My company cut our pay rise and gave our bosses more. What can we do?

Workers at the company I’m employed at were all “promised” a pay rise. When the pay rise took effect, the increase was lower than we’d been told it would be – without any explanation – and all bonuses were removed entirely. At the same time, all employees in leadership positions have received and will continue to receive a guaranteed two-figure percentage pay rise. The rest of us were told that future pay increases will be low, and dependent on the company’s discretion alone.

Now, we’re all being told that our targets will be increasing each quarter, and we are still required to do everything possible to exceed these targets, the only incentive being to keep a job. When I questioned these changes, I was told that very low union membership meant the company could essentially do as it pleased.

Is there anything I can do? I’m in my late 40s, so looking for another job isn’t an option in a country as ageist as ours, but I’m also worried that before long my wage will be below the poverty line.

What you’ve described regarding pay is so much more than a broken promise. It’s a policy of austerity.Credit: John Shakespeare

What we’ve ended up mentioning in the question above is really the tip of a pretty appalling iceberg. From everything you’ve told me, your workplace has a deep cultural illness.

I was shocked to discover in our correspondence that this is not some failing medium-sized company desperately and ineptly attempting to save the furniture, as I assumed after your first email. It is, in fact, a huge, financially robust organisation – an Australian household name.

What you’ve described regarding pay is so much more than a broken promise. It’s a policy of austerity for the people doing the work and of largesse for the bosses. I’ve never understood this approach – if a business is in such difficulty that serious, painful changes are required, shouldn’t those changes apply to everyone?

The employee in this instance would be well advised to join the relevant union in their industry.

Dr Eugene Schofield-Georgeson

At a time when everything is measured to within an inch of its life, it seems only fair that “key performance indicators” would be just as demanding of managers as they are of non-managers.

Being a manager, as I’ve said many times in Work Therapy, is an incredibly difficult task and I understand the argument that managers should be well remunerated for the challenging nature of the job.

But doesn’t logic dictate that responsibility brings an extra burden worthy of extra pay precisely because there is a daunting buck-stops-with-me element to the job? If the numbers suggest that employees aren’t doing their job properly, isn’t that a reflection of management?

I asked Dr Eugene Schofield-Georgeson, a senior lecturer in the University of Technology Sydney’s faculty of law, what you might be able to do to extract yourself from this dire situation. He told me that joining a union was your best bet.

“The employee in this instance would be well advised to join the relevant union in their industry so that the union may commence enterprise bargaining for a significantly higher pay rise on behalf of that worker and, hopefully, other employees within the enterprise,” he says.

“Collective bargaining has historically been the method by which workers in liberal democracies have held bosses to account to redistribute a fair share of their profits to those who produce those profits.”

To put your recent pay rise in context, Schofield-Georgeson also said that recently bargained gains for workers have been, even at their lowest ebb, “at least 4 to 5 per cent per annum”. He added that “trade union membership is entirely tax-deductible and much cheaper and more specialised than legal representation”.

A couple of years ago, I heard from a reader who was hesitant when asked if they would attend a union meeting. I mention it because, in their response, the expert I spoke with talked about the deliberate “generation-long shift in most global north countries” away from union recognition in favour of managerial prerogative.

As Schofield-Georgeson told me, without collective bargaining, any worker is “relatively powerless in the face of [this] prerogative”.

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