I won't say it was lucky because it was an ultimatum, which I was happy to enforce either way. It would be lucky if I was banking on the raise.

Pay transparency for wage brackets doesn't mean they can't approve individual raises. The wage bracket for my job is realistically $50-175k. It may be more of a problem if you're looking for a job with a small bracket of acceptable pay, but a company should be able to justify wages for top earners. You can easily tell people that they would need to demonstrate more skills and experience to earn higher amounts. Maybe you'd argue this opens them up to suits but I say a competent HR department would be able to demonstrate that pay is apportioned by actual metrics.

If it isn't then that smacks of discrimination against lower earning employees or nepotism/favoritsm.