So I’ll try keep this as short as possible – myself and a team of 6 others, all recent grads between 22 and 26, work for a certain agency, small-medium size, which shall remain nameless. We’ve always been one of the best teams in the business, providing a really necessary function at a very high level yet we’re paid what is considered quite low for what we do. Our salary is £18,000 before tax (National Living Wage), which doesn’t stretch too far given we live in an expensive city in the UK. We’ve raised issues about the relatively low pay before, and never had any response from management. Recently, one of the more senior managers took us all into a room and said that as a thank you for all our hard work, and because they know we struggle to make ends meet, they’d give us a pay rise to £20,100 at the start of the new financial year (April 1st). This struck me as odd, as it’s such a specific number and it happened to coincide with the new national living wage going up. So running the maths, new national living wage being £9.50/hour, we work 8.5 hour days, 256 days of the year, actually takes it to £20,672. So even though they’re disguising it as a ‘pay rise’ for all our hard work, we’re actually getting paid below the National Living Wage (by £572), which we weren’t before it was raised. Is this really shitty management, or should I just be grateful that I’m getting paid more?
TL;DR: Management pretended they were giving us a pay rise out of the kindness of their heart but actually it was due to the National Living Wage increase