Full pay transparency comes with a lot of baggage. Of course, when you're union represented, full transparency is in existence because experiences and skills don't have much to do with the pay rate at which you're hired, and performance has nothing to do with the raise you'll receive. Both are calculated by the union contract. Everybody gets the same $$, regardless of your contributions.
Is this Russia Danny? This isn't Russia, Danny... Same pay upon hire (regardless of your experience) and the same raise regardless of performance - nice. Let me think about that... Does that environment encourage high performance? Hmmmm...
So pay transparency exists in Union environments. With that in mind, why wouldn't a company negotiating a new contract use the transparency that exists to drum up union member support for their best offer to the union?
That's exactly what AT&T has done. Here's the text from an email to all employees at AT&T announcing the status of the negotiations, as well as the existence of a contract calculator where you can actually go out and see how much each union employee has to gain by the union agreeing to the current contract:
"After months of negotiations, the company has provided a last, best and final offer for the contract covering Core wireline employees in the Southwest Region (Communications Workers of America District 6). The district comprises the states of Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Texas.
Bargaining continues in all other regions — West (CWA District 9), East (CWA District 1), Midwest (CWA District 4) and Legacy AT&T Corp. (CWA ComTech).
Virtually all employees covered by the last, best and final offer in Southwest will see a positive financial impact under the offer. A calculator is available on www.att.com/corebargaining which will show the estimated, cumulative value of wage increases combined with wage progression for each individual, as well as estimate the effect of health care changes.
This is a fair and reasonable offer that recognizes the contributions of employees by preserving good union jobs with good wages and benefits that are among the best in the nation. Even in this part of our business, which is experiencing substantial customer and revenue erosion, we are continuing our commitment to making an offer that preserves all of the elements of our compensation packages — wages, pension and health care — and doing so at a time when many other companies are making substantial cutbacks in these areas.
To help in your understanding of this offer, a video presentation* from John Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T Operations, posted here, provides additional context about this offer. In addition, a detailed summary of the last, best and final offer is available here on www.att.com/corebargaining.
We urge the members covered by the Southwest Core Contract to give this offer careful consideration and to ask their union leadership for an opportunity to vote in favor of the proposal."
Here's the new contract calculator provided by AT&T. If you do nothing else on the web today, click through and do a couple of scenarios. It's pretty fascinating.
Has anybody else looked at this and thinks it's incorrect? That the increase in wages is double counted? In my example, I was making something like 23,000 currently, and at the end of three years, would be making 44,000, but it says my total wage growth was like 41,000 (minus healthcare). No way...they annualized each year consecutively, and then totaled it all up again in the total. the actual increase should be 41 - 23, or 18,000. Correct? Or am I completely missing something?
Posted by: anonymous | May 19, 2009 at 11:41 AM