I work for a small company who unfortunately just had to downsize and make extreme cutbacks to survive. It's really difficult because we were growing so fast but as soon as they smelled the upcoming recession they started to make some changes because our orders slowed down a lot. We lost a few really good workers with a lot of skills.
That being said, since the new year my job has changed from just a sander to the guy who trains the sanders, the only on staff sander at the moment so I handle literally every single order coming through my shop, and I'm the one who maintains all of our machines and keeps the shop clean. One of my bosses had me write up SOPs for maintenance the other day and they were blown away with how well I did on them. This guy apparently sings my praises at our other shop as I hear, and he's one of the big bosses.
Last week they sat us all down and told us unfortunately that we have to put a hold on all of our yearly raises but we would still get bonuses like we normally do. I have a meeting today with one of the company owners to talk about this announcement because since the new year hit my job duties have literally tripled and I'm being told there's no raises. This is absolutely unacceptable for my particular position so I'm asking for a fairly large raise. My question is how do I word my request? I've never been part of a company that has this level of professionalism to it so my instinct is “Hey what's it take to get a few more bucks an hour around here?”
Please help me be professional