'Would you take a pay cut?' Poll results/discussion

patjoyce

this works fine if everybody earns the same I have been in such a situation and was the person earning the less so somebody on say 30K can cope with haing a 10% drop but if you are on say 15K you need every penny to survive in my case I would have been happy to be made reundant but the company couldn,t afford if took them to a tribunal instead and got my wages back

airtrack12000

I would have to be 100% sure that redundancies would occur if a pay cut was not on the cards. Could you trust those at the top who may be using scare tactics just to cut wages and take more for themselves. Sceptic, yes but can you afford ot to be ?

stevemcol

Patjoyce

People tend to live to their means. Whatever earnings level, you'll often find individuals are committed to the max with loans, mortgages, outgoings etc.
10% of a lot is .....well, a lot. Whatever your earnings level, losing a tenth of your income will require a significant adjustment.
That said, I don't think Jonathon Ross will end up on the bread-line.:rotfl:

cw18

not before listening to recommendations from the Union !!!

And if no Union, then I'd want to know if it was a 'majority rules' vote, or whether by voting 'yes' mine would be reduced even if other others who vote 'no' don't lose anything.

And a 10% reduction would have to leave people at or above minimum wage -- so what if they can only reduce some salaries by a much smaller percentage?

Bound to get shot down for this one -- but I'd want to figure out whether I was better off taking the cut or risking being made redundant and moving onto benefits !!

I'd also want assurances (in writing) that if they later had to lay people off the redundancy package would be based on my salary before this cut -- what's to stop them dropping everyone's salary by 10% and then laying off 20 people -- saving themselves 10% on the redundancy payments :eek:


far too many factors to be able to vote in this poll

pinkshoes

I voted "yes", as the opening statement says:

Would you take a pay cut to save your company?

Thus implying that if I said "no", then the company would fold and everyone would lose their jobs, meaning instead of having a 10% pay cut, I'd have a 100% pay cut.

For anyone who said "no", then that leaves you with a 10% chance of losing your job, so surely you'd rather take a 10% pay cut than risk complete job loss, or one of your colleagues suffering the same?

ceridwen

As regards the earlier comment about people tending to live to their means - many people do, but not everyone. Those on good incomes can much more readily cut back on things like having extra holidays, a second car. Its impossible to cut basic bills down to beneath a certain level - well not without being freezing cold in one's own home for instance.

The thing is too that many people being asked to take a paycut are on pretty low money anyway - there comes a point at which one is weighing up the relative merits of the salary one gets as compared to having more free time to do what you please (so the risk of losing income isnt so great anyway - as that income has declined anyway). We already see that people with loads of children are better off not working - and that salaries are going down anyway - without having actual physical paycuts imposed. Even as a single person - if I were living in rented accommodation - there would come a point paycut-wise at which I'd have to decide it wasnt worth having a job.

I can only manage to do the lowpaid job I do because my mortgage is paid off - thats the only reason I receive noticeably more money for working than I would otherwise have (but then thats my business only and my good fortune only that I'm in that position - not something for employers to take advantage of).

I can only repeat the fact that if an employer manages to impose one paycut - then that is likely to be the "thin end of the wedge" and they are likely to come back for further paycuts later. Even more to the point - if your employer imposes a paycut on you, then I would say there is a high chance you will get made redundant anyway at some point and a certainty that the redundancy package would be based on the new (lower) pay and that in fact a large part of the reason they wanted the paycut was specifically in order to have the redundancy pay based on a lower salary. It is very much a trend now for employers to try and cut the level of redundancy pay down to less than whatever that company has previously laid down as being payable in the event of redundancy (quite a few companies apparently have cut their redundancy scheme back from a reasonable level one to the statutory legal minimum).

Plasticman

ceridwen wrote: »

Those on good incomes can much more readily cut back on things like having extra holidays, a second car. Its impossible to cut basic bills down to beneath a certain level - well not without being freezing cold in one's own home for instance.

That's assuming that the person on a good income is having extra holidays and has a second car. You seem to make that point yourself in your comment below:

ceridwen wrote: »

I can only manage to do the lowpaid job I do because my mortgage is paid off - thats the only reason I receive noticeably more money for working than I would otherwise have (but then thats my business only and my good fortune only that I'm in that position - not something for employers to take advantage of).

Somebody could be taking home £1000 a month more than their friend, but if their mortgage costs £1000 per month more, they won't have any extra cash to cut back. A higher income doesn't automatically equal more 'spare' money.

poorbutnice

No I wouldn't take a pay cut because our family is already unable to pay the bills after my husband being made redundant! No-one was asked to take a pay cut for him, he was chucked out because of his age which leaves us £1600 worse off a month and I am supposed to support us all on £1000 a month with no sick pay even for one day when the stress all gets too much. Oh and his former employer is investing in a new building to employ more people to the tune quarter of a million pounds.

aka_joey

No. The management should look to make redundant the 10% of employees that make the least effort. They are probably there somewhere in most companies and (controversial) could well be the people who have too much debt and that have helped cause the economic crisis we are in now.

irishwench69

For me, the answer is no!

That's for a number of reasons, mainly tied to my circumstances - I work in an industry that doesn't have many lay-offs, and my department is one of the most crucial within that industry (needed for compliance / legal reasons). Therefore I might not get a payrise, I might do a lot of overtime that's not paid, I might not get extra resource I need, but I'm not likely to get made redundant! Also, given the demand for experience, I'd probably be able to get another job quite easily!

Speaking more generally, I still wouldn't take the pay-cut - management should pull their collective finger out - there are plenty of other ways to cut the fat other than asking for a pay-cut - and these other ways also don't completely demotivate your staff as well!

IW x