Hey y’all, I’m a warehouse worker in Illinois, when I was hired on I was promised $17.50 an hour. I got access to the employee self service recently to find out these past 4 months I’ve been getting paid $17. Now I don’t have any actual on paper proof of this but I remember very clearly thinking , “$17.50, hey that’s just a dollar less than my girlfriend who’s already in the field, neat!” And I’m a little miffed about this discrepancy, because I know it probably happened because my department manager is scatter brained.
I don’t need any legal advice or rallying cries here. I just wanna know cause I already sent him an email saying I found this, this isn’t what I was told, can I come over to your building later and talk about this? How should I broach this? Obviously I want to start with friendly energy but stay stern that this is not the rate I was told I would be getting. Thoughts?
Whenever having a tough conversation, be prepared to either accept whatever they offer or find a new job. Welcome to America, it is what it is.
You probably signed a contract initially stating the starting rate. You can ask for this. You may have been told the wrong starting salary, you may have been given the bait and switch. It is probably too late to change the past, regardless. You can ask for a raise of $0.50 starting current (or more likely next) pay period. They can say “it’s not the time of year we give raises” and “your would not have been told that, it isn’t our standard” etc. You can look for what their current starting rate is for the job you are currently doing and apply to the same job within the company, when asked why you are doing this you can point out you were denied market value raise.