Amtrak employee meals

[Exvalley]

Tere were small groups of us who surriptitiously shared compensation information within the group without letting anyone else know, since we knew that officially what we were doing would be subject for disciplinary action including dismissal.

In my state it is illegal to discipline someone for sharing their rate of compensation.

 

[TrackWalker]

...I am not even sure we are really talking about it in this thread.

I believe the original topic ended with post #2.

 

[Bob Dylan]

In my own job experience over my entire career it seems to me that the only group that gains from keeping compensations secret is the managers who can then proceed to fecklessly lie their way through under compensating many while making them believe that they are compensated more than others. Making the information more public would mostly cause agony to the managers who would have to be more honest for a change. Just IMHO of course.

Over a significant part of my working life there were small groups of us who surriptitiously shared compensation information within the group without letting anyone else know, since we knew that officially what we were doing would be subject for disciplinary action including dismissal. But it was useful to gauge which manager was honest and which one was a liar and to what extent. And yes, I was blessed with having several honest managers, and a few not so honest. In general more validated information is better than less in making decisions.

As a Civil Servant, both Federal and State, as well as in the Military, my Adukt jobs were all compensated on a published Schedule that was available for anyone to see.( with Steps for years of Service and COLA adjustments)

The difference came when it involved Promotions and " Merit Pay," when only a certain number of people could receive them.

There were also bumps ( the Military called it "Pro-Pay" for Educational Levels, Special Skills such as speaking certain Languages, and allowances for Expensive areas such as New York, San Francisco,Boston etc.

Not all Governmrnt employees are not compensated the same, although theres no Secrets when it comes to what's available.

( And Women still make like 75cents on the Dollar compared to Men!)

 

[me_little_me]

mypay.dfas.mil literally gives the base pay for every pay grade at every year of service. Our special pay and BAH allowances are public knowledge and easily searchable as well.

And that information has been public when I was in the service from '68 to '80. Not on the internet in those days (we used smoke signals - an idea we stole from the Native Americans ) and in newspapers -mostly in those oriented towards military people but publicly available to anyone.

 

[caravanman]

You previously mentioned passengers confronting staff over work related benefits, and obviously that would be unacceptable behavior, but you also seem to condemn the mere discussion of compensation as if it is fundamentally injurious. Is there a specific harm you believe is caused merely by knowing how much someone else makes?

Sorry, I don't recall mentioning passengers confronting staff?

As I say, it is just considered bad manners to enquire what another chap earns in the UK. It's a standard of behaviour. I think we don't hold folks value in society to equate to their income as much as is the case in America?

I don't think there is a specific harm, other than ensuring those at the bottom of the pile know their place, and act in a humble way towards wealthier people... (joke!).

Seriously, either we all should be open about such matters, or none should. I err towards us all being open, but resist the idea that only public employees earnings and conditions need to be common knowledge.

 

[jis]

In the US your right to discuss your pay between fellow employees is protected by federal law.

Except when employment contracts with confidentiality agreements are involved, which are not prohibited by federal law.

Here is a very good discussion of this subject matter:

https://work.chron.com/salary-maximum-interview-offer-17975.html

 

[Mailliw]

Of course the majority of American workers are at will employees without an employment contract.

 

[bratkinson]

As a DP manager in my early thirties before I went back to being a techie, and confirmed by my now ex-wife 10 years later as she was a middle manager at a regional bank at the time...

It's all about a 'range' of monthly pay for each pay grade within the company (think military pay grades based on rank). So, all programmers under me were in the same pay grade. The data entry folks had their own pay grade and range, as did the computer operators. And for what it's worth, the company went through a 'Hayes pay grade analysis' or something like that about a year earlier and each position was established by the 'Hayes committee' (upper management?) as a specific pay grade similar to Federal Civil Service 'GS' pay grades.

And like I was told by my manager, my wife by her manager, and she told the managers that reported to her, it's all about the 'mid point' (50%) of the range of pay for a pay grade. We were only allowed to have no more than 30% or so 'above midpoint'. Of course, new hires start at or very near the bottom of the pay range for that grade. And like civil service employees, every year, there's an across the board percentage increase in the pay range, based on whatever upper management decides. That didn't mean everyone got an immediate pay raise like I do now from Social Security. It basically allowed the managers some 'room' for small increases and still stay below midpoint.

My wife also told me it worked similarly with annual bonuses. She was allotted a total of X dollars to give out as bonuses to her employees. And it was all about 'mid point' there, too. So most bonuses were in the lower range and only 1 or 2 of the 7 or 8 under her got 'bigger' bonuses. Of course, she got a significantly larger bonus than any of her underlings.

And for what it's worth, working mostly as a contractor programmer/analyst for about 30 years, I was involved with writing new payroll systems at two contracts. One was a national, multi-subsidiary company that had anywhere from 7 to maybe 12 payrolls to get out every week (we did all the payrolls for all the companies, from management to multiple unions each with their own contracts and pay days). The union employees mostly got paid weekly and the checks overnighted to their companies. Some managers got paid bi monthly on the 1st and 15th, 15th and last of the month, others on 2nd and 4th Wednesday, some monthly, and so on. That one was a real challenge as sales person compensation had a commission component that was calculated on individual unit (food products) sold. Calculations had to be done down to 4 decimal places (ex: 145 jars at 0.0103 commission each). The other was a major city government. I wrote the gross pay calculation program for all employees from the city hall janitors to the mayor. Of course, during my testing, I had to verify the results I was getting with what the employees were currently making. The mayor got a far less than I expected. Meanwhile, fire fighters had all sorts of unique hourly percentage add-ons based on the position they filled, even if for 2 hours. The police officers had a variety of add-ons as well, but not as wild as the fire fighters had.

