October 31, 2006

 

S&P GIVES A NEW MEANING

TO OPENING A CAN OF WORMS

 

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) officials have made an adventure of putting employees’ pay raises into effect and then paying their retroactivity.

 

When the problem initially surfaced, it appeared innocent enough. S&P management sent an email to a recently hired financial writer notifying her that she had been overpaid and it was going to adjust her salary and make a retroactive deductions in  subsequent paychecks to correct the error.

 

When Guild officials looked into the matter, however, we determined that the problem was much larger than the initial email was portraying it.

 

In another email explaining the situation, John Gillen, senior director of workfare initiatives and human resources, wrote: “As soon as the contract was ratified, we notified the recruiting staff that began hiring in as many new employees as possible under the new salary rates with the new GWIs (general wages increases) built in so as to help us to reduce the amount (of) retro work we would have to do.”

 

Talk about opening up a can of worms!

 

The tentative agreement the Guild and S&P, calling for a 3.75% retroactive increase to April 1, 2005, and another 3.75% increase retroactive to April 1, 2006, was ratified on June 23. The raises didn’t show up in employees’ paychecks until August 24. Between those dates, S&P was recruiting new employees like Uncle Sam trying to recruit soldiers.

 

In an effort to determine just how large a problem we were dealing with, the Guild asked S&P for a list of all employees hired between June 23 and August 24. There were 37.

 

Of the 37, S&P is saying that at least a handful was overpaid, that their wage increases were built into their starting salaries and then their raises were applied again. Those individuals have received emails saying their salaries will be reduced and future reductions will be made.

  

The Guild is grieving the entire convoluted situation.

 

The original case, the one involving the financial writer, appears to be a slam-dunk. Her offer letter went out on June 12, not only well before the contract was ratified, but two days before even an agreement was reached with the Guild. The amount quoted in the offer letter was the amount in which she had agreed to come to work for S&P. After all that was said and done, then the two retroactive increases were applied exactly as they should have been.

 

S&P officials have been all over the place in this case. On October 20, they sent an email to an analyst notifying him that the general wage increase had been incorrectly applied to his salary and, three days later, they did an about face and wrote: “Since the offer of employment was made prior to the new wage scales being determined, your salary was correctly adjusted and shall remain at . . .”

 

The curious thing in th e analyst’s case is that the offer of employment was not made prior to the new wage scales being at least tentatively determined. It was made after a tentative agreement had been reached on the day the contract was ratified.

 

On the other hand, another analyst was sent an email saying his wages were going to be garnished when his offer letter was clearly sent prior to the agreement on the contract being reached.

 

Company officials have provided the Guild with a list of six individuals (of the 37 hired between June 23 and August 24) they claim were overpaid because they were given salary increases after those increases were built into their hiring-in figures. As late as a grievance meeting on Friday, October 27, however, Local Guild Representative Bob Townsend asked management personnel if they were saying that the other 31 employees had not received the retroactive pay increases and the managers said they did not know.

 

It’s the Guild’s position that everyone should have received the pay increases to be applied to the figure they received in their offer letters. Management did not notify the Guild that it would be calculating those increases into the starting salaries of new employees. As far as the Guild as been able to determine from interviewing new employees, they were not told those increases were included in their offers. And, when it comes right down to it, new employees shouldn’t have had the new rates effective before the more veteran employees in any event.

 

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10/30/06