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Hi all,
In recent years, wage transparency has become an important issue for Literacy Works. We believe that staying silent about our wages keeps us from fully advocating for ourselves. When workers share how much they make with others in their field, they have much more support when they want to negotiate for higher wages. In the adult education field, a notoriously underfunded sector, many organizations pride themselves on being a “good deal” for funders because they don’t spend much on payroll. Instead, they rely on low-wage workers and volunteers.
In Spring of 2021, our Literacy Action Project covered the topic of working conditions for adult educators. We wrote that many adult educators hear “it’s just not in the budget” when they ask about raises. We go on to write, “...if you are told that your low wages are a result of the constraints of the budget, what is actually being said is that the fair compensation of the staff is not a priority to the organization.” (Literacy Action Project, 2021). The instability of this kind of structure makes this field unsustainable.
As passionate advocates for literacy justice, we feel that adult educators deserve to know the reasons behind their salaries. At Literacy Works, we share many job posts but we require that the salary or hourly rate be included otherwise we won’t share it. One organization responded, “But if we show how much we’ll pay, people won’t apply”. We were immediately struck by how powerful wage transparency can be. If people know how much to ask for and employers know they’re going to ask - wages will rise and workers will be able to stay and invest in their work.
We also want to acknowledge the help of Rachel Greenwood from Chinese Mutual Aid Association who has already started work on wage transparency there and brought this work to us. To paraphrase Rachel, "we work in adult education because we want to advocate for people and we are people too.”
So here’s what we’re asking. If you choose to share and join us in this work, you can complete a short anonymous survey about your wages and working conditions. All answers will be immediately available to the public in this Google Sheet. We encourage you to use this information to better prepare yourself for wage negotiations or when you're starting a new position. We also hope that displaying our wages in public will encourage employers to budget for living wages for their staff.
If you have reservations about sharing, do know:
- No director, manager, or employee can legally stop you from sharing your salary and cannot shame you or retaliate in any way.
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There is absolutely no pressure to share your salary. If you don't feel comfortable sharing, then don't share.
- You are still welcome to look at the sheet and learn about other salaries even if you don't want to share.
Right now we are only requesting information from adult education teachers, but in the future, we hope to continue this work with other staff members. Also, we are only focusing on adult educators working in Illinois. If you have another position or work outside of Illinois and are interested in contributing, please email keighty@litworks.org for more information, but please do not complete this form.
Thank you for your help in making the Adult Education field
more inclusive, transparent, and sustainable.
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