WWYD-underpaid and overworked

[Bee21]

So, at the end of last year I had a proper meltdown at work (was an insanely busy year), which led me to seriously reconsider my employment situation.  I wanted to resign on the spot, but they made me take extended leave instead, to calm down (direct management is very apologetic and feel bad about the situation).  I was depressed for weeks and barely able to function but by now I am getting a bit better and ready to take them on in a logical, non crying way.

I work for a large, very regulated organization.  My main problem is workload. I have been working part time in the past 8 years, but as it turns out I always had a full workload - i can actually prove this with cold hard numbers.it turns out that I was responsible for 35% of all the project and tasks of our area, ie my portfolio has always been larger than the portfolio of the people who were there full time. I had a 60% load officially  and there are 4 of us.  I also found out that other areas of the organization (am being  deliberately vague what sort of industry) with the same responsibilities are classified higher than us, ie they are paid more for the same type of work even though our area was the busiest of all.  The difference between my income during these years and the income of the full timers' is quite significant. 

i complained unofficially to my direct boss before, but there is apparently nothing they can do. They refused to reclassify us or to employ more people. I am meeting with HR next week to lodge a formal complaint and I am bringing my numbers, list of completed projects etc.  Has anyone been in the same situation and if so, what did you do? Or if you were in my shoes what would you do?

PS. i can just resign and take a year off (nobody is hiring in my industry right now and we have plenty of FU money), but as I have nothing to lose, I am planning to stay on a bit and rattle the cage in the name of community service.

[Model96]

Good luck!

[former player]

Good on you for trying.

One thought: you did not complain to your boss "unofficially".  You told him about a work situation while at work: that is an official complaint.  You may have done it relatively informally (ie not a formal written report), you did not do it unofficially.  When you talk to HR this is an important point: it means that the organisation, in the form of your direct boss, were on notice 1) that their systems were set up in a way that was unbalanced and unfair on both workload and pay and 2) knowing that, refused to take action to remedy the problem.

A second thought: if it is possible for you to raise the issue of race or sex discrimination then that is more likely to get HR's attention. Typically part - time workers are more likely to be women: if you can show that a part-time worker is more likely to be woman and has a (relatively or absolutely) higher workload than full-time workers that are more likely to be men then that is evidence of discrimination of the grounds of sex.   Also, if you can show that your particular team of four is overworked and underpaid relative to other teams and has a higher proportion of women or racial minorities than other teams that is also evidence of discrimination.

If you have records of what you said to your boss and when about the workload and pay problems that is something else to put to HR.

[cool7hand]

I'm so sorry this is happening to you. I'm afraid that my thoughts aren't positive.

I used to do management side HR work. In most organizations, an event like this is the beginning of the end of your ability to advance your career in this organization. Regardless of whether your situation was fair, an event like this puts you on a liability risk list. Most organizations will just kick the can of your career down the road until you cry uncle and leave.

I hope I am wrong. But the purpose of sharing this insight is so that you can watch for the signs. Those signs are usually some variation of meetings/conversations where people express compassion for your situation, and even suggest fixes, but no meaningful change ever occurs. What's really occurring is that the organization is trying to say the things that limit its liability, while hoping that you'll leave.

You should consider speaking to an attorney, but there is risk to that as well. In insular industries, word gets around. Not hiring you because you had an attorney send a nastygram isn't legal, but that doesn't stop it from happening.

If you have specific questions, please message me. Again, I'm sorry and I hope you find a fair organization that meets your needs!

[ctuser1]

... but as I have nothing to lose, I am planning to stay on a bit and rattle the cage in the name of community service.

This is a bad idea in 99.99% of cases.

If you leave on relatively good terms then you will likely retain your network at this workplace. That can be worth a lot, especially 10 years down the road.

If you rattle the cage, then that is the act for which people will remember you, and they will forget what kind of workhorse you were before all that rattling.

The 0.001% situation where this may not be so harmful is if you are in a hyper-safe kind of a position like tenured professor, a doctor etc.

If you don't like to work here, please consider leaving in good terms.

[Sibley]

You say you work part time. So, only accept a part time workload. Askamanager.org has various posts about how to deal with this kind of situation.

[mozar]

but there is apparently nothing they can do.

Why would they do anything, since they can keep exploiting you?
Put in your two weeks notice and call it a day.

[ChickenStash]

A few relatively easy, low-hanging fruit fixes:

1.) Quit and go somewhere else. I wouldn't recommend burning any bridges so a simple 2 week notice (or whatever the employer thinks is appropriate) would suffice.

