Salary Increases

No, they go up by whatever your company feels is necessary to retain its staff.

No, they have openly paid you an extra 1.8%.

Notice what?

This is probably because it was all that they could afford

Unless you have a contract requiring RPI increases, they have swindled you out of nothing. They have given you a pay rise. If you think that it is not enough you have the usual options.

Is it? This is irrelevent.

Apart from find a new employer you can do nothing.

tim

I take your point, but believe me, this has nothing to do with retaining staff. This is quite a large company that is very wealthy.

Okay.

Hum. I somehow seriously doubt this in a very big, big way. When I previously said it was quite a large wealthy company, that was a bit of an understatement.

Okay. I would not personally call it a pay rise though if it is below the RPI. It has not kept up with inflation so it is a decrease IMHO.

Cheers for your comments Tim. I guess you are right on a couple of things. I suppose they don't have to give up an RPI increase, and can give us whatever they want, whether that's below RPI or nothing at all. I understand your point on retaining staff, but for the company I work for I seriously doubt this.

I am still going to ask a question or two about this. I think I could be elsewhere by the end of the year though at this rate.

What attracted you to Sweden? Bigger salary and better increases? :)

John

Just a change of scenary. There is limited choice of companies that will buy my skills and when one in another country came along I took it.

Contrary to expectations, like for like salaries are actually lower here than in the UK (freelance rates are as good because of the high welfare provisions that the employer has to provide), and I don't have to fight ageism, for the first time in ages 30% of my colleagues are older than me.

tim

If they are trying to move from RPI to CPI to justify lower increases - then they are ripping you off. CPI is a useless measure of inflation for cost of living as it doesn't include any housing costs at all. It's only appropriate for people with no housing costs!

Ask your company to justify cutting your pay in real terms. Maybe they have a good reason. Maybe they just want to save money. Most companies will try to get away with paying staff as little as possible - as would be expected in a free market - so make sure you adopt the same attitude and try to get the company to pay you as much as possible.

Do you have performance related pay? Perhaps you could adopt pay related performance - you perform in line with your real terms salary increase/decrease!

current average increase is 4% so a bit above RPI - still the RPI doesn't include house price increases (or even mortage payments) so they probably need to go up a bit more.

"The Office for National Statistics on Tuesday also reported that the Retail Price Index stayed constant in April, rising by 3.2 per cent over the past year.

The RPI is still used in most wage negotiations and for calculating the value of index linked government debt. It is higher than the CPI because it uses a different basis of calculation and includes council tax and mortgage interest payments, which have risen faster in price than other goods and services.

Britain's CPI inflation rate of 1.9 per cent in April is a touch lower than the European average, which stood at 2.1 per cent in March."

Phil

They can offer you whatever payrise they choose. If you don't like it you can move on. That's what capitalism and the free market is all about.

You work in IT, Tim?

In message , davidof writes

The average pay increase may well be correct but I think this measure includes all those people who are on incremental scales and age related scales as well and also those on commission. Therefore it is not a good benchmark for the 'inflation' type pay increase.

Ah! You service washing machines.

Unfortunately not :-)

tim