I want to be kind because your intentions seem good. But I’m not entirely clear what your intentions are either. Are you trying to help your colleagues? It doesn’t sound like you have any guarantee that your boss will redistribute your raise to other employees, and I’m not sure how much comfort they would get from this act of selflessness.
In fact, I suspect most would find it confusing. You’re living comfortably right now, but who knows what the next decade will bring? You could lose your job; you could fall in love with someone who lives on the other side of the country; a piano could fall on your head, Looney Tunes style. There are many eventualities that could suddenly put you in the same boat as your “struggling” coworkers. They understand this by virtue of their own circumstances, which is why they would no doubt happily accept a raise right now if it were offered to them, and why they are unlikely to be impressed by your rejection.
Perhaps you are trying to assuage the guilt you feel about being a beneficiary of an unequal system. If that’s the case, why not use your position of security and influence to advocate for better wages for your peers? If you don’t need the extra money, why not take it and redistribute it, for example, towards labor or inequality-focused causes, or even directly to other employees?
If you’re worried about driving a wedge between yourself and your lower-paid colleagues, picking up the lunch bill once or twice a week and supporting their interests as a respected, high-level employee will do much more to strengthen bonds of solidarity than telling everyone out loud that you turned down a raise because you know everyone is worse off.
And if you don’t care about the interpersonal dynamics of the office and ask the question with a completely abstract sense of fairness and justice, that’s even more reason to accept the raise. When you negotiate your salary, you are not only negotiating on your behalf but also, indirectly, on behalf of anyone who may fill the position after you. If you accept less than your employer is willing to pay, you are establishing a lower floor from which any successor will have to negotiate. You may be financially sound, but will that person be?
In fact, at some level you are negotiating on behalf of anyone else doing the same type of work, now and in the future, in any workplace, and the salary you accept can provide a reference point for both bosses and employees elsewhere. You may be happy with your current rate and want to avoid the appearance of greed in front of your less fortunate coworkers. But the symbolic solidarity of rejecting a raise is worth much less than the real help of putting upward pressure on wages.
