Back in the day when I was a lowly paid wage slave for a multinational Oil company in NZ I ended up on a major project to upgrade all of our accounting systems. It was a major project to me and I saw it as my opportunity to get some valuable skills.
I got into debt so I would not quit (I was that close), finished the project and became the prime user support person. They called me a Systems Officer, but I was the Business Analyst/Help Desk (only about 20 users). The job had me instructing IT staff and contractors on what to do. I was on 1/8th the money of the contractors who I was basically instructing/allocating work to. I was not a happy camper about that, but I was learning a lot.
So I got a miserable normal wage rise like everyone else and than put in a formal objection to my low pay. This of course had to go through HR who disliked me intensely as I had embarrassed the HR manager in front of the whole company.
He had sent out a memo stating that pay was being changed from fortnightly to monthly. I knew that this was illegal as under NZ labor law the company needed the approval of each employee affected, not just consultation but approval. I got a petition up and got a significant number of signatures such that the company had to back down and allow us to stay on fortnightly if we wanted. The man hated me after that. Some months before I had called the Dept of Labor (DOL) that our work conditions were not acceptable as the air-conditioning was not effective and we were over heated in the summer. They tested and of course on a coldish summer day they passed (bugga it). He sent me a written note stating that I could not contact the DOL ever again. I sent him a reply that under the Employment Act I could contact them at any time without notice to my employer. So yeah we didn't get a long.
So my appeal went to him and he turned it down, I appealed and it went to a remuneration committee that he directed and of course it was rejected again. My boss, god bless him knew it was personal and we had one option left, appeal to the CEO. Apparently this had never happened before, probably because the company was full of yes men/women.
I put my case to him and I got a raise of 60%, which at the time sounded great but was still inadequate.
So I got another job, went down a bit in money terms, but got out and got more experience.
I remember my “Going away morning tea” as us kiwis call it, after 7yrs I knew everyone and thus it was a grand little affair with a few sobs as I always helped my fellow workers, just not management too much. I made a point of saying “I am glad to be going as there is no future for me in the company”.
All those people who say they are sad to be going are liars, but good ones!