To be absolutely gutted at getting the lowest payrise in the organisation?

[MassageGun]

I am the only person, out of 130 staff to be getting less than 5%.

I have a senior support staff role on a school, the most senior. It's a tough job juggling conflicting priorities and basically any problem that isn't directly related to teaching and learning lands on my desk. I do a good job and always get excellent reviews. Pay is comparable to an upper scale teacher without allowances.

This year teachers are getting a minimum of 5% with some of the lower paid getting more. Good.

Support staff points are all getting the same amount in pounds. For some staff this is up to 10%, also good for the lowest paid, but doing it that way means that people higher up the scale get a lower %.

I'm happy that ridiculously low paid staff will be getting a decent rise for a change, but to be getting significantly less than anyone else in the organisation, including some paid a lot more than me is really hard to take.

It's no one at the school's fault (LA school tied to national payscales) but to say I'm feeling unvauled and unmotivated would be putting it mildly.

AIBU and how do I get over it?

In my experience, most employees don’t know where they are on the pay scale let alone colleagues. They often only look at the impact on them and possibly the range for the next level up I.e. potential promotion. I say this as someone who has explained pay awards to 000s of employees over decades.

I also find employees don’t convert £ to % for themselves, sorry to say but quite a lot of people don’t know how to do % so won’t notice if others have had a lower %.

@NeverDropYourMooncup exactly my point.

You are arguing, princessglittery that it is fair that the OP gets a (real terms) pay cut while people lower down the scale get a real terms pay rise (or less of a pay cut).

Why should the OP not be fucked off at getting a pay cut?

The headteachers’ union NAHT are also balloting for strike action over pay. They earn way more than me but don’t deserve a massive pay cut either.

@noblegiraffe flat rate £ pay awards are fair in terms that everyone gets the same £ figure (pro rata as appropriate).

My question to you, and the OP, is how would you split the fixed £ budget for the pay rise? Who would you take £ off to give OP a higher %. That is what the decision makers will have been wrestling with. They cannot magically increase the budget, they would need to ask tax payers to pay more tax.

My question to you, and the OP, is how would you split the fixed £ budget for the pay rise? Who would you take £ off to give OP a higher %.

It wasn’t the school or LA who made the decision about pay scales, it was the government. The government made the political decision not to fund any pay award meaning that cuts need to be made to school provision to provide them.

Stop trying to make the OP feel guilty about the impact of that govt decision. People who work in schools are fed up of it.

@noblegiraffe to be clear I know teachers etc. pay tax.

Relevance?

The government needs to fund education so that staff pay rises are not funded by cuts to children’s education and redundancies of school staff, as is currently the case even with the shit pay awards being made.

It is not greedy of the OP to be unhappy about a pay cut.

@noblegiraffe the relevance is normally when I point out its tax payers, I get the retort but public sector are tax payers too! I forgot to add it to my post.

@noblegiraffe I’ve never said the OP was greedy for focusing on a % rather than the £ figure.

No, but you’ve asked her to consider what she would like to cut in order to give herself a bigger pay rise.

This is an unacceptable tactic when it is a case of the government deciding that cuts should be made to education provision to give school staff any pay rise.

The government would now have the guilt for that impact passed onto the people affected by it rather than themselves, and you are facilitating that with your comments.

As a teacher, I am not going to be made to feel guilty for my 5% pay rise coming out of the school budget rather than the government tax take (which, if you recall, they are seeking to reduce). That’s on them, not me.

Jeez, people arguing that people on more than them deserve a pay cut more than they do simply because they earn more than they do is so divisive. We’re not talking about massive earners here.

And in the meantime the government is doing things like allowing bankers to receive bonuses more than double their annual salary.

Look at the real problem here, and it’s not the OP earning more than a TA.

@noblegiraffe the OP deals with the school budget, she is familiar in how they work. By asking her to think in terms of how she operates with a fixed budget and has to make difficult decisions I was actually trying to help her reconcile why the decision was made to do the pay award as £ rather than %.

Had the OP not got a budget background I would have not used that scenario.

I don’t want the OP to get over the decision, I want her to be (rightly) angry over the mess school budgets are in and the shit pay decisions.

Everyone should be angry, not telling people it’s ok if they think about it as not taking food from a child’s mouth.

@noblegiraffe I think we all got that.

My private sector employer has given some staff a £1k pay rise. The rest? Absolutely nothing.

👍

Don’t vote Tory. Support school staff. Remember the bankers’ bonuses.

We’re not all in this together, some are more equal than others. And it’s not the OP.

@NoSquirrels It doesn’t work like that in the Public Sector. Pay rises are normally determined by a central pay team and then implemented, they are not individually negotiated. The op got the same £ increase as many of her colleagues which is fair to all.

I understand- what I was trying to tell the OP was that this is one of those situations whereby if you really, really feel an injustice has been done to you, take action and take your complaint to someone who might be able to create a solution. Even if it’s not the official route, perhaps there is something else that can be done by the people (Head) in the school itself that can help her feel more valued.

The only other option is to just get over it.

I dunno. I’m getting no pay rise at all and looming recession makes my job very insecure with low redundancy pay etc. I just can’t feel the level of aggrieved the OP does over the idea of an almost £2K uplift.

It’s fascinating to read the views of those who have only ever worked in the public sector pay rises. I have only worked in private sector

How do you know that posters on here have "only ever worked in the public sector?"
They haven't posted their job histories, just their current roles.

@Ohyoucutie @BlueRidge At the risk of getting my head bitten off, I think Ohyoucutie is right there is a mindset of long standing public sector workers that can come out in discussions like this.

The private sector is much more diverse with some sectors having a lot more money and others having very little/no money for pay rises. I know of people who get mega rises and bonus’ and those who have had no pay rise for a decade.

Setting aside that the money available for pay arises is not enough, Whilst at an individual level a pay rise in the public sector I understand how they can feel unfair I can attest to how much thought and hard work goes in to spending the available budget as fairly, and legally, as possible.

I've worked in the private sector, I even remember getting bonuses for successfully completing a project. Funnily enough I also know people who work in the private sector and there have been plenty of threads on MN about people in the private sector pissed off at inequality in pay, or payrises or bonuses so I don't think that people in the private sector are somehow saintly when it comes to accepting unfairness in their pay packet.

I can attest to how much thought and hard work goes in to spending the available budget as fairly, and legally, as possible.

Yes, well, you think it's fair that the OP gets a big pay cut while others don't, so don't be surprised if she disagrees.

It does vary in the private sector though. I get 2 weeks sick pay then ssp, stat mat pay, never had a bonus and get a tiny pay increase each year, around 1%. Always been similar to this in any organisation I’ve worked for. So 6 months full sick pay and pay increases of almost 5% does sound a lot to me

@noblegiraffe maybe we need to really think about whether you can place a value on whether someone deserves to be paid more for an hours work than someone else. If everyone got the same hourly pay everyone would get the same pay rise etc. Much easier one National Wage Rate?

After all a cleaner in a hospital could have saved lives during covid by cleaning the infection from surfaces.

The current pay rises of ~5% (which are massive pay cuts because of inflation) are coming on the back of 12 years of pay freezes and below inflation pay rises.

If you think the public sector is getting a good deal on pay, do feel free to apply for a job here, because for some reason, we are haemorrhaging staff to the private sector.

Was that in reply to me?