bank bonus dilemma

as far as I am aware they have said ALL staff (not All Directors) will get the bonus. I find it rather difficult to believe that ALL have met their targets. And for that matter what are the targets cos that's all they keep ramming down our throats.

I bet one of the targets is still wapping a portion up those that are going

I take that to mean all staff who have met their targets will receive the bonuses they are entitled to. In many cases the banks are contractually obliged to pay bonuses to staff who have met their targets.

Chris

yes, but it would be nice to know what those target are........is there an employee here that can give us an example.

I don't know what the targets are. However I have a colleague whose daughter is a student and works in a bank part-time. They certainly use and abuse her. She is always under pressure to work later, or come in for an extra Saturday morning. She works pretty much full-time during her holidays, but they wont cut her any slack when she has exams on. She reckons the only reason she is still there is the bonus. Now it seems to be under threat.

This raises several issues for me:-

I hadn't recognised that bonuses had permeated the whole of bank life and not just the highly paid top levels.

There are a lot of very ordinary people who will be hit very hard if bonuses are not paid.

The press are being quite irresponsible in the way they report this issue. How about some stories on how low-level employees need the money to pay their bills?

Neb

That is arguable, given that if the taxpayers had not bailed out the banks they would have gone bust, and all contracts would have ceased at that point.

Sounds pretty much par for the course in any job actually.

Too bad. Most people's bonuses are not contractual, and I doubt if hers is either. In most businesses, unless you have a personal contract, a bonus is paid as a percentage of your salary dependent on how the company as a whole has performed, not dependent on how you have performed. If the company makes a loss, you don't get one.

You don't get paid bonuses because you need to pay bills. You get paid your salary for that. If you want a bonus, make sure the company as a whole performs well. If you can't do that, accept that you might not get one and budget accordingly.

Perhaps you'd like to tell all the rest of us, who would actually be funding any bonus out of our taxes in relation to any bank we've had to bale out, why we should pay them. We have bills to pay too.

very well worded.......

Lets to not forget about the lower interest loans/mortgages that some of these employees have also benefited from as employees.

In message , Ten Pin Bowling writes

That is because for many the bonus has become to be considered as part of the normal pay and not as an actual bonus that may or may not be paid.

Some people may be on bonus schemes directly related to their own or their teams performance and targets but the majority in Banking would I believe be on a scheme as you say that relates to the Banks performance and profits in which they would receive a percentage of salary as a profit share.

The Banks use the bonus scheme as a means of incentive whilst keeping salaries lower than they might otherwise be but again you are right, no profit should mean no bonus as you can't have a profit share if there are no profits to share out.

They may have been worth something in the past but in many cases I doubt that they are much of an incentive now that rates have come down.

You must have worked in some dodgy places! That is not my experience of work. People in senior posts get well rewarded and work a lot in return. People in lower paid jobs have a lot of opportunity to negotiate. " I will work extra on Saturday, if you give me Tuesday off instead."

I was very surprised to find that "in most businesses" as you put it there are bonuses at all. In my industry payment is exclusively salary. You doubt, means you actually don't know. According to the Press over the weekend banker's bonuses are contractual.

This has been portrayed almost exclusively as fatcats creaming off millions. However it is much more complicated than that. David Cameron has just come up with the idea of capping bonuses for 2008 at 2000. I quite like that idea. It would give the lower paid people who are depending on it their money, but would also prevent the huge bonuses that I see as the problem.

Neb

Although I don't work for a bank now, I have worked for a couple of them before. The bonus system is not that different to the way it works in any other type of company. Don't forget that not everyone who works for a bank is directly involved in the core financial services part of the business. I worked in telecoms, and the targets for staff there would typically be to "migrate x% of branches to the new backbone network by the end of the year". Human Resources might have targets like "recruit and fill x% of positions available for new graduates this year".

Chris

If that's what's written in people's employment contracts then that's what the banks are obliged to pay. I entirely agree with what you say about what would have happened if the banks were allowed to go bust. In fact I actually think that would have been better to allow that to happen. That still doesn't alter the fact that as long as they are still in business any contracts they entered into remain binding.

Chris

What happened to the contracts of all those who have been made redundant since the banks' irresponsible behaviour was brought to light? They were torn up, I suppose. BMW workers got one hour of notice.

They got paid for the week so legally they got one weeks' notice. This one hour guff is union spin.

It is common to be marched of the premises when being dismissed but people don't usually refer to this as 2 minutes notice!

tim

In message , tim..... writes

I bet they made sure the employees didn't work their notice.

I have only known that to happen in cases of dismissal for misbehaviour, except in the case of managers, who I have witnessed being told to clear their desks and leave the same day. Before Thatcher there was a statutory 90 day period for consultation before redundancies were completed.

I was placed on a redundancy list in 1981, even though I had already been interviewed and accepted for a job in another department! Fortunately the union successfully fought my case, and I worked a further 10 years before retiring early.

You've obviously never worked near a sales department

tim

Only if more than 100 redundancies.

It's the post, not the person, which can become redundant.

In any case these aren't redundancies.

they are contract workers not been employed next week

tim

AFAIK there is nothing to stop an employer changing the employment contracts at any time. If the employee doesn't like it they can leave.

My opinion is that any bonus payments should be capped at an absolute value so it is still of use to the lower paid staff. The fat cats can (and should) not get any more.

The nature of the word "contract" should give you a clue as to why this is wrong, at least as written.

Contracts are agreements. They cannot be changed unilaterally. (That doesn't mean that they necessarily last for ever, either).

If an employer thinks it can escape a contractual obligation to an employee e.g. to pay 1m whether described as a bonus or otherwise, the courts are there to prove otherwise.