What's in it for me?

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Apple fanboy

Each year the cost of living goes up, yet the salaries stay the same. People get made redundant, and their responsibilities become yours. Your reward for this? You get to keep your job. The world sucks. But at least we have jobs/food/houses!

Originally Posted by Squadleader

Sorry, I just dont see it as "abuse"..I see it as the company having to change the biz model to keep up with the times, sure it sucks, but until you start your own company and "abuse" your own workers you have to roll with it...You can be sure your boss's already know you would quit for a better opportunity, which is why they are not offering any to you...

The problem with these sentiments is that it isn't the case that the entire corporation is taking a cut, or that the entire corporation has stagnant wages. There's a lot of data out there showing that the disparity between pay to upper management and pay to the standard worker has grown quite a bit over the past 20 years. I'm not arguing that a CEO shouldn't necessarily be the highest paid person in the company, but I don't think it's right that they're paid a salary equivalent to 100 - perhaps even 1000 - standard workers (and I'm not talking janitors). And if salaries are cut across the company, I expect that the upper management should suffer cuts, as well. Otherwise, it is certainly abuse of position, as they are taking payment that should rightfully be going along to the rest of the company workforce and padding it into their own salaries. It's only a problem because they're in a position to influence their and everyone else's salaries.

[takao]

reminds me of the external business partner who every year tries to come up with the same "we need an IT specialist on standby in the early morning at 5 AM in case our data transfers don't work" and when reminded of additional employee costs put into the contract drop it at once...

what are they thinking .. that somebody in IT will show up at 5 AM for the same money like on a 9 to 5 job ?

[thekev]

Originally Posted by Squadleader

Sorry, I just dont see it as "abuse"..I see it as the company having to change the biz model to keep up with the times, sure it sucks, but until you start your own company and "abuse" your own workers you have to roll with it...You can be sure your boss's already know you would quit for a better opportunity, which is why they are not offering any to you...

When it doesn't involve a company that is having trouble maintaining profitability, it's usually just a case of the typical MBA factory mentality. They can't think of real ways to drive continued growth based on product offering and marketing, so they analyze what employees will tolerate. It's typically a sign of poor or stagnant management.