My sister was an RN at a hospital whose parent company gobbled up some area hospitals.
In her case, they cut her pay 25%, because it would be unfair to pay the other people less. This was right before COVID, and everyone basically quit - like a whole department of nurses en masse.
She came back as a contractor when they were hard up, at one point making $350/hr. All of the normal staff left and it became a contractor mill. When contract people didn’t show, she got $2000-3000 shift bonuses for a 4 hour work commitment to allow the ER to stay open.
I certainly hope the Slack folks do something similar.
This is happening everywhere. The place where I work a very large, rich University gave out two 3% raises since COVID started and at one point temporarily cut everyone's salary by 5%. The only way to make more was to get a promotion or apply for a role on another team.
I personally know 2 people, a healthcare (non-COVID) worker and an architect, who've had salaries cut about 20% as well. Still anecdata, of course, but throwing it onto the pile.
In 2020 the company I worked for did ~25% temp salary reduction so they could feel safe that they could keep everyone employed and such. 3 months after everyone did it they said "thank you thank you we are so happy we don't need to let anyone go". 2 months later they laid off ~50% of the development team and people throughout the company...
At the end of the year they said no bonuses, followed by an email saying despite covid they made a profit.
The beginning of Covid was somewhat of a unique time. It made sense to accept wage cuts because the entire world economy was a big question mark at the time, and the likelihood of you finding another job at that point wasn't great.
My own partner accepted getting cut down to only two workdays a week at 40% of her pay, for over six months, before she finally found another job. She would have been better off furloughed like most of the rest of the company (they were in the events industry, the company made almost $0 revenue in 2020) because she would have been eligible for the extra unemployment.
But I think a 10% across the board wage cut is risky when you're not in the midst of a big recession/depression. You'll have your best employees that could have probably left and gotten a 10-20% increase elsewhere already, have now lost 10% of their wages at your company and now can get a 20%-30% bump if they leave.
People won't be loyal and stay just because you're hurting the company evenly. Speaking from experience, at a previous company we had frozen raises and removed 401k match and worse healthcare and we saw steady and significant attrition just from that. Cut salary by 10% would probably have similar results.
During the early days of the covid lockdowns, before nursing home staff or residents were vaccinated, many staff quit en masse to work as covid test center staff. The hours were better. The job was less complex and less demanding. The pay was comparable.
Then when the remaining staff began to contract covid, they were down to a few core people working continuously to provide care. Many recently (and not so recently) retired nurses returned to work until they could figure things out.
There isn't much to learn about enterprise staffing here except that when the chips are down, people who are truly devoted to their jobs will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure it gets done.
I feel it's a pity these people are often (in my country) poorly compensated for the incredible effort they make.
Taking pay with the understanding that it's hard to be fully productive during covid, while going to work at a competitor, is sus. Firing may be coming soon, perhaps with lawsuit.
My wife had her hours cut by ~50%, in an industry that has zero revenue since the start of Covid, and will not be rescued by re-opening - or anything short of a vaccine. Yes, zero. She can't understand how she still has a job.
She's still getting paid her full, normal salary. I'm not sure if the company owners are praying for a small-business relief hail mary fund, if they are going into debt with no plan to pay it back, if they are motivated entirely by wishful thinking, or if they don't want to let their employees down.
Whatever the case, it is both very generous of the owners, and very concerning.
Several companies I know seemed to lie and use Covid as a convenient excuse to not give out raises (or give shitty bonuses, etc) to save money in the short term. Meanwhile hiring and earnings don't match up to those actions.
The last company I worked for did something similar. It cut everyone’s salary (60 people) to avoid a layoff right after Covid hit. As soon as they did, I started looking for another job.
Your best employees can leave and you are left with the “Dead Sea Effect”
(employer speaking) at the beginning of the pandemic we sent everyone home, and did across the board pay-cuts (50%) for alomt everyone (we set a floor so those least paid kept 100%).
Those that could work from home did. Some worked 100%,some 50%.
Over the first 6 months we assessed monthly, and slowly raised the floor. Once everyone was back on 100% we paid back-pay for all the missing pay (even those who chose to only work 50%).
Ultimately everyone was made whole, actually considering the saving in fuel from commuting came out way ahead.
We managed to avoid any layoffs.
Not surprisingly (to us) we got very few thanks. Mostly we're told how bad we are running the company. Bonuses are too low etc. A long career being an employer has shown me that (with rare exceptions) the more we look out for staff the less they appreciate it.
This company is already dead before covid-19. The virus just accelerated it and likely gives the executives somewhere else to point the blame. It takes large companies years to die. Just look at Sears.
There is a hospital here in Colorado that during covid-19 told its employees it needed people to work more hours at reduced pay because of covid-19. After that the leadership turned around and gave themselves bonuses.
For real my ex is a union welder and she made stupid money during the pandemic. Construction is considered essential and she got mad overtime with all the people out sick. They basically took zero safety precautions and she gave me the pleasure of being one of the first 100 people to catch covid in my city of ~200,000 people.
In her case, they cut her pay 25%, because it would be unfair to pay the other people less. This was right before COVID, and everyone basically quit - like a whole department of nurses en masse.
She came back as a contractor when they were hard up, at one point making $350/hr. All of the normal staff left and it became a contractor mill. When contract people didn’t show, she got $2000-3000 shift bonuses for a 4 hour work commitment to allow the ER to stay open.
I certainly hope the Slack folks do something similar.
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