2.) Just stop doing the extra work. If you are part time, I assume there is some agreed upon number of hours for the pay so when you hit those numbers per day/week/pay period stop working, log out, go home. When the boss asks why a project isn't getting done just say there wasn't enough time. When new projects are assigned, check if there are enough hours unallocated and if there isn't time, turn it down. Simple.

You have at least as much power as they do in an employment situation, probably more. Use it to your benefit.

[alcon835]

Nothing to add to the excellent advice already given. I am interested to hear how it goes today! Please keep us updated as these help the rest of us when we find ourselves in similar situations.

[RWD]

You say you work part time. So, only accept a part time workload. Askamanager.org has various posts about how to deal with this kind of situation.

2.) Just stop doing the extra work. If you are part time, I assume there is some agreed upon number of hours for the pay so when you hit those numbers per day/week/pay period stop working, log out, go home. When the boss asks why a project isn't getting done just say there wasn't enough time. When new projects are assigned, check if there are enough hours unallocated and if there isn't time, turn it down. Simple.

^^^ This. Worst case they fire you and you get a better job.

[Boll weevil]

Skip the lawyers unless you can prove they’re breaking the law. There’s no requirement they treat all groups equally and I can think of a number of reasons why they would classify and pay groups differently. (Level of education required, do they need to have surge capacity available, who is the customer/what is the budget, where are you at in project/product lifecycle, etc.)

And if they are breaking the law, still tread carefully around lawyers because whistleblowers often get blacklisted because other companies don’t want to chance the whistle being blown on them.

Ask for reduction/modification of responsibility. Ask for transfer to that group (or, if they’re full, to get their next opening).

[formerlydivorcedmom]

Complaining to HR is likely going to make life more difficult without any actual changes coming about.

If you are the workhorse, your manager will continue to load you up with work until you break (as you've seen).  It is the only way for the team to continue to function/manager to look good.  A good manager would have tried to fix the situation before you had a breakdown.    Yours did not.

I think your best options are to
a) Insist that they reclassify you as full-time and pay you commensurately - while insisting that you only take on 20% of the workload (team of 5).
b) Only take on a part-time workload and decline all other work.

You hold a lot of power here - you are FI, so you don't need this job, and you are fed up. 

I've been in a similar situation - in a team of 6 people, I was doing 40% of the work.  I complained to my manager and my director and they shrugged. I threw a toddler-level tantrum in the office one day, took a week off to recover (and threatened to quit on the spot if he called me in).  For the new few months I reduced my workload on my own and basically dared my boss to fire me.  He was shocked - SHOCKED - when I quit two months later after I had found a new job.  Two of my coworkers quit the week I left - they were the only other productive ones in the group and would have ended up with my work on top of theirs.

[HawkeyeNFO]

HR will NOT help you.  HR is there to protect the company and its interests.  They're not your friend.  Stop wasting your time with them.

[Metalcat]

Staying there to "rattle the cage" is like staying in a bad marriage out of spite, I see no good reason.

Leaving a workplace always feels so dramatic until you do, and then it eventually just becomes somewhere you used to work.

Don't let this place be more than it is. It's a shitty place to work, that's all, so don't choose to work there. Shitty places to work are a dime a dozen, and people get stuck in them for a lot of legitimate reasons. Don't be someone who sticks themselves in a shitty workplace for no good reason.

[DeepEllumStache]

Agree with the other posters. Don’t go to HR. They are not “on your side” they are there to limit the company’s liability.

You don’t have the power to fix the staffing. Your boss has no incentive to fix the situation because you are pushing yourself beyond what’s healthy so that the boss does not experience any negative outcomes from their inaction. You do not owe your boss that. You do have the power to control how much you do. Either quit or reduce your workload.

If you go the second route, send a simple email outlining which tasks you are prioritizing. Don’t give an explanation, don’t rattle the cage, just a calm “going forward I will prioritize x, y, and z but will not have time for a and b.”  Then follow through and let anything not prioritized fail.

[former player]

OP can fix the overwork issue by saying no, but given her current boss she can't fix the pay issue without going to HR.  Worth a try to fix that before leaving if she wants to.

[Model96]

HR will NOT help you.  HR is there to protect the company and its interests.  They're not your friend.  Stop wasting your time with them.

Yep, your only chance is if your boss values you enough to champion a change for the better in your circumstances.
HR will most likely create another problem for you, to take your mind off your existing problem!

[Bee21]

Thanks guys, excellent points, I really appreciate your input.

