Why Caitlin Clark is underpaid 🏀

Hey there! ICYMI: We just launched a new channel, @dogatemymic! In this street interview series, we interview dogs and share their stories that are guaranteed to leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy. 

After two years of Salary Transparent Street, we wanted to create a feel-good channel that brings you joy instead of stress. Our very first interviewee? An 11-year-old tripod named Mandy. 

Follow our channel to learn more about Mandy’s story (and meet the other canine companions). 🐕

 1   Caitlin Clark’s starting salary reveals the WNBA’s massive pay gap 🏀

Caitlin Clark was recently drafted as the #1 choice in the 2024 WNBA draft. But that’s not why she’s making headlines: It’s the fact that her first-year salary is $76,535–a number that doesn’t match her market value by a landslide. 

The math isn’t mathing. Since starting her college career, Clark has… 

• Generated over $50 million for the state of Iowa. 

• Sold out Iowa’s women's basketball season tickets for the first time in history. 

• Drove nearly 19 million views to the NCAA’s March Madness final, making it the most-watched women’s basketball game in the US in five years. 

What’s going on? One word: Contracts. For the NBA, revenue between the league and the players is split 50/50. But for the WNBA, it’s 90/10. If the WNBA paid 50% of its revenue to players, the best players would have salaries over $3 million, noted economist David Berri to CNN. 

So why isn’t Clark negotiating? Thanks to something called the WNBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), she kind of…can’t.

And the WNBA is playing its own game. In our video on WNBA players, Berri explains that the WNBA’s narrative of it “not being profitable” is a powerful negotiation tactic: “If you tell the players they’re losing money, the players won’t ask for very much,” he said. 

This has to change. To support WNBA players, bring awareness to the issue by telling your friends, watch the WNBA on TV, and follow your local teams and players on social media. 

And most importantly, vote with your dollars by going to games (a WNBA league pass is under $40 a year!). Have fun and close the pay gap? That’s a slam dunk if you ask us. 

 2   Volkswagen workers join the United Auto Workers (UAW) 🚙

Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted overwhelmingly to join the UAW, per The New York Times. This makes it the first new automaker in the US to be unionized in nearly half a century. 

• For Context: On October 30, the UAW closed a historic deal with the “Big Three” carmakers (Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis). It included 25% pay increases, the end of “wage tiers,” and more. 

But the UAW isn’t stopping there. It plans to expand to Southern plants, where there’s historically been union resistance—starting with Volkswagen, which failed to unionize twice in the past. But recently, the UAW’s win inspired workers to go from anti- to pro-union.   

This is huge. After the union vote at Volkswagen, the Mercedes plant in Alabama is next—and success at Volkswagen could set a precedent for Mercedes.

“Victories at both Volkswagen and Mercedes would be nothing less than an earthquake,” noted labor historian Joseph McCartin. “It would mean that the anti-union citadel [in the south] that has repulsed effort after organizing effort has been breached.” 

This is the power of unions. Their wins inspire workers from different companies to advocate for themselves—leading to a domino effect that can transform entire industries for the better. 

 3   This is how Americans *really* feel about pay transparency 💭

Gather around, folks. USA Today surveyed over 1,200 Americans to uncover their POV on salary transparency—and the results are both enlightening and spicy: 

Pause: What are employers so afraid of? According to the survey, it could be a few things. If respondents learned they made less than their co-workers… 

➜ 72% said they’d ask for a raise. 

➜ Over 50% would lose motivation.

➜ Around 25% shared they’d straight-up quit. 

In other words: Employees aren’t messing around when it comes to fair pay. And with 58% believing it’s the company’s responsibility to promote pay transparency, the message is clear: Companies that pay fairly (and openly) will be at the forefront of the job economy.

Want to know which companies those are? Explore our free salary database right here! 

Do you remember the Writers’ Strike?

Last summer, the Writer’s Guild of America and its 11,500 screenwriters protested for protections against AI, better pay, and fair residuals.

After five months, they negotiated a historic deal. 🙌 So in this episode of The Break Room, we’re passing the mic to three screenwriters to find out exactly how the strike changed their lives.

Plus, you’ll learn how to become a screenwriter (with zero experience), how much they earn, and more!

• Are software engineers worried about AI replacing them? This is their answer. 

• Wait, a stage combat coordinator earns how much? 🤺

• No one is taught how to negotiate salary…but we’re all expected to do it. Let us help. 

• The 15 highest-paying trade jobs (up to $90,000!) with low barriers to entry. 

• 1,000 interviews. 3 million followers. 1 billion views. Here’s our two-year recap at STS.

Thanks for being here! Before we part ways, our thoughts are with Samsung executives. The tech giant just ordered them to come into the office six days a week to “inject a sense of crisis” after it failed to hit financial quotas last year. 

Um…we have a feeling this won’t end well. 

See you next week!