IBM repays millions to staff after messing up its own payroll IBM’s Australian limb underpaid 1,647 staff and has been forced to pay them AU$12.3m in back pay (US$8.97m or £6.98m) and make “contrition payments” to Australia’s government. Australian industrial relations laws and rates of pay can be notoriously variable depending on staff qualifications and duties. IBM appears to have run …
Reminds me of a theory called Inverse Incompetence.
I first heard of this at a site in the 90's used to understand the retention of some managers. It explained that people with bad enough plans who can execute them poorly enough may end up achieving something unintended, even beneficial. Superiors, not (never) familiar with details end up basing opinions of the individuals competence and effectiveness on misleading results.
"and the odd Australian practice of topping up pay packets by a little when staff take their holidays" - Even senior people can get it as part of an "award". My first full-time Oz job Was as a "General Manager". I had bought a new car when I arrived a few months before, to be told that the award gave me an air-conditioned automatic transmission car, and that I was not allowed to take cash instead. After a year I took leave, and while I was away my salary was paid into my account - It seemed to have an overpayment of 17.5%, but when I queried it, I was told that I had "forgotten" my "leave allowance". A workers paradise indeed.
I've run into similar rules on company cars in Europe. Only one previous employer gave the option of taking a car or taking cash instead. All others were variations on the theme of 'take it or leave it' - in some cases not even offering public transport compensation (let alone a bicycle) as an alternative.
The holiday pay thing is also reasonably common in Europe - many countries will pay out an extra couple of weeks in summer and/or winter.
Rates of pay difficult or complex ??? Then why has no worker been accidentally overpaid?
Upvote because you beat me to it.
Banks are the same. They claim mistakes are bound to happen from time to time - which is true of course - but never explain why mistakes in their favour far outweigh mistakes in the customers'.
We all know but it might be refreshing if they occasionally fessed up that they're way more focused on the upper management's remuneration than the customers' interests - or even the shareholders'. ("USR shitting on the little guy".)
The "odd practice" is known as leave loading - I believe its original function was to compensate shift workers for their loss of shift allowance when they were on leave. It's calculated as 17.5% of your salary for your leave period, so it works out at around 1 - 2% of your annual salary depending on how much leave you get.
Nowadays many companies pay it as an annual one off payment, normally around the end of the year (in my experience the first or second pay period in December). It's not as common as it used to be though.
The other "thing" we have over here - that confused me when I first moved over here - is Long Service Leave. Basically if you work for a company (the same company) for more than 10 years then you are entitled to between (generally) 8 weeks of paid leave in addition to your normal leave entitlement. Unlike leave loading, long service leave is a federal entitlement so most employees will get it. But you do have to stay with one employer for ten years or more.
Actually, long service leave is 13 weeks leave (without the 17.5% leave loading) after 10 years, and continues to accrue for each year thereafter. I should know, I've been with the same company for 33 years. We also have the ability to cash-out accrued sick leave - one week's worth every year on start-date anniversary.
The other one that intrigued me was that my Australian cousins were able to bank leave allowance over several years and then take e.g. a couple of months off in one big run, as opposed to every job I've had in the U.K. where I've been lucky if I've been able to carry 5 or ten days maximum from one year to the next, with anything more than that being 'lost'.
The Aus approach seems like a much better system to me - I keep wondering what the downside is about working in Australia, and I can't find it apart from everything that moves, and half the things that don't, trying to kill you.
All we need now is payment for all the hours we worked OVER what we were paid and charged to the customer.
Many Australians were paid for 37.5 hours a week or 40 hours per week, as per their employment contract, but worked (and charged the customer) for many more.
All these extra hours were recorded in one of IBMs multiple and redundant labour tracking systems, and the customer was charged for the hours worked, but the employee only got paid the contract hours, the rest was "expected" and supposed to be a "gift" to IBM.
Those that refused to work the extra hours for free, were abused by their manager for only "doing the minimum", given poor performance reviews, and made redundant at the earliest opportunity.
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