On Wednesday, in between her vacations, she took to Twitter to give some advice for applicants vying for her old role. Ask for no less than a $115,000 salary, a signing bonus and a relocation bonus if you are relocating to New York City, where the company is based, she wrote, adding that her salary for the job was $107,000. “I believe that being transparent is one way to achieve equality in the media,” she wrote.
Walker didn’t think the tweet’s impact would extend beyond the reach of people working in travel media. But almost immediately, the post went viral, echoing across Twitter and garnering thousands of retweets and reactions from users working in the media industry.
Oh! Before I forget — if you apply for my old job as Senior Travel, you need to ask for no less than 115k, a signing bonus, and a relocation bonus if you’re moving to NYC. In full transparency, I was at 107k. I believe that being transparent is one way to achieve equality in the media.
— Victoria M. Walker (@vikkie) February 2, 2022
“I didn’t expect this at all,” Walker said, adding that her phone’s battery life went into overdrive, dying twice after being fired up with calls and notifications that day. “The response was so overwhelming that I got tired of it for a few hours. Then I went back to drink in VeliKa BEACH.”
Across Twitter, supporters have called him a “hero“one”legend“one”the Queen” — praising her initiative and reigniting conversations about the ongoing push for salary transparency. “This is how you stop the cycle of companies underpaying people,” one user has written. “Thanks for helping the other person.”
Talking about pay has long been considered taboo in American culture. But in recent years, workers and worker advocates have pushed for companies to be more transparent about disclosing their pay scales.
Others have taken up this call by posting their salaries on social media and promoting boards where users can share their payment anonymously. And after reading Walker’s tweet, some were even inspired to reveal their entire salary history.
A person revealed her salary history from 2009, including the cities she lived in at the time. Another shared her salary history in various jobs and roles.
On the legal front, the country has seen an emergence of state wage transparency laws. Maryland, Rhode Island and Washington require employers to disclose salary ranges to applicants upon request. Last year, Colorado enacted a law requiring employers to include compensation in job postings. And in New York City, where Walker lives, employers will soon be required to include salary ranges in job listings.
Ruchika Tulshyan, author of “Inclusion on Purpose: A Cross-Sector Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work,” said she was “overjoyed” when she saw Walker’s tweet.
“It’s really great that this travel writer used the position she was in to make sure the other person was compensated fairly as well,” she said.
Tulshyan, an inclusion specialist who writes frequently about equality in the workplace, had been following discussions on pay transparency for the past week. In a separate controversial viral post last week, a freelance recruiter shared that they had offered an applicant a much lower salary than what was set for the role. “I offered it to her because that’s what she asked for and I personally don’t have the bandwidth to teach salary negotiation,” the manager wrote.
Tulshyan also noted that, while many people have felt comfortable sharing more of their lives online, others are still hesitant to talk about how much money they make — regardless of where they land on the pay scale.
There are several reasons for this, experts say. American companies have sometimes discouraged, banned or punished employees for talking about pay — even though it’s illegal. A poll by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that between 2017 and 2018, nearly half of full-time workers reported being discouraged or prohibited from discussing wages and benefits.
Labor and women’s rights advocates say wage transparency can be an important tool to narrow wage gaps, especially along gender and racial lines. In a 2018 interview with Time, Chandra Childers, research director at IWPR, cited the case of Lilly Ledbetter, who sued Goodyear after learning that men doing the same job as her were making more money.
“She didn’t know she was being paid less, so she couldn’t negotiate for higher wages — that’s more common than we might think,” Childers said.
Personal disclosures are “powerful right now,” Tulshyan said — and they can help chip away at a broader culture of salary secrecy. They can be especially important for people with marginalized identities, who have “more obstacles and barriers to getting the same amount,” she added.
But, she said, there are also limits to personal disclosures.
If the job posting doesn’t include a salary or wage range, personal disclosures—from a person who has left the job, a hiring manager, or a recruiter—may benefit some applicants. But without a general policy of salary transparency, Tulshyan said, “not everyone will benefit from it.”
Additionally, conversations about pay transparency can be shut down by industry or networks. Notably, many of those who disclosed their salaries to Walker work in the media.
“What would be really amazing is if more jobs had at least a salary range,” Tulshyan said.
Amid the ongoing push for laws that would enforce this kind of transparency, efforts like Walker’s tweet provide a baseline for applicants and potential employees worried about being demoted.
“The response was great,” Walker said. “Many people [are] contacting me saying that the tweet inspired them to go into review season, or to go everywhere and ask for more money.”
“At the end of the day, I want to be of service to people in any way I can,” she said. “I just want people to get paid.”
