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Antiwork

common practice at my place of work, to justify low pay for high performance.

It's not really a raise is it? Let's put it this way. My work a few years ago applied a 'market adjuatment' to the department I was working in because their independent study of comparative positions in other companies revealed that we were (as we told them for two years) grossly underpaid for our work. This market adjustment was applied to the Starting wage of all agents in the department, which meant that anyone who got a comp raise that year and who were close to or above the adjustment saw little to no increase at all. Don't get me wrong, they were on The right track here but it didn't end there. More than half of the department got increases of less than 100$ a year, because their tenure meant they had already been making close to the new market STARTING WAGE for our department. Now, when it came…


It's not really a raise is it?

Let's put it this way. My work a few years ago applied a 'market adjuatment' to the department I was working in because their independent study of comparative positions in other companies revealed that we were (as we told them for two years) grossly underpaid for our work. This market adjustment was applied to the Starting wage of all agents in the department, which meant that anyone who got a comp raise that year and who were close to or above the adjustment saw little to no increase at all.

Don't get me wrong, they were on The right track here but it didn't end there. More than half of the department got increases of less than 100$ a year, because their tenure meant they had already been making close to the new market STARTING WAGE for our department. Now, when it came to time for a comp raise, they were denied any raise (not even inflation adjustment) because they had technically received SOMETHING as a raise that year already. This meant that these folks who worked 5 or more years for this department were making the same as a greenbelt off the street but required to do more work because of their experience.

In among all this, I started working for this department a year and 10 before this market adjustment. They require that you work in a role for a year before you are applicable for a comp increase, so my first 10 months did not count (and comp is on a cycle so it doesn't follow your actual time but rather the fiscal year)and I did not get a comp raise the first year. The second year I got the market increase which admittedly was fairly large (3k/year) but this further invalidated me for comp increases for that year, so after almost 2 years I was making the same as a new person joining my team.

3 months later I was offered a position in our 'white glove service's (name withheld) department. I figured I would see some sort of increase because the work entails more care and so more soft skills as well and a higher level of understanding of the product and how to fix it. I did not get a raise, and because I joined partway through the year, this once again invalidated me for a comp raise!

A year and more later I got my first comp raise since joining the company, and it was 3% – our inflation rate over COVID has been more than 7% so I took a pay cut here.

Obviously I didn't learn my lesson because I then took on a role in leadership where they were unable to tell me what my comp would be until I accepted the role. It was considered a 'lateral move' so I got no wage increase.

Fast forward to today – a couple of months now there have been grumblings in the department of poor wage for work ( I have no control over wage for anyone, I'm sort of a peon/secretary with a fancy title). I understand where they are coming from but I can't do anything about it and I'm feeling the same way as well. That being said, I just learned that we hired some new people into our department (which is hard to do because wage is low and everyone knows it) but they hired these new people for more than 5k a year more than our highest paid agent. And of course they are keeping silent about it because they know it will open a can of worms they are I'll equipped to deal with.

Edit: in case anyone else is wondering, I have been letting others know about the wage discrepancy 🙂

Also, I know this is just a rant post – I'm sorry it's not really constructive or contributing to the mission of the subreddit but I needed somewhere to vent a bit so I hope you all are ok with that.

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