Apple has an office in Seattle. Kirkland is in the Seattle metro.
> * Becomes a "workplace activist" and expects to do it on her paid time on company networks.
She wanted to know why she seemed to have lower pay than colleagues. Apple actively tried to shut down her legally-protected inquiries into this. Becoming an activist at this point seems reasonable.
Them keeping her wages a secret from her is pretty unreasonable and caused the activism, too.
I think the point she is trying to make is that this one secret resulted in federal labor law charges that had nothing to do with her actual pay.
> When I moved cross-country to my hometown of Kirkland, Washington, a ‘high living cost area’, I received a wage increase that was less than 5%. It did not even cover the increase in the cost of living. I had asked ahead of time what to expect, but no one would tell me. Instead, my pay became unavailable for viewing until the day after I moved. I crowdsourced estimates so I could get a rental and plan my finances and budget. The data suggested a 10% raise.
> Ashley, another activist who I met while organizing in support of flexible remote work options, suggested I start a wage survey. I had done some research to see that my pay seemed to be low for the Seattle area amongst Apple’s engineers and she didn’t seem surprised. I asked in Slack if anyone was interested in doing one. They had started one just hours earlier. It was shut down. It happened again a few days later and it had happened 5 months earlier, too. They were all shut down by the People team citing security concerns around personally identifying information for gathering gender and racial information, which, they said, was against Apple’s policies for employee surveys.
> I thought that what they were doing was illegal, so I started my own wage transparency survey off Apple’s servers while I was on vacation for my move. Afterward, people were told not to participate, not to discuss their pay, not to engage with me at all, and I was told it was off-topic in several channels (including a women’s affinity channel where it was deleted without notice).
On the other hand, an employee who joins the company and within one year...
* Moves to a more expensive location (that does not have a corporate office) and expects a big pay raise.
* Becomes a "workplace activist" and expects to do it on her paid time on company networks.
...is not someone I would hire if they were free.