I work as a first level technical support agent for a large healthcare company. I have been with this company for two years now.
To initially get a job at this company, people have to go through a contracting company and work through that company for a year+ in order to prove themselves. These contractors get paid significantly less than the full employees who are converted from their contracting company to the actual company itself. This we knew. Contractors typically get anywhere from $17-22 an hour. Whereas starting wages for full time employees is $27..so we thought.
Our call volume has been extremely overwhelmed since the beginning of this year. To help make things a bit more bearable, I created a Discord channel so that all of us level 1 agents can talk to each other throughout the day and not have to worry about 'remaining professional' since this chat we have is off company network and not being monitored by any higher ups.
The other day we were getting slammed and we were all talking about how lame it is for contractors to be paid so much less than full time employees. At one point I stated, “it's robbery for someone to get paid $10 an hour less to do the same job. Full time employees are over here getting $27+ an hour to do the same shit”. Not a couple seconds after saying that, one of the workers who has been here for 5+ years goes, “the fuck we do.”
After further discussion it turns out that the employees who have been here the longest, are getting paid $2.50+ LESS than those who were just converted as full time employees this past year.
Oddly enough, anyone who was converted the past couple of months are making $24 an hour. So it seems like for atleast a while, they were offering $27 an hour and decided it was too much or they couldn't afford that anymore so they decreased it to $24 an hour for anyone being onboarded moving forward.
My two main issues is that it's pretty obvious these employees who have been with the company for half a decade should be making equal, if not more, than someone who has been working for the company for just two years. Second, is that I believe the company should be moving the other direction with wages to accommodate for inflation.
These folks who have been loyal to this company for 5+ years just found out they are getting paid way less than people who have been here for a fraction of the time.
Any thoughts or advice for the people who just found out they are getting screwed over is appreciated. I also just want to see how common this is, hear from other's personal experience, and to hopefully further spread the awareness to make sure you are getting paid equally and treated well for the company you are working for.