4 years no pay rise. what action can employees take?

jacques_chirac

tir21 wrote: »

i gather from the responces that a petition while it would probably annoy the employer- would not be a sackable offence

It is not a sackable offence in itself - but it will mark you out as someone they might like to get rid of.

AP007

jacques_chirac wrote: »

They could make your life very difficult and manage you out of a job. There is good reason why no one else is shouting up about this - they value their jobs.

I have already said this to the OP on the other thread they have going but they are adamant 89-90% staff support them

Id say try it and see how many are.

notanewuser

jacques_chirac wrote: »

Have you let them know you are interested in career progression, asked about opportunities for training and taking on more responsibility?



Who are 'we' - these colleagues you think are going to stand by you?

Do you have any specialist skills that make you irreplaceable? If not, there is no reason why the employer is going to see your kicking up a fuss as anything more than a hindrance.

I believe he drives doctors around to out of hours appointments. I'm not sure how much "progression" or "specialism" there can be.

jacko909090

I actually write competitive tenders for my workplace - we are a not for profit organisation that does a lot of services for Care, NHS and others.

Usually tenders are scored on Price and Quality. The percentages of the total score for each of these is at the discretion of the Commissioner. Generally we will be marked 40% Price and 60% Quality but I have seen tenders with 80% Price/20% Quality and also 10% Price/90% Quality.

The Commisioner usually states the maximum contract price they are willing to pay which gives a clue to the price you would need ot reach to submit a decent bid. Tenderers will also have TUPE information on all existing staff so they can consider existing salaries, pensions etc in their price for the service.

We are increasingly finding that prices are becoming much lower as the impact of the funding cuts is biting.

We have lost some of our services to new providers based on price. Mainly because we have agreed to maintain our staff's existing salaries and pensions whilst they have gone in with lower paid staff rates and then immediately started consultation with staff to reduce their salary once they have won the bid.

In a former role the legal advice we received regarding renegotiating staff T&C's was that ultimately the employer could dismiss everyone and then re-hire them the following day on a new contract. The risk would be claism for unfair dismissal BUT unless all the employees affected claimed then an Employment Tribunal would likely deem it reasonable action if there was a business need to change terms and if some of the employees had accepted the new contract. Harsh but unfortunately employess have far fewer rights than people think.

As regards the OP and how you would know if other organisations pay more for your role - just look for job adverts on similar organisations websites or the Guardian jobs page. This will give you some idea of the 'going rate' for simialr roles.

It stinks but until the Government realise that not any old Tom, !!!!!! or Harriet can do social care, nursing etc and that there isn't 10,000 people lining up to volunteer to provide these valuable services we just have to suck it up and muddle through.

jacques_chirac

notanewuser wrote: »

I believe he drives doctors around to out of hours appointments. I'm not sure how much "progression" or "specialism" there can be.

The way he has been going on I thought he was something special, invaluable to his employer - clearly not!

Southend1

GwylimT wrote: »

Are you being paid less than the minimum wage? If not, how are you being taken advantage of?

Yeah because staff on NMW are not exploited at all right?

Ever tried living on NMW? If so, how did you find it?

AP007

Southend1 wrote: »

Yeah because staff on NMW are not exploited at all right?

Ever tried living on NMW? If so, how did you find it?

It would be better than JSA

Southend1

tir21 wrote: »

this has all got a bit personal about me being in the wrong for not just accepting i will never get another pay rise with this employer

but i intended this thread to be a bit more hypothetical in questioning what a determined group of employees could do to push for a rise without comitting a sackable offence

i gather from the responces that a petition while it would probably annoy the employer- would not be a sackable offence

thats all i was wondering

but if the employee is totally powerless and should just roll over - then i accept your responses

Don't take it personally. Many posters on this forum just come here to have a pop at someone. It makes them feel better about themselves. There are also a significant number of fairly right wing types who believe that anyone who doesn't own their own business or is employed below senior management level deserve nothing more than to eke out am existence on NMW.

If you feel you deserve a better deal (and let's face it your employer has probably put up prices year on year, and you can bet senior management pay has not stagnated), then your only real option is to get together with your colleagues and take collective action.

I haven't read the whole thread tbh as it seems to be mostly people commenting how outraged they are that you feel you deserve to earn a decent living, so I don't know if you are a union member or not but I would recommend joining, becoming active within your union and starting to organise around the issue of low pay/no pay increases.

Southend1

AP007 wrote: »

It would be better than JSA

So clearly we should all be paid a pittance and be grateful for it. Great logic.

elmccw

Don't rock the boat, look for another job.

That's what I am doing 15% pay cut in 2010, 5% payrise in 2011. No movement since
I am actually on less than when I started in 2008.
No point in complaining my employer knows that they can employ a graduate at minimum wage.

Look elsewhere.