Showing Salaries Is Finally Catching On So Why Pump The Brakes?

It’s taken a few decades but nonprofit performing arts orgs are finally becoming comfortable with including salary ranges and hourly rates in job postings.

The road from there to here was long and uphill; for instance, when Arts Admin Jobs began in 2011, I included a salary range field as a mandatory item and employers spurned it as they would a rabid dog. Once I relented and removed the requirement, listings flowed in, but only a few included compensation information.

Thanks to a growing chorus of voices, like Vu Lee and @ShowTheSalary, employers began to come around to seeing the benefits of including salary ranges and hourly rates. So much so, that in the last major update at Arts Admin Jobs, I reintroduced the salary/hourly rate fields.

Even though they aren’t required, 60 percent of the listings at the time this post was written include salary/hourly rate information. Of the other 40 percent, half of those are from the same three orgs, each with multiple listings.

This is fantastic news!

So you can imagine my surprise when I came across an article at philantrhorpy.org by Vincent Robinson trying to convince readers that including salary figures was a bad thing, especially for diversity.

If that seems odd to you, that’s just a good sign that you’re still sane because the reasons the author lists to support the idea that compensation transparency is bad don’t hold much water. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the author’s position has been getting hammered on Twitter by a flood of logical responses.

“But not every racial-justice effort that catches fire on social media is worth supporting."

The fact that this sentence appears in a #nonprofit #philanthropy opinion piece on pay equity is breaking my heart. https://t.co/O4bQIbo4IG https://t.co/L7OJhUFuto

— Kelly Jeanine (@KP_PR) June 23, 2021

This article is making the rounds & BOY HOWDY is it problematic.

1) He did not contact @ShowTheSalary
2) His source is a long report about salary negotiations. I don’t see a reference to salary posting at all.
3) His alternative solution seems to be to hire his firm. Clever. https://t.co/WN250yP7Hk

— Allison Carney (@ahcarney) June 23, 2021

As a woman of colour I’d much rather companies @ShowTheSalary. Having worked extensively in non-profits so much of my time has been wasted applying for roles to find out they are paying less than I would expect. https://t.co/P6pdvEEUVo

— Laura (@echoesandstars) June 23, 2021

As much as anything else anyone might say on this, I just can’t square feeling like “some people might not apply because they have imposter syndrome” is more important than “some people might not apply because they don’t know if it will pay them adequately and fairly” 🥴 https://t.co/5u82qrh49q

— Lisa Clavering (@LisaClavering) June 23, 2021

While I understand Robinson’s points, I agree with the vast majority of sentiment responding to his article. If tweet learning isn’t your thing, you can get all of the salient points in 4:13 of entertaining edutainment from this popular segment of Adam Ruins Everything. It does a superb job at explaining why salary transparency is the rising tide that lifts all boats.