Michelle Obama Blogs!
Too cool - Michelle Obama blogged over at BlogHer on equal pay and Lilly Ledbetter.
Lilly is from Alabama. For nearly 20 years, she worked for a Goodyear tire plant. She was the only female supervisor--so you know this is a tough, hard-working woman. One day, someone sent her an anonymous letter with a list of salaries of her co-workers. That's how she found out that she was making less than the men she worked with--even men who were less senior than she was. And we're not talking about a few dollars. Some of her male counterparts were making 40 percent more than she was--for doing the same work.
It's a nice follow-up to Samhita's post yesterday on Obama and the economy...
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**sigh** I love Michelle.
I have a question about the Ledbetter incident. How does one access information about their salary and their coworkers' salary? Everywhere I've worked I've been told that that information is confidential - you weren't even allowed to ask others how much they were making, so there was no way for me to know if I was getting the shaft from my employers (or more accurately, how much of a shaft I was getting).
You are definitely allowed to ask others how much they're making... it's just kinda taboo... but it's a taboo that's in everyone's best interest to break. I mean, you can't ask your employer how much your coworkers are making, but you can certainly ask your coworkers... and also check stuff like salary.com to see if your employer is really off the mark.
I happened to read this just as I read a Facebook comment by my friend about how she discovered her male coworker, doing the exact same job (but less qualified for it), was making $5/hour more than her. Even I was shocked; we're really young, in our early twenties, and art students, and most of us are still working minimum or low-wage jobs, and that's the pay I expect to be consistent--everyone making peanuts. I dreaded when we'd all enter the higher-paid, skilled workforce and have to be vigilant about our pay. But I guess some of us haven't had to wait.
Furthermore, when she and the coworker brought it up to their employer, he (the employer) couldn't see what was wrong with it.
This summer a friend of mine found out that a guy doing the EXACT SAME job as her was getting a higher hourly rate...they were counselors at an acting camp.
She confronted the supervisor about it...his response? He said the guy knew CPR. (I can kind of see that, but still.) My friend said she thought of it as an equality issue and got a raise! I was SO proud of her...it must be really scary to confront a boss like that.
This stuff is bullshit, though. Seriously.
I got hired to do a job that was originally posted as paying $10 an hour. They employer wanted to pay me $8. Being the idiot I was, I forgot about him advertising it at $10, but somehow managed to talk him up to $9/hr. After working there for 6 months, I found out a male co-worker, in the same role an dhaving the same exerience, was making $36k a year. HOLY CRAP. I quit and found a better paying job. And I am happy to report I left that employer in a bind, and the guy who made $36k actually had to earn it for once (normally, he played WoW when he was supposed to be working).