Tomorrow I want to ask for a raise from $20/hr to $25. I’ve done a great job at work for the past couple weeks, and kissed up a lot during that time, so I think now is the perfect time. Here’s the situation:
-I’m coming up on my one year hiring anniversary. Due to high turnover rate I’m the longest employed in my department. I plan to work here for 6 more months before going back to school (of course my boss doesn’t know that)
-my department consists of me and four other employees. We are contracted by other companies to do jobs at their sites. Two of my coworkers were promoted to a specific job they do every week. This presumably came with a raise, and the fact that I wasn’t given these promotions isn’t a slight on me and not something I’m disappointed by, since there were logical reasons why they were given it instead and I didn’t want those promotions anyways. One of my coworkers was just recently hired from a competitor company at the highest level at my position (with a couple extra dollars per hour to convince him to work for us) despite knowing basically nothing about our work and being unwilling to do many of the jobs we do (understandable since my boss grossly misrepresented the type of work we do during his interviews). My last coworker and I are the only ones willing to travel to jobs overnight. This is crucial since my company is nationwide and understaffed everywhere, with several branches having zero employees in my capacity, so we’re carrying the territories of several branches within my company. My boss stated last week that they’re going to try to get him a license that would help with our job (this comes with a $2/hr raise). I’ve been ready to get this for months, but due to some legal grey areas it’s unclear if I’m eligible for it. I can’t give too much detail but this is absolutely thru no fault of my own.
-basically this means that within the month it’s very likely I’ll be the longest tenured employee and the lowest paid. I’m still at an entry level pay rate despite being second in charge. I’ve helped train all four of my coworkers. I lead on every job I do. I’m clearly second in charge to my boss. I’m one of only two people willing to travel despite that being a necessary component of my job.
-I’ve been asking for months to take my competency tests and licensing test to get my guaranteed raises but no progress has been made.
-last week I worked with my boss one day. He took a couple phone calls obviously within earshot of me, in which he discussed our hiring situation with a higher up. He particularly discussed me and my traveling partner as “getting there” in terms of competency. Aside from being unprofessional and borderline offensive, I truly believe this was an effort to make us feel less competent than we actually are, and discourage from requesting raises. He also picked at a number of things I did at work that were extremely minor and not necessarily incorrect.
-my company is clearly terrified of us leaving. Turnover rate is extremely high for my job, and it’s very niche work that is hard to find someone qualified and willing to work for us. They’ve offered a number of bonuses, incentives, etc recently but no real raises.
When I was hired I was given a timeline estimate of roughly 6-9 months to obtain my raises. I want to ask for all of them to be given with no tests needed, since it seems likely I’ll never actually get an opportunity to take them. How do I conduct this conversation?