I am a white male and have a job as a manager doing a specific job at a company, for which I am both competent and qualified. My coworker, who is not white or a man, and is also competent and qualified, definitely has more to do than me, works in an semi-adjacent role, and has been with the company a few years longer. They are at a slightly higher level to – assistant director.
I had to negotiate my salary to an acceptable level when I joined the company last fall. I’d like to make sure they aren’t being paid less than me, and if they are that they know I am willing to walk out until it is corrected.
The company is struggling to bring in workers in our department, and I just have a feeling she’s probably being underpaid, nothing concrete to go off of. They also used what I consider some bad-faith technicalities to bounce us out of our half-year bonuses recently. So I’m ready to do this.
The only other time I did this though (I had the same position as two other women at another company, and for the same amount of time, and knew I was getting paid more because I saw a playlist HR left lying in a printer), I offered to share my wage info with them and let them know why, and offered go to management together and demand they be paid equally or I’d walk out. They didn’t even want to know and got mad at me for even bringing it up, and so I didn’t do anything after that.
We have no workers union at this place and I don’t plan to be there long enough, not do I have enough clout, to see anything like unionizing through.
I want to do the right thing to offer this potential help to my coworker, and I want to make sure I approach the situation in a way that doesn’t make it uncomfortable. Is this even the right thing to do? Does anyone have any experience here?