1.3% increase - Am i being taken advantage of?

Hi all, so its that time of the year. Time for an annual pay increase. I didn't get my payslip yet, so i only found out this morning what my pay was by checking my account. My increase is 1.3%. Is this right? Can they do this? Vat has risen by 2.5% this year, so effectively i've just taken a pay cut of 1.2%. Opinions and advice please...

 

Yup, but it's not VAT you should be worried about it's inflation, which was 3.7% in December, so you're actually 2.4% worse off.

Sorry.

 

1.3% increase is 1.3% more than I'm going to get this year or next.

 

Thanks bindi. Its just what i wanted to hear. Yeah i totally forgot about the inflation. Lovely. Apparently nobody was happy about their increases. I see morale dropping soon as their is no motivation to work hard anymore. Sorry to hear spanky. I've been there, i know how it feels. I don't know how they get away with it.

 

Damn higher ups.

 

Annual pay rise you say, lucky you.

 

I don't understand the question, "can they actually do this?". We live in a capitalist country so they can do what they want with your pay.

 

Unfortunatly they can, Our's is 1% at the moment and LGS has been frozen for best part of three years now, not good eh?

Hopefully in two/three years time we can all look happily to proper pay-raises again!

 

Well, I'd probabyl b*tch about that.
Inflation here was officially pegged (and BY THE COMPANY I WORK FOR) at 8% last year.
My department has a budgeted amount of 0,-
I manage to bill 450K, and yet they tell me my department isn't good enough to make an average increase of inflation...

 

Glad I freelance and can pay myself whatever I want.

 

Well, at least you still have a job. A 2.4% pay cut is pish compared to redundancy. You can save that by being a bit more organised with the weekly shop.

 

At least you get paid on time/at all

 

I think they can pay you what they want, usually pay rises are related to how well the company is doing.

Depending how your company is organised, what can happen in a company with different department managers is each one gets pot of cash to distribute amongst their subordinates depending on who has been promoted, etc. but you'll probably know better about how your company works. 1.6% is pretty lean though.

 

Better to have a job mate being true! Alot of people are facing wage decreases and voluntary redundancy across the entire country really, still!

Allow me some sarcasm here chap, a company could grow 8% a year and the employees would still suffer, well many of them would be that cruel anyway, google on the other hand...

 

I think most people are having to take it on the chin at the moment so don't feel cheated. Even when the going was good, most people didn't get a pay increase that matched inflation.

Companies are also having a rough time - they generally aren't keen on passing on the VAT increase at the moment to remain competitive and sales of course aren't at peak so targets are down also. For a large company, this can mean several hundreds of thousands of pounds lost (pulling figures out of my ass of course). Depends on your sector or nature of business I guess.

As Nexxo said, better to have a job by far!

 

Innit.

Friend of mine works in local government and has been moaning about losing £600 a year increase to keep the unions happy. God knows what would happen to these people if they actually had to work for a living, without spinal points, pensions, 25+8 holiday etc. etc.

Any increase at the moment is a win. You're very fortunate.

 

I think the civil servants are having a protest at some point on all these cuts and stuff, can't say I blame them (I'm not I work for a third party company despite my job title).

 

Ah, so corporate greed really took off in the early nineties eh? I thought it started in the eighties.

 

i blame the banks, and say the banks should be paying back the government before paying ridiculous bonuses