's why I think the penalities for anti labor actions should be capital (sorry, pun). If you do anything to fuck with labor, your life should be ruined. Assets seized, lifetime prohibition of management roles.
Moreover, contrary to popular belief, unenforced regulations are worse than nothing and should be repealed by any responsible governance, because they effectively institutionalize the abuse they claim to prevent by concealing the abuse and increasing the competitive advantage the abuse offers. This is why indexes often use them as a proxy gauging regulatory capture.
Over here it's not "illegal", they just fire you with a different reason if you even as much as mention what you earn to a coworker.
They should sue. Even at will doesn't let you fire for illegal reasons and that's an illegal reason. Employment attorneys take cases on contingency and live for these sort of slam dunk, easy win cases.
You would still have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that your firing was due to the salary discussion and not something else.
It's like when a cop wants to pull you over: if they follow you long enough you'll make enough of a mistake for the pretense.
No, this would be a civil suit, so it's just preponderance of the evidence. Not hard to meet that for a case like this.
Last guy who tried this was accused of stealing and got into huge trouble despite there being no proof.
I'm all for comparing salaries and I've done so for my previous jobs, but my current job has left me concerned to discuss openly. I've been struggling internally about it.
Long story short is that one of my coworkers is a real malcontent that made a huge fuss when I got a promotion. They are the reason that I don't state my pay when I encourage my other coworkers to seek higher wages and coach them on negotiating raises. I'm worried that the sourpuss won't use the information as a tool to improve their own situation and instead cause more trouble for me.
How could they use that information to cause trouble with management? Presumably management already knows your salary
Dealing with someone that decides to try sabotaging your career, whether they are successful or not, is typically drama to be avoided.
When I got the promotion, they started sending whiny emails up the management chain. My immediate supervisor that I worked with to get the promotion was then put under scrutiny and essentially told "make this problem go away". It ended up with my supervisor having to give the coworker a detailed report on all of the reasons they didn't get the promotion and I did, leading to a tense work environment.
I can easily imagine this coworker doing the same shit if they heard my salary. There are two main reasons that I keep quiet:
- I have been walking on eggshells around that coworker since the original incident. It changed the work vibe from focused and fun to petty and defensive. I really don't want it to get worse.
- My supervisor really advocated for me to get the promotion and I don't want a good deed to be punished.
I do advocate for raises for my coworkers to them and to my supervisor, and I wouldn't feel hesitant to state actual numbers if it weren't for that troublesome coworker.
I might just be neurotic about this, idk. It just really sucked when they got butt-hurt and made my work life way more stressful.
People can do amazing things when they have no other option but to endure. That said, I can't imagine having to feed three kids on top of my already high expenses.
having to feed three kids on
don't forget kids' healthcare, clothes, toys, school supplies, dance/piano/tennis/whatever lessons, field trips, classmates' birthday parties every damn weekend... and if they have special needs, all the costs associated with that
i don't get how people do it either
Spoiler, they don't. I grew up in the kind of poverty that has us digging food out of the garbage if we wanted dinner. My parents didn't take me to the doctor when I dislocated my knee, or when a schoolmate knocked me out with a text book. The school provided a couple of uniforms, and weekend clothes were all secondhand. Toys were few and far between, we mostly just played ball in the street with the other kids in my neighborhood. School supplies were borrowed from other kids or the teacher. We didn't do extracurriculars except church, no field trips, no birthday parties. Special needs were called "being lazy" and I just got my ass beat a lot, so, I didn't discover the brain tumor until I was an adult.
you suffered because the billionaires who own the politicians want tax dollars going to them instead of people who actually need it
More or less, yeah. The church also took advantage of us, telling my mentally ill stepfather that being poor was a good thing actually, and it was good for his kids to go without so we could learn to rely on god like the sparrows of the field, or some shit. My parents never missed a tithe, but they sure made us skip meals so god didn't get angry at us.
religion is such fucking bullshit. it brings literally nothing positive that can't be had without religion
A benevolent Christian God would surely be much happier with his priest accumulating wealth over feeding some starving children, right?
Debt
fun fact: usury (charging interest on a loan) used to be considered evil and sinful, but now it's just taken as a given, because that's what we've been raised from birth to believe
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=ger
Fun fact: because usury was sinful for Chrisians, but it wasn't forbidden for Jews, many Jews were pushed into the money business with usury by not allowing them to do much other jobs and then had to pay high rents and taxes. It's where the stereotype of greedy money controlling Jew comes from.
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Yeah, but often getting by is not only about high salary but also low expenses.
They aren’t. As a single person you get screwed on taxes and other benefits.
Here, it's about 2.4k rebate for kids per year. I assure you that kids cost more than 2.4k per year.
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Just the dual income is definitely a bigger deal than the tax breaks. The standard deduction for filing as married is exactly 2x filing single, which really only matters if there's a significant income disparity or you don't itemize.
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You should see what they expect us to get by with on SSDI.
Thought she was holding a fish to her ear like a phone, for a moment there...
The secret ingredient is crime.
Nothing too serious, just send the kids down the mines and tell them it's Minecraft.
(This is a joke pls don't report me I may have 3 kids)
So OP doesn't provide for their 3 kids at all? Priorities, I guess...
Classically an ad for taking on more debt.
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They have multiple incomes
There are ways... with two kids, we get by using the same sedan we always used but without being able to use the back seat, make the same food we always made but eat less, and spend our luxuries budget (aka video games) on their books and school supplies. Luckily we also get insurance through employer so that covers them, with additional costs of course because who ever heard of universal healthcare?
Suffice it to say it all sucks, but that's the US experience. And they wonder why nobody wants kids anymore... at least on the upside, these two kids will know how to make a molotov at an early age!
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