salaries

[joanna bujes]

At 09:28 AM 06/09/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>but friends who are freelancers/contractors often WILL talk about rates
>for particular kinds of work and with particular employers, for
>comparative purposes. it's one of the ways you know when you're doing
>really well or getting screwed, whether to push hard in rate
>negotiations or to ease up. within corporations, however, i agree
>completely that it's considered very bad form to ask someone's salary or
>to parade your own around (or to bitch about it, for that matter),
>except perhaps among close friends. even then, it's tricky. is there not
>something phallic about salaries? where's zizek when we need
>him  . . . ;-)
>- --------------

Actually, I didn't write that. I just observed generally, that in the US 
salaries are a forbidden subject. This works to the disadvantage of workers 
who, while doing the same kind of work, are subject too wildly different 
payscales. For example, two technical writers doing the same kind and 
amount of work might make anywhere from 65,000 to 100,000 working in the 
same dept and for the same company in my neck of the woods.

Joanna