For some context, this just happened at my workplace. I have been with my job for three years and am woefully underpaid. I found out by just how much when I asked my new trainee what their starting salary was. This brand new employee has the same job position as me and is getting paid $10,000 more dollars than me for the same job duties.
Well, another employee who is essentially the entire purchasing department put in their two weeks notice. I was alerted yesterday that I would be filling in for her as the interim purchasing person with a promise that if it goes well, I would get the position full time with a potential pay bump. They let me know this one day before her last day.
So while I am training with her to learn her entire job in one day, I asked her what her salary was because I wanted to know what kind of “pay bump” I should expect if I take this job. She has been here for six years and made maybe 1k more than myself. I was absolutely shocked and appalled. I just started a serious job hunt to find literally anything else.
But the last incident is what made me lose hope for boomer employees. I was talking to the purchasing woman's husband and two other employees outside the bathrooms about everything I mentioned and how unfair it was that me and this woman were getting paid “Insert bad salary here”.
Her husband is one of the nicest and cheeriest people I have ever met but he is also a boomer and when he heard me bring up my and his wife's salaries, he went off on me. He gave me an earful about how its private information and should only be discussed between the employee and their manager and shouldn't be spread around. I was pretty shocked and simply asked, “who does that benefit?” But he was so emotional at that point, I could not try to reason with him.
He sputtered off and one of the girls with us who is my age actually said I was wrong for bringing it up. I asked her why and she gave me an example where if everyone knew what everyone else was getting paid, they could say “I have a masters, why am I not getting paid equal to this person?” Tt would devolve into chaos. Again, I asked why that was a bad thing. People should be demanding to be paid fairly. She could not come up with any more reasons.
I walked away to my computer and typed this up to get some perspectives. It boggles my mind how people are so brainwashed to think that hiding information that only helps their employer is a good thing.