I've always felt that my salary is nobody else's business, and the salary of other people is no business of mine.
Employers love this attitude! It's always worth having these conversations, otherwise everyone thinks they are the highest paid amongst their peers. Perhaps not to a new joiner though.
I don't see why the OP should suck this up. Salaries have been going crazy recently. Research the market rate of your position, talking to recruiters if needs be, and be prepared to justify your worth to your employer. There's always the option of going elsewhere if they say no and they will have this in their mind too! It's much more expensive to recruit staff than to retain them.
I would also say don't wait until your appraisal to do this. At these review points there is often a fixed budget for salary increases, and your manager will have other things on their mind.
I've had to do this on three occasions in my career so far. Only one was declined. I then got an offer from elsewhere, followed by the inevitable counteroffer from my then current employer, by which point it was too late.
Suck what up? The fact that the company pay other people more to do the same job? half the people in the country are "sucking that up".
There's no reason to assume he is underpaid just because somebody else is being paid more.
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There's no reason to assume he is underpaid just because somebody else is being paid more.