May 25, 2005
My Amicus
The national Amicus web site:
now has the facility for members to register and log on, to enable the site to display information relevant to your region, industry etc. Though the features of this are currently rather basic, this is the first step in a development plan, so members are encouraged to try it out.
Visiting Central Park, Manchester
An even more bizarre twist arose last week in Manchester in the company’s determination to be secretive and prevent Amicus from communicating to employees.
Amicus asked for a stand within the new building for the two days of visits to the new Central Park site but the company refused, for reasons that were less than convincing, to allow us this facility. After this refusal, Amicus had to arrange alternative ways to publicise Amicus and its importance to employees at the Central Park site. Members on each of the coaches distributed leaflets to the passengers. Employees on a number of the coaches had fun spotting the Amicus billboard truck touring the area and the posters on the approach road to Central Park advertising "Amicus The Union for Fujitsu", "Amicus The Union for Central Park" and "Amicus The Union for Fair Pay".
You can see one of the pictures at the bottom of this article.
However, we have to report that, on two occasions our posters were stolen by some unidentifiable individuals. Our Amicus officers didn’t quite make out who removed the posters on the first occasion but on the second occasion three people were spotted loading our posters into a silver Vauxhall. Amicus officers followed them, to ask for the posters back but the individuals seemed determined to keep them, and following a mini-tour of Harpurhey, the Vauxhall drove back onto the company site, and the Amicus officers decided to let them keep the posters at that point. We presume we must be doing something good if these individuals were so keen to take these posters to make them their own!
Amicus survey of Fujitsu pay 2005
Today Amicus is launching its 2005 pay survey for Fujitsu Services staff.
All employees (members and non-members) are encouraged to complete the survey, which can be found at www.ourunion.org.uk/paysurvey2005.
You can also display the poster to advertise the survey to your workmates.
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Over the coming weeks, Amicus will be issuing updates to members to help them work out if they are a pay/benefits ANOmaly.
To be added to our email distribution list, join today. |
May 20, 2005
Let's make Central Park a great place to work
Let’s make Central Park a great place to work
Fujitsu is moving staff from five sites into new offices at Central Park. A new workplace offers great opportunities to create a positive working environment – building on the best from the past and leaving the worst behind.
Amicus – the union for Fujitsu staff – is here to represent the interests of employees.
On your own you have little power to influence your working life. But by joining your colleagues who are already Amicus members you have access to independent expertise and experience. We believe that only through a trade union can staff have an effective voice.
What Amicus can offer
Amicus provides advice on all aspects of employment. We can ensure Central Park is a safe and healthy place to be and if you ever find yourself in trouble at work, Amicus can be there to represent you.
Research has shown that trade union members are paid on average six per cent more than non-members in comparable jobs. In MAN05 where Amicus is already recognised, the union has achieved better pay deals than elsewhere in the company. Amicus won improved sick pay and enhanced the package for staff in situations of redundancy.
Unions can also add value when it comes to the quality of working life. Unionised workplaces offer better job security, better training and opportunities, and problems like bullying and harassment are more likely to be challenged when trade unions are present.
Legal right to join
You have a legal right to join a union and employers have to allow you to be to be represented by a union in grievance and disciplinary hearings. Employers cannot discriminate against employees for being a member of a trade union.
Amicus will continue to negotiate pay and terms and conditions after the move. We aim to ensure that all staff benefit from the added value Amicus brings.
Your employer is backed up by a whole team of experts such as lawyers, accountants, management consultants and PR professionals for advice and support. Shouldn’t you do the same?
May 19, 2005
Individual Performance Related Pay
Below we reproduce a story (with apologies to Robert Tressell) about Individual Performance Related Pay at Bodgit & Scarper PLC, which illustrates some of the problems with secretive pay systems - as well as how they can be tackled.
Disclaimer: Any resemblance to individuals, living or dead, is purely accidental. Any resemblance to real companies is purely in the mind of the reader.
Performance Related Pay at Bodgit & Scarper PLC
Worthy Widgets had been a thriving business for years. Then, a few years ago, a battle broke out in the boardroom, after which Bertie Bodgit and Sam Scarper left the company.
Bodgit & Scarper launched a rival company, which they promised would be more “modern”, better managed, and more successful. They publicly attacked the Worthy Widgets management, saying they were “stuck in the past”.
