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.
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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Though everywhere I have ever worked (in tech, in the US) it was highly discouraged to talk about salary.
Weβve 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.
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.
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.
We are in agreement.
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.
If youβre in an at-will state, they can fire you this without saying this is why, and itβs very hard to prove this was why.
Montana is the only state where an employer needs "good cause" to terminate.
Seriously discuss salaries. My coworker was making half of what I was making for doing the same job.
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 Β£ 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
Assuming your manager has the authority to increase your salary. Iβm a manager and have 0 power in any say and very limited in what I can do. Iβm just paid to babysit my staff to make sure the job is jobbing.
Same. You gotta go like 2-3 levels up in management to get someone with authority to raise wages. I think it's by design at this point.
100% by design. I know people who will say "but my manager can't get me it" as reasoning. Which is strictly correct but also like, man.
It's all relative. Is your manager trying to get you a raise? Or, are they getting a bonus by denying you one? If you aren't sure, maybe it's the latter.
I technically dont have the authority to increase anyones salary, but I have the information and can be a huge advocate for them.
I personally have also rejected promotions. No counter offer, just said, "if thats all you can afford to offer me, ill try again next year when you can make me a better offer."
They came back and doubled the salary increase
Worked at Lowe's and was astonished how little power the GM had. However, he could have paid me more, point-blank asked me to ask for a raise. Left in a fit before we met. :)
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.
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, youβll 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
Discussing wages is constructive in general, but I am afraid many workplaces remain lacking in adequate solidarity for the tactic to be successful.
Beware of those who will try to bring down others instead of helping to lift everyone together.
Right. Those people we need to beware of, those are the bosses. That's why we talk, that's why we unionize.
Bosses and bootlickers both demand our wariness.
I have several stories on this I like to tell.
I worked at a startup in NYC that was doing job-search related stuff. Find job postings, get resume advice, that kind of stuff. Someone in the customer service department found an article online about salaries, shared it, and then people were talking about how much they got paid. Management came down hard on this, and said it was a fireable offense to talk about salary. Everyone got real quiet on the topic after that. Was it illegal for them to do that? Maybe! But laws only matter when they're enforced, and a bunch of entry level people making $30-50k a year don't have the means to launch a legal challenge. That's even if there's enough solidarity to try, and the effort won't be scuttled by scabs and bootlickers.
For extra irony, a couple years later the company launched an "Are you getting paid enough?" salary comparison tool.
I worked at a different startup in NYC. This one loved data. Data data data. They had t-shirts made that said stuff like "Data doesn't care about your feelings" or whatever.
People started agitating about salary transparency. They wanted to know how much people were being made, because there was a sense that not everyone was getting paid the same for the same work. Also, some of us had in secret started comparing notes, and found some wide gaps.
Well, the CEO wasn't having it. He said "we have salary bands", but wouldn't provide more detail on the range of the bands, who was in what band, and how it all worked. Just we have salary bands and they're fair.
People didn't like that, so he tried changing tactics. He said, "Who here thinks they're being paid too much money? No one? No one wants a pay cut. Right. So that's why we're not going to release the specifics." As if the only solution to Amy being paid too little is to lower Bob's pay.
This is the same CEO, at the same "we love data" company, that when people brought up studies about four day workweeks being more effective, just shut it down with "We're not doing that."
Management and ownership don't care. They don't care about what's legal or just. They care about power, and profit as a close second. I knew a guy that worked in a factory, and the owner reportedly would say stuff like "If you assholes unionize I will burn this place to the ground, and I don't care if you're inside or not."
There need to be institutions, with teeth, to stop these kinds of things. If ownership even whispers an anti-union sentiment, they should lose everything.
Places like that you work hard, get the experience and title(s), leave. Rinse and repeat.
I always talk salary with coworkers, but I've discovered that it can occasionally be a liability as some people lack class solidarity and lean into resentment before considering collaboration. Do talk salary, but look before you leap. Reach out the the coworkers you know you can trust first.
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
Serious question: how do you start that conversation with a coworker if you're not 100% certain they'll be receptive?
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.
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 am terrified everyone in this community doesn't comprehend the actual problem.
If you're working for a salary, you have already been robbed.
One time, a couple of years after I had graduated from college, I had a coworker who had about, I'll guess 25 more years experience than I did. I would talk to him, but his personality was abrasive. I think he'd qualify as a giant asshole.
Anyways, that time, after our annual raises, we were talking, and he just blurted out to me something like, "I make $160,000." And I responded, "Okay." At the time, it was a lot more than I was making, but he had a lot more experience, and many more qualifications. He was a subject matter expert on a very specific piece of the project. I didn't think much about what he said.
I thought he was just bragging, because that was typical of his personality. It never occurred to me that he might have wanted me to share my salary back.
But I don't think I could have used that information to my advantage. Like I said, our situations were pretty different, and this was just after our annual raises, so a difficult time to get another raise.
Anyways, the next morning, he comes back over to my desk and hands me a piece of paper. I look at it, and it was the paper they gave him for his raise. And he says, "See? I do make $160,000." So, it turns out he was just bragging, after all.