As a 'professional', we never did share our pay information with others. But a couple of my co-workers and I did. I think we were all disappointed as to a man, we thought we were underpaid individually and found we were all within a few dollars of each other. At least, while on hourly contracts, we got time and a half over 50 (not 40) hours per week. That was possible as benefits were calculated based on 40 hour weeks, so after 40, the cost of benefits was zero to the company.

What DID open my eyes, though, was while living in Detroit in the early 70s as a contractor, on a very large conversion project for Detroit city hall had 2 contract companies on the project. 4-5 from the regional company I worked for, and the other was TATA, based in Bombay India, had 7 men on the project. They were hired for that project in India and sent to Detroit. We all got along quite well and frequently had lunch and/or dinner together, etc. Me and my co-workers were all surprised to hear they were all living in one apartment and getting paid $7.00 per hour while we were making $15+ for the essentially same job! They were overjoyed at $7.00, as their living expenses were exceedingly low, then sent half their check back to their families, and when they returned to India, they'd 'live like kings' with servants, etc. For what it's worth, as it was the conversion of the entire city hall accounting system, we each had access to the various accounting files, including payroll. Curiosity got the best of me and I looked up what Mayor Coleman Young was making. Annually, with my overtime, I was making more than HE was!

 

[Bob Dylan]

As a DP manager in my early thirties before I went back to being a techie, and confirmed by my now ex-wife 10 years later as she was a middle manager at a regional bank at the time...

It's all about a 'range' of monthly pay for each pay grade within the company (think military pay grades based on rank). So, all programmers under me were in the same pay grade. The data entry folks had their own pay grade and range, as did the computer operators. And for what it's worth, the company went through a 'Hayes pay grade analysis' or something like that about a year earlier and each position was established by the 'Hayes committee' (upper management?) as a specific pay grade similar to Federal Civil Service 'GS' pay grades.

And like I was told by my manager, my wife by her manager, and she told the managers that reported to her, it's all about the 'mid point' (50%) of the range of pay for a pay grade. We were only allowed to have no more than 30% or so 'above midpoint'. Of course, new hires start at or very near the bottom of the pay range for that grade. And like civil service employees, every year, there's an across the board percentage increase in the pay range, based on whatever upper management decides. That didn't mean everyone got an immediate pay raise like I do now from Social Security. It basically allowed the managers some 'room' for small increases and still stay below midpoint.

My wife also told me it worked similarly with annual bonuses. She was allotted a total of X dollars to give out as bonuses to her employees. And it was all about 'mid point' there, too. So most bonuses were in the lower range and only 1 or 2 of the 7 or 8 under her got 'bigger' bonuses. Of course, she got a significantly larger bonus than any of her underlings.

And for what it's worth, working mostly as a contractor programmer/analyst for about 30 years, I was involved with writing new payroll systems at two contracts. One was a national, multi-subsidiary company that had anywhere from 7 to maybe 12 payrolls to get out every week (we did all the payrolls for all the companies, from management to multiple unions each with their own contracts and pay days). The union employees mostly got paid weekly and the checks overnighted to their companies. Some managers got paid bi monthly on the 1st and 15th, 15th and last of the month, others on 2nd and 4th Wednesday, some monthly, and so on. That one was a real challenge as sales person compensation had a commission component that was calculated on individual unit (food products) sold. Calculations had to be done down to 4 decimal places (ex: 145 jars at 0.0103 commission each). The other was a major city government. I wrote the gross pay calculation program for all employees from the city hall janitors to the mayor. Of course, during my testing, I had to verify the results I was getting with what the employees were currently making. The mayor got a far less than I expected. Meanwhile, fire fighters had all sorts of unique hourly percentage add-ons based on the position they filled, even if for 2 hours. The police officers had a variety of add-ons as well, but not as wild as the fire fighters had.

As a 'professional', we never did share our pay information with others. But a couple of my co-workers and I did. I think we were all disappointed as to a man, we thought we were underpaid individually and found we were all within a few dollars of each other. At least, while on hourly contracts, we got time and a half over 50 (not 40) hours per week. That was possible as benefits were calculated based on 40 hour weeks, so after 40, the cost of benefits was zero to the company.

What DID open my eyes, though, was while living in Detroit in the early 70s as a contractor, on a very large conversion project for Detroit city hall had 2 contract companies on the project. 4-5 from the regional company I worked for, and the other was TATA, based in Bombay India, had 7 men on the project. They were hired for that project in India and sent to Detroit. We all got along quite well and frequently had lunch and/or dinner together, etc. Me and my co-workers were all surprised to hear they were all living in one apartment and getting paid $7.00 per hour while we were making $15+ for the essentially same job! They were overjoyed at $7.00, as their living expenses were exceedingly low, then sent half their check back to their families, and when they returned to India, they'd 'live like kings' with servants, etc. For what it's worth, as it was the conversion of the entire city hall accounting system, we each had access to the various accounting files, including payroll. Curiosity got the best of me and I looked up what Mayor Coleman Young was making. Annually, with my overtime, I was making more than HE was!

But you didnt get a chance to get in on the Graft that Elected Public Officials do!