Mr Scarper became the Chief Executive Officer of Bodgit & Scarper PLC, while Mr Bodgit became head of Human Resources. From the start they set about proving that their “modern” management was better. Whereas Worthy Widgets set a rate of pay for each job, Bodgit & Scarper introduced individual “Performance Related Pay”.
Bertie Bodgit made sure the press reported the fact that Bodgit & Scarper’s “pot” for pay rises was higher than the increases at Worthy Widgets. It seemed that Mr Bodgit’s Performance Related Pay scheme really was better for the company and its workers. Worthy Widgets was soon struggling to find good recruits.
But two sisters rumbled Bertie Bodgit’s Performance Related Pay scam…
Wendy and Betty were twins. When they left school, Wendy found work at Worthy Widgets, while Bodgit & Scarper took on Betty. They both started on the same basic salary of £10,000 as grade-1 Widget Furtlers.
As the April pay round approached, Worthy Widgets announced that they were increasing pay for all grades by 2%, so Wendy’s pay as a grade-1 Widget Furtler rose to £10,200.
Over at Bodgit & Scarper, Chief Executive Mr Scarper proudly announced a pay “pot” of 3%, boasting to the press that modern management rewarded the workforce better. Mr Bodgit, the Head of Human Resources, issued guidelines to all managers, telling them to plan pay rises totalling 3% for the year. The guidelines told them to allocate the money based on “individual performance”, so some people got nothing at all, while a few got far more (though many doubted any real link to performance).
Betty worked hard for Bodgit & Scarper, learning steadily. She got an average rise of 3% making her pay £10,302. But Betty’s manager warned her that she was now paid more than her colleagues, and needed a promotion to get a rise next year. To get promoted, she must start working like a grade-2 Widget Furtler, but wouldn’t get promoted until she had shown she could do the new job.
In Worthy Widgets, a grade-2 Widget Furtler in Wendy’s department left the company, and she got the vacant job. Her company paid each grade 5% more than the one below, so her pay rose 5% to £10,710. The promotion made no difference to the Worthy Widgets pay bill – they had simply replaced one grade-2 worker with Wendy, and would fill Wendy’s old grade-1 job with a new recruit.
Meanwhile, at Bodgit & Scarper PLC, Wendy’s sister Betty jumped at an opportunity to cover for a vacancy for a grade-2 Widget Furtler. Betty’s boss reminded her that she needed to do the job to prove herself before being promoted, and added that he had no budget to promote her just yet, as the full 3% pay pot for the year had already been allocated.
As April came round again, Worthy Widgets announced another miserly 2% rise for their staff. Mr Scarper gloated that he was once more giving his employees a 3% pay pot this year – 50% more than Worthy Widgets for the second year running.
At the Drunken Duck on Friday lunchtime, Wendy and her Worthy Widgets workmates endured a barrage of jokes from their smug rivals. Meanwhile Sam Scarper comfortably fended off journalists’ questions about his own six-figure salary, bonus and pension scheme, arguing that all his employees were sharing in the company’s success.
Betty looked forward to her pay review, hopeful that the promotion would be hers. Sure enough, she was given a 5% rise and promoted to grade-2. She felt very proud of her 5% rise - one of the highest. The increase to £10,817 would be a big help at home too.
Wendy felt dejected with her measly standard rise of only 2%. The rise took her grade-2 pay to £10,924, but surely she should get more than some of her less able colleagues? She wished Worthy Widgets had individual Performance Related Pay like at Bodgit & Scarper.
Meeting at the weekend, the astonished sisters realised that Wendy was actually paid more than Betty!
How was Bodgit & Scarper giving bigger rises but actually paying people less?
Worthy Widgets’ 2% each year had been an increase in the pay for the job. Wendy’s 5% rise with her promotion had been on top of that – good news for her but making no difference to the company pay bill. Bodgit & Scarper were announcing 3% pots, but this was the average increase for the person, not the job.
Betty’s pay at Bodgit & Scarper was only £317 more than the grade-2 salary at Worthy Widgets two years earlier – an increase of only 3% in two years. Meanwhile at Worthy Widgets the grade-2 salary had increased by 2% each year (£424) – just as they had announced.
So even though Mr Scarper announced a pay pot each year that was 50% more than the Worthy Widget’s rise, Mr Bodgit’s scam meant that the pay for the job actually went up 25% less!
