Message #61498

[spitfire78]

Hi Callie,

I was once in a similar situation.  When I was hired here (back in 1981!), they brought me on board for $10,000/year.  This was considerably higher than I had been making in my previous job and I was thrilled.  After a couple of years, I discovered that another secretary hired the exact same time as me and doing the exact same job with the same amount of experience as I had was brought on several thousand dollars a year more than I.  The reason - she was making more in her previous job, so they paid her more.  They figured I would be happy with less, so they offered me less.  I was pretty livid over it at the time, but because I shouldn't really have had the information to begin with could do nothing about it.  This is a large company, however, and they couldn't get away with it for long.  Eventually a review was done of all the admin salaries and it was discovered that I was being paid less.  In the course of maybe a 5-year period I received extra raises mid-way through the year about 3 times to "bring me up to the level of other admin staff in my area".

Now, obviously that couldn't possibly make up for all of the years that I was underpaid; however, it was gratifying to know that my division was caught red-handed by the main office and forced to even up the distribution.  Eventually, because I sought out extra duties and responsibiilties and took extra training, I became the highest paid secretary in the group.