I work in a call center that’s my glorified corporate overlords like to fake is an office job but there’s really like 10 of us in office and 40-50 who work from home all across the country with the same pay/rate/benefits as my state (shit, it’s all shit where I live). 3 days ago those of us in office were discussing our wages and it came to light that when the newest group of new hires that came into our department back in feb/mar got hired, they came on at the same rate of pay as those of us who had been there for much, much longer.
This is an issue for MANY reasons. My job currently has a tier system based on performance. Tier One is new hires and DID start at 16.75 (now 17.75), with a dollar bonus for Spanish speakers. Tier Two (myself), is a dollar pay raise, significantly added responsibility including taking almost triple the calls, answering text messages and emails and training the newer people on the job as well; (should be 18.75, is currently 17.75 and has been since last May-Juneish with a dollar for Spanish speakers and this did not go up accordingly). Tier 3 is people who take escalated phone calls, emails and call out (we don’t typically do that) and are generally more “leadership-y”, they should be 19.75 with a dollar boost for Spanish but are making 18.75. Also some of the Spanish speakers have not been getting that extra dollar either.
Now for the other issues, I have a fantastic supe and it’s the SOLE reason I haven’t quit months ago. When I brought this up with him, he told me he was not only aware but they were looking at raises based on performance per individual. Many of these people have children, one of them is an elderly woman who has done no wrong in her life. He cited one of them as not deserving it because she calls out to take care of her children too often and would be getting out on a final.
To say this all radicalized me and I’m seconds away from forming a union (I’m not actually i have a meeting with my manager to demand we get our pay fixed and get that back pay along with 3 other employees on Monday) is to downplay the situation highly
Update for the 10 people who have interacted with this since apparently this sub is either dead or no one saw this:
My manager came storming into the office today (it’s Saturday and I’ve never seen him work a Saturday before in his life so he obviously knew we knew) and told me were meeting today. It ended up with me finding out that the new hires were given market based raises like I knew already and they just “didn’t have it in the budget” for the rest of us who had been here longer. They had been looking at giving out performance based raises, exactly like I’d been told by my supervisor per person, and were rolling them out more slowly for the Tier 3’s and I was told almost all of them had been brought up to the correct wage already (or above). He made it known that he was apologetic they did not tell any of us sooner and they should have been more transparent but he was sure we would have been upset (no fucking shit) and that the market adjustment raises would not be coming. I asked him for an explicit timeline for when these raises would be coming but he said he couldn’t and wouldn’t be giving it to me.
So I’m meeting with his boss on Monday. And I’m reaching out to a bunch of people in confidence to begin collecting signatures to form a Union like was suggested in the comments.