Volt Asks Temps To 'Vote" For Microsoft Pay Cut

theodp writes "In an email sent Friday evening to its Microsoft temp workers, Volt Workforce Solutions asked the techies to 'vote' to agree to a 10% pay cut. From the email: 'We want to support you in continuing your assignment at Microsoft and respectfully ask that you respond by going to the upper left hand corner of this email under the "Vote" response option and select, "Accept'" by close of business Tuesday, March 3, 2009. By accepting you agree to the [-10%] pay adjustment in your pay rate.' Microsoft managed to keep the Feb. 20 email detailing plans to slash rates from leaking while it pitched its Elevate America initiative at the 2009 Winter Meeting of the National Governors Association, touting Microsoft skills as just the ticket to economic recovery."

Comments

volt's cut

[Qrlx]

I worked for Volt at MS for a year. They offer a 401k plan and match a small percentage which is vested after a year. My year ended (MS only lets you stay a year due to the perma-temp settlement, then you have to take a 100-day break), but the Volt match never materialized in my 401k. Volt explained that to get the match I had to work 12 complete months. Sounds like a year, right? No. Since I started in the middle of the month, my first month wasn't a "complete" month, and it didn't count towards matching.

I told them their policy was BS, since 1 in 30 employees must start on the first day of the month, assuming people's contracts are as likley to start on day 1 as any other day. They didn't respond.

But the really nice part is today, when everybody on Slashdot gets to read about it.

Re:volt's cut

[d8ta]

My question exactly. When I was contracting at Microsoft, after I had dug up the gig, gone through the interviewing process, arranged a bill rate, and gotten steered by MS' HR area to go through Volt, Volt was proposing to take a 35% margin off the top for a deal that I had put together. Fortunately, I was able to find another "approved vendor" with a much more reasonable margin. I've come across Volt's presence in several other contracting situations, and they've tried to cram down similar margins there too. I hope that the folks actually doing the work at MS have enough contract flexibility and persistence to find a more reasonable subcontracting vendor.

Re:My kind of democracy

[commodore64_love]

>>>You can vote anyway you want, the only catch is that there is only one choice.

That's true. My company has not done this yet, but I've heard from a neighboring company that the temporary Contract workers were told they must take a $10 cut, otherwise next week would be their last. A few stubborn persons refused, and were asked to leave, but most are still working with a reduced pay.

This "Microsoft vote" is mere formality; if you don't take the cut you may as well pack-up your desk and take a long, unpaid vacation.

Ultimately this is the answer.

[Maxo-Texas]

American workers take a 25% haircut and become competitive again.

During the great depression there were several major waves of pay cuts.

This service economy fantasy is not sustainable.

What's missing is the 75% pay cut for the executive class back to 1987 levels when they "only" made 50 times the average worker (instead of over 400 times today) AND raising taxes on dividends and capital gains from 15% back to normal income levels ( these extremely low tax rates on div and capital gains are why warren buffet averages 17% income tax rate while his secretary averages about 30%)