Betty was running on a treadmill. Unless Bodgit & Scarper employees kept up with the treadmill through progression and promotion each year they got little or no rise and their standard of living went down because of inflation. But the harder the employees worked the faster the treadmill would go. Every step forward they took on the treadmill meant more money being diverted from real pay rises towards promotion and progression, and the further behind the pay for each job would fall.
Exposing the scam
Once word got round about Wendy and Betty’s experience, employees at Bodgit & Scarper started to ask questions. Some said that PRP stood for “Peter Robbing Paul”, not “Performance Related Pay”. A few joined a union. They organised pay surveys that showed that average pay for grade-3 Widget Furtlers at Bodgit & Scarper had actually gone down over the last year, despite people getting an average rise of 3%. This was even worse than Wendy and Betty had thought.
The key to the scam was a combination of progression, promotion and attrition.
Mr Bodgit only gave rises to people who progressed within their current job or got promoted to the next job up. He kept the pay figures secret, so nobody knew what pay to expect when they were promoted. Whenever someone was promoted to grade-3 their pay did go up, but Mr Bodgit made sure it remained lower than the existing grade-3 workers. Meanwhile he froze the pay of those grade-3 Widget Furtlers who didn’t progress, get promoted or leave. So over the year the average pay of a grade-3 Widget Furtler at Bodgit & Scarper PLC actually went down!
People leaving the company was a key part of Mr Bodgit’s scam – he called it “attrition”. Every time someone left the company Mr Bodgit made sure that someone on lower pay took on their job.
Stopping the scam
Bodgit & Scarper’s employees were furious when they saw the survey results. At the Drunken Duck it was now their turn to be the butt of the jokes from Worthy Widgets employees. Something had to be done.
Bertie Bodgit hated unions. They were “dinosaurs”, “stuck in the 1970s”. They had no place in a “modern” company like Bodgit & Scarper PLC. Bertie Bodgit was dedicated to defending “the rights of individual employees” not to have a union “interfere” in their affairs.
But by now a majority of employees at Bodgit & Scarper had joined the union, giving them a legal right to “union recognition”. With union recognition, the company would have to negotiate with its workforce through the union (collective bargaining), provide facilities for employees to elect representatives and allow the reps time off to be properly trained and carry out their duties. Reluctantly, Mr Bodgit signed a union recognition agreement. Privately, Bertie Bodgit told his friends at the golf club that he regarded it as a “personal failure” and blamed the union for the “breakdown in trust” at the company.
But there was worse to come. The union requested information about the pay and benefits of Bodgit & Scarper employees. With union recognition came the legal right to information to help the collective bargaining process. Mr Bodgit, the head of Human Resources, nearly blew a gasket. He said this was an infringement of the individual rights of employees. After months of delay and under the threat of legal action, Mr Bodgit finally provided the information.
The union analysed the information and found huge variations in pay between people doing similar jobs. They found clear evidence of discrimination on sex, race and age. Employees suspected discrimination on everything else from disability to shoe size, but this was harder to prove. In just a few years the average pay for each grade (apart from new recruits) at Bodgit & Scarper had fallen way behind the rates at Worthy Widgets. And grade-3 Widget Furtling wasn’t the only job for which pay had actually gone down each year.
Mr Bodgit’s “Peter Robbing Paul” pay scam was blown wide open. The press had happily reported all the boasting from Mr Scarper the Chief Executive and all the bragging from Mr Bodgit the head of Human Resources. They soon started carrying different stories.
Armed with the facts, the union reps argued that Mr Bodgit’s individual pay system had to go. It was obvious that unless the scam was stopped, Bodgit & Scarper would now struggle to recruit and retain good staff. The union also argued that it was better to prevent and solve discrimination now than spend time and money in the courts. Even Sam Scarper could see the writing was on the wall.
As a first step, Bodgit & Scarper PLC defined rates of pay for each grade, and brought every employee below those rates up to them. Secondly, they agreed with the union a series of pay rises to bring these pay rates up to match those at Worthy Widgets. Thirdly, the company settled the discrimination claims out of court, compensating employees for their lost earnings.
Angry that their profits shrank, Bertie Bodgit and Sam Scarper are now considering selling the company they founded – to Worthy Widgets.