Obtaining Equal Pay as a Current Employee
Ensuring you have equal pay requires you to first, find your comparators and learn their pay. Then, educate your employer and make the ask.
Step 1: Find your comparators.
You’re in the best position to determine who is performing substantially similar work to you. Generally, this step can be pretty simple. But, sometimes it’s not so simple. While your employer may categorize your work as equal to someone else with the same job title, in actuality, you may be performing very different work or even more work and your true comparator may have a different job title. To dive deeper on finding your comparator, check out my blog post on Proving Substantially Similar Work.
If you and HR (or management) are not aligned on what your comparator is, you need to know this:
To compare jobs, the law only considers a comparison of the skill, effort, and responsibility actually required to perform the job. If your employer points to a different skill set that your coworker has, but s/he doesn’t actually need to use it to perform the job, then it’s inapplicable when comparing the work. That’s why the law says that job descriptions, titles, classifications and the like are not determinative. The actual job content determines the substantial similarity of jobs.
Another key thing to know comparators: if you’re temporarily doing additional work to fill in for a missing manager or other colleague - if it is over a month, it’s no longer “temporary”, and you should get equal pay for it. (29 C.F.R. § 1620.26)
Step 2: Find out your comparator’s pay.
Higher Title Typically Means Higher Pay: Get the Pay Scale
If your comparator is someone with a higher title, then generally that position will come with a higher pay scale. Sometimes the pay scales are available. If not, try asking HR for the pay scale of a certain position because you’re considering trying to promote into it. If they won’t provide it to you, then find someone who has interviewed for that position and tell them to ask for the pay scale. Your employer will have to give it to them and they can hand it over to you. If you find the pay scale is higher than your job title, you know your comparator is likely getting paid more than you.
Make the Ask to Your Coworkers
Asking your coworkers what they are paid can be very uncomfortable. The stigma about sharing pay information because it’s “confidential” is deeply ingrained in our society. It doesn’t help that for a long time company’s either had formal policies prohibiting employees from talking about their pay or highly discouraged it.
What I need you to know is that your employer discouraging or prohibiting you from openly discussing your pay is ILLEGAL.
Start thinking about your pay as only confidential if you keep it confidential. It’s hard. It’s awkward. It’s scary. But, the consequence of not asking could be drastic. Every day you get paid less on account of your gender,race, or ethnicity, you are not only losing out for yourself, but for your family, your kids.
Being paid just $10,000 less annually could lose you over $1 MILLION in retirement savings. ((This represents investing $833.33 per month for 30 years with an average interest rate of 8% (variance 2%)). You could have retired earlier and spent more time with your family, your kids, your grandkids. Unequal pay on the basis of your gender, race, or ethnicity could be taking you away from time spent with your family.
That’s my pitch. MAKE THE ASK. You will be surprised how many times men gladly offer up this information, because it happened to me and I was shocked... But, that’s a story for another day.
Make the Ask to HR
If you can’t muster up the strength to ask, but you still believe you’re experiencing unequal pay, you can ask HR, too! You’ll have to ask them to investigate it. Of course, everything they learn they can keep confidential. But, they should at least look into it.
When you go to HR, explain how your jobs are equal if it’s not clear to them. At this point, you’ve read my blogs so you can make a good case.
Protections From Asking or Talking About Pay at Work
Get rid of the stigma that pay should be kept confidential. The law provides that an employer cannot discourage or prohibit employees from talking about pay. I’m here to ENCOURAGE you to talk about your pay.
The prohibition related to pay secrecy includes:
Disclosing your own wages
Discussing the wages of others
Asking about another employee’s wages
Aiding or encouraging another employee to exercise their equal pay rights
Anti-Retaliation for Speaking About Pay
The law also protects you from retaliation. An employer cannot discharge, discipline or otherwise discriminate or retaliate against any employee who discloses their pay, or who has taken any action to invoke or help in enforcing equal pay laws.
Step 3: Make the Ask for Equal Pay
What I mean by this is to specifically and literally ask“for equal pay”. Don’t ask for a “raise”. You want to frame it as an “equal pay” ask and not a “raise” because once you start talking about raises, your employer will likely start thinking, is it annual review time?s it an out of cycle pay raise? How has your work been, etc.? They will approach itike a typical raise ask. This is not that. You’re asking for what your employer is legally obligated to give you.
Who to Start With?
Start with management and if that’s not getting you anywhere, it’s time to involve HR. At this point, if you’re happy with your job and you want to stay, you might want to frame it as an opportunity to educate your employer rather than call them out.
If you get pushback that your positions are different, equip yourself with what the law says are your comparators (Blog here) and start advocating for yourself.
If they concede with a, “Fine it’s substantially similar, but here’s the reason for the higher pay”, and they give you some excuse, get it in writing. Follow up with an email and say, “We discussed my request for equal pay for substantially similar work to X. You did not disagree that X performs substantially similar work to me, but you informed me that the reason for his higher pay is Y. So I understand, is this correct?”
Always get your various conversations with management and their responses to your questions in writing. This will preserve the record and perhaps reveal contradictory, implausible, and/or inconsistent reasoning that becomes indefensible (i.e. unworthy of credence).
Read my blog here to see if their excuses pass muster: Defeating Employer Excuses For Unequal Pay. If they don’t, then you have a great handle on your equal pay claim and it’s time to involve HR.
You deserve to be paid appropriately for your work. These laws are in place to help you do just that, and I truly hope you will put your equal pay rights to work and use them.
DISCLAIMER: this information is general in nature and does not constitute legal advice or seek to be the complete and comprehensive statement of the law, nor is it intended to address your specific requirements or provide advice on which reliance should be placed.