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In reply to the discussion: So, about that Amazon wage hike that Bernie is responsible for... [View all]moriah
(8,312 posts)In HP's reorganization during the Great Recession, they did across-the-board pay cuts, with hourly penalized less than salary in theory -- but also cut shift differentials, benefits for straight non-married domestic partners (which I'd been using to cover the guy I'd been living with and his kid from his previous marriage to keep her off SCHIP-based, aka taxpayer funded, insurance) were cut and the company paid less of the premium share for everyone else's dependents, and while execs got theoretically large base pay cuts, they didn't lose their real income -- *their* incentives and bonuses.
This was to avoid more Enhanced Early Retirement/Workforce Reduction (the two types of RIFs with severance) than was HP's normal turnover rate -- managers usually tried to use them when it would benefit a departing employee and meet the district quota in favor of just having to cull the "least productive employees", but only so many people each year have a spouse that got offered a better job in another state, are experiencing such health problems they're going to exceed all company leave, short term disability, and FMLA but didn't buy LTD coverage, or are wanting to take their family on a mission trip (three instances they were used in my tenure there). The idea was take a paycut to keep them from doing a really heavy cull, told to us to be expected to be 5-10% of hourly positions. A "5% salary cut" sounded better than "5% of jobs cut".
Because I'd been on third shift weekends, my pay went down FAR more than most of my colleagues -- 20% instead of 5%. But I was 1) happy to not get fired, though I didn't truly feel in danger as few people wanted my shift, would want it even less without the bonuses, and I was getting good performance reviews, and 2) willing, as a person without a family to support, to accept a little less for what I was doing in the hopes people who did have kids living with them would keep their jobs.
I am not a corporate account to know exactly how much reducing incentive bonuses at executive levels would equate to cents per hour. And the people currently working for Amazon very well may have families to support, too. Maybe they can find some higher-up pockets to squeeze to give current employees a little bigger of a bump. But I'd be looking more at costs of group rate health insurance for dependents to not get cut -- that's a place they're going to hurt people if they squeeze.