Functionally Unemployed

I've been trying to decide for the past couple of days whether or not I should post this, or even write it. I'm still not sure whether I should or not, to be honest. But I'm going to anyway.

Along with our paychecks on Friday, we all got a memo from the owner of the company concerning the state of the business in the troubled economic climate we're in. The main point of the memo was that our wage cap was being reduced by a full dollar per hour. Anyone making more than the new wage cap would see a wage cut on their next paycheck.

The natives were restless, to say the least. I suppose the good news was that we didn't have a shift on Friday night or over the weekend, so we have a couple of days to prepare before we start having to deal with the inevitable backlash.

I understand that changes need to be made. But this particular change makes no sense at all. Follow my reasoning here. The way our pay structure works, employees get a 50¢ hourly pay raise when they complete their probationary period. They are then eligible for quarterly pay raises of between 5¢ and 30¢ per hour, based on performance, attendance, and behavior. Do the math, and it turns out that any employee making more than the new wage cap would have to have been with the company for at least a year, and most likely for 15-18 months.

So who does the pay cut really affect? Only those employees who have been with the company the longest—those who have been the most productive, the most loyal, and the most successful. The long timers, the veterans, and the best and the brightest. They're the ones who get the pay cut. The newbies and the screw-ups continue to make what were making before.

Successful companies don't punish their best employees with a pay cut, no matter how hard the economic times are.

I asked the Field Director (i.e., my boss) if this new wage cap applied to supervisors and managers as well. The short answer was no, we would remain at our current hourly wages. The more complicated, answer, however, was that the owner was going to start tightening up on how many supervisors could be present at any given shift based on the number of interviewers present (the "ratio"), as well as setting a minimum workload for there even to be a shift at all. On smaller shifts, supervisors or managers would generally still be welcome to come in and work—as interviewers. And as interviewers, we would be subject to the new wage cap for those hours.

In such circumstances, that works out to more than a 25% hourly pay reduction for me. And that's assuming there will even be the same number of hours available for work. I don't count on that to be the case.

There is some comfort to be had, I suppose, in that fact that it's not just the call center that's feeling the pinch. All the company's salaried employees, the vast majority of which work at the main office downtown, are also being affected. They're all being asked to take one day off each week without pay.

Of course, that's still only a 20% pay reduction for them.

I've taken a few business classes in my academic career. One of the axioms of business that I've learned is that there are two ways to get a company out of fiscal hardship: increase revenue, or reduce expenses. When a company turns its primary focus toward reducing expenses, it is admitting that it cannot reliably generate revenue any more. And a company that can't generate revenue isn't viable.

I've worked for this company for six and a half years now. I enjoy (most of) the people I work with. The flexibility the job offers has been extremely helpful with school. Despite the occasional slow times, overall it's been a pretty good job.

But given the direction things are heading now, I can't help but think that my employer is circling the drain.