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Originally Posted by injuneer
Cabletel always were poor payers, I worked for them for about a year & a Half on shift (the shift rates were cr*p but I needed a job quickly!) at the time the annual bonus was included as part of your salary, not extra to as it is today. So you couldn't really quote your annual salary because you didn't know what it would be!! I believe a lot of yankee companies used to operate like this at the time, Nynex for one. The major problems came when they bought the consumer Co division off Cable & Wireless Comms, C&W were really good payers (and still are), this meant a lot of ex CWC staff were being paid much more than "old" Ntl staff and that disparity still exists 4 years down the line!
The "management" didn't like staff to compare notes on salaries (and still don't), saying it was a private & personal matter for each individual, they seem to operate on a divide the staff and rule basis, they don't want to address the problem because they know it would cost them too much wonga.  |
I remember the old bonus they used to call it PRP, when we asked questions about tax due to the government relaxation on PRP, we found out it was not an approved PRP so we had to pay full tax on it. I think the way they held back part of your salary for the quarter was a scandal, and I'm not sure if it was entirely legal the way it was conducted. I heard the legalities was the reason they quickly did away with it!
It was a great idea, we will not pay you 10% of your wages and will give it you back after we have claimed interest on it for 3 months, if you are lucky we might give you a slight bonus for the privelidge of us witholding it. I remember the first bonus I had was good, and then they moved the goalposts so it was impossible to achieve the targets!
Do you also remember the other chestnut....Pool Hours
I know there was hell to play when I brought up in a meeting with HR about wage differences between people in other regions and even in the same department, they were annoyed that wages were being discussed and as you said they thought someones salary was a personal thing. They tried to sort out the wages on one occassion, our regional manager gave us a powerpoint presentation and we had already been tipped off about it earlier in the day from another region. He took one page out of the presentation because it showed the proposed salary scales for the different levels of techs, we caused a big fuss and he eventually showed us, not one of us were in the scale for our grade.
I remember they assessed each persons knowledge, and it was all being controlled by Alfredo and another guy who's name escapes me. He was a right b*****d always on everyones back, but eventually worked himself up so much he left the company because of stress.
Anyway, Alfredo or this other guy marked mine and another Headend Tech's scores down, becaue we had higher scores than their glorious perfect headend techs in Glasgow. We had both been in the cable industry for 10 over 10 years, and were scored fairly.
We lost money because they didn't want anyone from Wales being paid higher than anyone in England or Scotland!
The unfair pay scales still go on in ntl, it's something they will never sort out, and it was also one of the reasons I left. There was one guy on exactly the same grade as me but earning about 4K a year more, I had about 13 years experience and he had joined the company as an installer about 4 years previously.
He's still there, and my ol boss is stuck with him in his team now.
Funny though, it was the other way around according to the Broadcast guys, they reckon the long term employees were much better off financially.