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salary job-change contracts role

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February 27, 2025 Score: 0 Rep: 49,615 Quality: High Completeness: 30%

I want to piggyback on the response from @TheDemonLord, but with some variation. This assumes that you have emails where your boss agrees that a pay raise was previously mentioned as a condition of your promotion, and does not counter that you are actually working in the promoted position. In the way we conduct business all over the western world, one could infer that there was an offer and an acceptance of a contract term.

Your boss may not have had authorization to offer such terms to you, but as an employee of the company who has authority over you, the company is required to honor any such agreement he made with you over wages. If you take the issue to HR, they're likely to and bulls--- you out of your money, because HR's role is to solve problems in the interest of the company. On the other hand, if you take the issue to your state's labor board, you will get your money assuming that you have some written proof.

Let's assume you don't have any written emails with the specific salary or hourly rate in the body of the text, and the date at which you were supposed to get the raise. If you don't, send one more to your boss. Keep an even, non threating tone. State that you are disappointed at how things have worked out. Send it, wait for a reply.

In any case, forward any such correspondence to your personal email address. THEN you can hit up your state labor board, or mention to your boss that such an action is pending. With proof in your possession, this can go in your favor (or at worse case, they'll fire you but still have to pay you.)

Use this with caution. I am not an attorney, and this does not constitute legal advice.

February 25, 2025 Score: 14 Rep: 50,237 Quality: Expert Completeness: 50%

So, to recap:

  • Pay rise was agreed, due to promotion
  • Pay rise has not manifested
  • 2 Emails have been sent to the Manager to rectify
  • Manager indicates that pay rise may not be what was agreed

Now - although you havent got the original agreement of a Pay rise in writing (life lesson for you to learn), The 2 Emails you mentioned actually work in your favor:

The fact that the Boss has replied what might be given is not what was promised confirms the following:

  • There was an agreement to a Payrise
  • The Amount that was agreed was higher than what might happened.

You need to escalate this to your HR ASAP, preferably CCing in someone high enough up the chain who can approve this.

Key things you want to assert And do not negotiate down from either these

  • The Payrise is to be backdated from when you formally started the new role
  • The Payrise is to be the amount agreed upon (and not a cent less)

In NZ, you would have good grounds for a personal grievance case for not being given the pay rise, this falls under Unjustified disadvantage, specifically the Good Faith clause:

You accepted a Promotion or change of role based on an increase in pay, for an agreed amount. You have assumed the new role with the added responsibilities, but have not been given the agreed upon compensation.

If you get given the run-around by HR or Management, the next step would be to fix up your CV, prepare for an immediate depature, contact your local Labor Board or equivalent organization and get in touch with an employment lawyer to get them to start proceedings against them.

And by Run-around, I mean anything other than: Oops we have fixed this and paid you the backdated amount.

One of the golden rules of employment: You do not mess with peoples pay.