What we discuss when we do not discuss our wages

Back in November, I shared a piece about the “ Real Media Salaries Spreadsheet” that was started by one of my coworkers and publicized the incomes of more than a thousand individuals operating in media.

Now the New York City Times has published an excellent brand-new piece about this movement, on the breakdown of the taboos around pay transparency:

Open discussions of pay lay bare some of the basic contradictions that govern a lot of offices, which claim to embrace their employees like family while insisting, all the while, on professionalism and discretion. They are neighborhoods whose members care about one another and yet likewise understand that their respective ideal to belong is based upon their utility, perceived or real. To ask a colleague her wage– specifically one who has actually operated at an institution for many years– opens deeper, upsetting concerns. How valued are you in this neighborhood? Are you more valued than I am, or beyond what I perceive as your worth? Or have you undervalued yourself, been timid, clueless, exploited?

The article does a fair job of approaching the concern from different differences, including the social and professional comfort included with even attempting to change the expectations around salary secrecy, and the real data that reveals what takes place when money matters are aired out outdoors:

[U] sing information from a happiness survey that has actually been performed in Norway given that 1985 … Perez-Truglia found that the newly found accessibility of other individuals’s pay resulted in a significant increase in the happiness space: Higher-income earners were happier than they were before the info was commonly offered, and lower-income employees were less pleased.

Simply put, I’m personally in absolute favor of sharing income details. There can certainly be room to negotiate within that– if you can make an argument to your employer that your skills and labor deserve more, for whatever factor, then by all means, go all out. To do that successfully, you need information. And as long as the one in charge is hiding info from you, you’ll never truly have the ability to bargain for a decent offer.

Breaking the Salary Sharing Taboo[Susan Dominus / The New York Times]

Image: Evan Jackson/ Flickr(CC 2.0)