TikTok
Woman Fired After She Posted TikToks Explaining How She Got $20k Raise At New Job
They “really did not like” her sharing about how much she was making.
Last month was a life-changing time for Lexi Larson in many ways. She thought she’d just landed herself in a new corporation with better pay, but in just weeks, she lost her job all because of her TikTok. Lexi saw nowhere else to share about this terrible news but TikTok.
We didn’t get the numbers before, as Lexi had them removed after her employer’s warning. But we have them now, and it was a $20,000 increase from $70,000 to $90,000.
Last month, Lexi went viral with her clip, revealing that she’d been fired “out of nowhere” not long after her company found her on TikTok.
She’d opted to remove all videos that might’ve been of concern to the company, but that means she removed most of the content that was core to her account, which was to speak openly about the working environment of the tech field and what it’s like to work in one.
Breaking her silence, she spoke at the end of June, “Basically, my employer found my TikToks [and] really, really did not like that I was sharing my salary.”
“They said it was a security concern because I could post something private about the company on my TikTok account,” she continued, hinting that the company knew they couldn’t accuse her of what was a federally protected activity.
She was explicitly told that she had not broken any of their policies, “but it could happen at any time in the future.”
Under the National Labor Relations Act, employees are protected from being terminated just by mentioning their salary. On top of that, in Colorado, companies are required to post the salary range on their job postings.
She added on her TikTok, “I did go and check their Colorado job posting after all this happened, and they do not have salaries listed.”
Larson had not applied to the company – she was scouted through LinkedIn. She took the offer, thinking it would’ve been the right choice considering the inflation.
Larson had been inspired by other content creators who shared similar content as her and gained confidence when applying to avoid being underpaid.
That was why she began to make her own content based on her own experience. She shared, “I also think salary transparency is important, just because that’s how you know you’re getting underpaid in the workplace, which – as a woman – I’m very passionate about.”
Her followers had suggested she sue the company since she appeared to have a pretty strong case. Larson has since returned to her old job, and her old employer never had any issue with her revealing her salary.
Attorney and founder of Social Media Victims Law Center, Matthew Bergman had agreed that firing her only after two weeks of employment was “harsh.” But he spoke to USA Today that perhaps it’s better “to take a step back and be cautious when revealing personal information on social media.”