NB i am not FI, just have plenty of savings and a husband who is quite well paid, so technically I don't have to work. We are about 5 years till I can retire ( i mean, if we sell the house, the cars and the boat we are FI, but my husband resists the idea of radical mustachianism) I chose to work, but I might need to reconsider this approach 😊. This is why I am not really concerned with the burning bridges scenario.  I was ready to jump ship last year, but than covid happened, plus I did some interesting projects at work (i had my best year career wise), which will look very well on my resume going forward if i decide to stay in the same industry.

I am definitely going to HR because it is now a matter of principle. I know that they are not my friend.  If i let this go and just walk away, I will hate myself forever for letting that happen to me without fighting back. Yes, it feels like being in an abusive relationship (been there done that), we don't realise how bad it is until we get out of it.  I hate myself for not realising what was happening before,  I was too busy working to see what is happening around me. Stupid, I know. The thing is, I did not need extra hours to do my job, i can't claim that I was working longer hours than the others, but I can definitely prove that I accomplished way more in less time. But this bloody workload proved to be career limiting, destroyed my health, my mental health...

Good point about the discrimination- I can actually play this card. I am a person with an accent. Also, I am the only one in the department with the relevant education plus 10+ year of experience  so they can't refuse reclassification based on the lack of education or experience. If the other areas pay the same job title more, they can't really refuse it. 

The other funny part is that we are  undergoing radical restructuring and they are moving me to a slightly different role (and they are apparently panicking that I now want to leave because I was specifically selected for this, so I have a bit of leverage here), so i want to make sure that the workload and the classification level is set right from the very beginning.  Just as a matter of principle. And honestly,  after what happened at the end of last year, I don't want to stay for long. I am already looking. I just prefer to get paid while on the job hunt.  As they are so disorganized that they don't exactly know what I will be doing, I expect to be treading water for a few months until work picks up at the second half of the year, hopefully that will be enough down time to figure out what to do next. I will absolutely refuse to continue my existing projects to help out, that is not gonna happen, they can kill someone else with it.

But of course, after having been here for so long doing the same thing, I have no idea what to do, which is also causing me some anxiety. Prob looking at a drastic career change. And yes, I am getting counselling (work is paying for it).

[use2betrix]

So they were paying you as part time, but you were working full time hrs?

How many hours is part time classified in your contract, and how many hours were you typically working?

[Bee21]

The hours are not an issue, my problem was the workload (the size of the portfolio).  It is very quantifiable what i did in comparison to the others.

Anyway,  just heard that life in the office took interesting turns in the past few weeks while I was away, so now I am even less inclined to return to that hellhole.

I will report back next week after my chat with HR (I will def put in an official complaint for unfair treatment and discrimination before I leave).  In the meanwhile if anyone can recommend any resources for career development, career change etc please do share.  It's a good thing that I cleaned out my desk before I left.

thanks again for your comments, it's good to have a different perspective on this drama.

[alcon835]

@Bee21 I am curious how this turned out. If you're up for it, would love to hear an update!

[Bee21]

Well, nothing much is happening work wise, but I am functioning normally after a few rough weeks.

Management is trying to figure out life after the big reorganization,  nobody knows anything. This whole massive reorganization at this busy time was a clusterfuck. All my previous colleagues are on medication and in counselling, but I managed to distance myself from the work mess by demanding a new position description and politely waiting for instructions about the new responsibilities. They are yet to come. I cleaned up some minor disasters and stayed away from some big ones citing not my circus, not my monkey. They shifted me to a new area,  with different responsibilities as per the reorganization plan (about a fraction of what I was doing, same pay, same level), I can work from home a few days a week, and life is generally a bit boring but pleasant, not doing much at all which is fine with me. Like, I am sendind 3 emails a day, and that's all. I am getting some counselling (paid by work),  but got over the weeping phase fairly quickly so I am now using the sessions to help figure out emotional eating (work related, but still). I was in such a bad state initially that they doubled my counselling sessions automatically, but now I am back to normal.

 So, I am now in a really good spot mentally to start looking for other jobs, but my industry was hit by covid and nobody is hiring. It is so bleak out there that I haven't found anything in the past month which was was worth applying for. I am glad that bigboss didn't let me resign,  at least I get paid 45/h for turning up. I take this as part of my compensation package 😊. Plus my husband is starting to be in a bad spot work wise, we need to replace his car ($$$$) so it would have been super stressful if I was out of work, this bloody car will wipe out my 'take off the year and figure this out' fund.

I am using my working time to do some extra training, I did a few courses on Coursera and heaps on LinkedIn learning,  mostly around career and project management, that kept me entertained for a while and learnt a few new soft skills plus whatever i think might come handy later on. I still don't know what to do next, but I lost the anxiety and desperation around it.  Something will come up and I will be ready for it.