legal experts unite - can anything be done?

unwashed potato!

unwashed potato!

unwashed potato!

Soldato
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not sure if this is beyond a question this board would know, but perhaps some on here can advise where we could go to get free advice.

i know everyone loves the details so will give a brief explanation. i'm still expecting the lovely hostility this board has become, but hopefully will get some sound advice in between the rubbish.

basically a friend was promoted to a new role. they got this by going to some testing event for the company and this person got the highest marks out of everyone, which was impressive considering the age. unfortunately the company decided even though on paper he's the best there, they don't trust his young age so although will give him a promotion to a manager of a site, he'll get one of the worst possible ones that they have in a location that sucks balls.

it was months before this location was told of so all he knew was that he would get this promotion, and eventually when told where it was, he only had about 2 weeks until he then was to be moved over to that team to manage. he was then told for about a month after taking on this new team that the pay increase was still being worked out and when it finally came through it was just £80 increase per month. absolutely nothing. after tax even less, and due to the increase in travel this job was now a pay decrease with a lot more responsibility. now working weekends, later hours, always on call and expected to email/message out of working hours and on days off, for £80 extra before tax is a joke.

really the friend messed up here as he should have not taken on the new site without knowing the pay, however i guess he felt pressured and didn't want to start off bad and delay getting the new team any further, causing issues before he'd even started. perhaps showing the age issues here. and then when they finally told him of the poor pay increase, he should have gone back then and not left it. his fault indeed.

what we'd like to know is lets say this friend asks the company if he can go back to his old role at his old pay, would

1) the company have to offer this old role if he wishes to step backwards. i assume not.

and

2) would the company have to offer the old pay. again i'd assume not.

and finally

3) would this friend have any where to stand legally with the way in which the company gave this promotion, putting him in the role for about a month before letting him know of the tiny pay increase? that's the dodgy part to me. seems incredibly unfair as put him at the time in an awful position. does he after a month of working in the new role say actually no thanks the pay is bad i'll stay where i am, in the hope one day in the future to progress? does he refuse the role until the pay is sorted, meaning the team is without a manager for a month, possibly losing the role to another person and then being stuck where he is with no promotion.

thanks all for the useful replies ;)
 
TLDR; 'taken on the new site without knowing the pay,'his fault indeed.'

1) the company have to offer this old role if he wishes to step backwards. i assume not.

and

2) would the company have to offer the old pay. again i'd assume not.

did he have a backout clause?
 
If its a considerable step up role wise then I'd say stick it out for a year or so - gain the experience, etc. then use that to move to another job/company on higher pay - at which point he might have more leverage if he has made himself useful and the company might offer more for him to stay though personally I wouldn't if a company considers it appropriate to treat people like that.
 
Rroff said:
If its a considerable step up role wise then I'd say stick it out for a year or so - gain the experience, etc. then use that to move to another job/company on higher pay - at which point he might have more leverage if he has made himself useful and the company might offer more for him to stay though personally I wouldn't if a company considers it appropriate to treat people like that.
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is exactly what i've been saying, however it really has been such an issue lately with life. this guy literally can make no plans. you can't say in 2 weekends time lets do something. you can't say lets go movies on Thursday. all you can do is say at 5pm, lets go movies now, and hope while there you aren't hassled with messages too much.

the experience for sure if what this guy is "being paid with" at the moment, and at his age to have this on the C.V certainly helps for any other job, however i think it's still worth exploring all options for now.

Moses said:
They saw him coming.
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some what agree. this company isn't going to offer a higher pay than what i needs to, however the way they trapped him into this new role isn't fair.
 
Fairly sure the answer is no said:
1) the company have to offer this old role if he wishes to step backwards. i assume not.
Click to expand...

as above: Fairly sure the answer is no :D

2) would the company have to offer the old pay. again i'd assume not.
Click to expand...

I'd assume that if he were to go back to his old job, assuming they've not found a replacement for him already, then presumably he'd be getting his pay reduced to what he was on before - I'm not sure why that would change.

Seems like a backward step though, if you've just had a promotion and within weeks of doing the new role you want to turn it down and go back to your old job then say goodby to future career prospects/promotions in that firm. I mean he presumably wanted the promotion previously but it is the pay that is the issue here ergo I'd argue about the pay (frankly he ought to have done this at the time but meh). Alternatively or indeed in conjunction to arguing about the pay he ought to get his CV out to rival firms, he's just had a promotion so leverage the new position to get a similar one elsewhere albeit at a higher rate of pay.
 
dowie said:
I'd assume that if he were to go back to his old job, assuming they've not found a replacement for him already, then presumably he'd be getting his pay reduced to what he was on before - I'm not sure why that would change.
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they are now hiring people in the same role with a much reduced wage. he was higher than the rest due to the time being with the company, and was really over trained for the role so ended up doing other tasks. you could say that the pay before was too high so the rise to this now correct pay is why the pay rise was small, however there are other people doing the same role with at least £2k more that were promoted at the same time.

dowie said:
Seems like a backward step though, if you've just had a promotion and within weeks of doing the new role you want to turn it down and go back to your old job then say goodby to future career prospects/promotions in that firm. I mean he presumably wanted the promotion previously but it is the pay that is the issue here ergo I'd argue about the pay (frankly he ought to have done this at the time but meh). Alternatively or indeed in conjunction to arguing about the pay he ought to get his CV out to rival firms, he's just had a promotion so leverage the new position to get a similar one elsewhere albeit at a higher rate of pay.
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it's been quite a while now, more than a few months at least. but yes you're right good bye future with that company. was a difficult position. if they refused to go into the position without hearing the pay, then goodbye to a future with them. had they said when they finally found out the pay increase, nah it's not enough, it's good bye to a future with that company.

you're right about the C.V. look for another job now while in a position of strenght to at least see other options.

and yes he should have done this at the time. unfortunately didn't work out that way.
 
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Fairly sure the answer is no said:
[..] some what agree. this company isn't going to offer a higher pay than what i needs to, however the way they trapped him into this new role isn't fair.
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Do you think they give a damn about fairness? To them he's just a thing to be used as hard as possible. They got more work out of him for the same money and paid someone else less to do the work he was doing before. Double cost saving, so someone further up thr hierarchy has "succeeded" in the primary way most businesses measure success - cost cutting. I wouldn't be surprised if it was planned as soon as they saw the results from the testing event. Or maybe before it, if falsifying the results would have been easy enough. You strongly imply that he's young. It's common for young people to be used hard on the back of their hopes of making it to the big time, which of course few of them will do because the further up you go the fewer places there are. Most will just be used up.

Maybe he could find a job with a company that does that to a lesser extent than the one he's currently employed by. Or at least one that will pay him a bit more in exchange for most of his life. It's not likely to get better where he is now.
 
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