I've worked for 5 years for my company in Chicago. Last year my wife was offered a (2) year contract through her company for a position in Melbourne Australia, which we took. My company arranged for me to work remotely from my house in Melbourne.
My company has to follow Australian employment laws while I'm working here, which helped me in a couple ways (4 weeks vacation rather than 2) but the way my salary was calculated puts me at a disadvantage because since I've gotten here the US dollar has taken off.
To figure out my salary my company took my US salary and converted it from USD to AUD, then wrote the contract based on that AUD amount. Since then the USD has gone up in value compared to the AUD, but my paychecks have stayed the same (same AUD amount deposited in my account). This means that as the USD goes up in value my company is paying less and less for me per paycheck. In the last 1 year this change has lowered my salary by ~$14,000
I have my annual performance review coming up in 2 months. I expect to get a very small raise in pay (probably 3-5%) but I also want the company to "recast" the conversion to be current with today's USD/AUD value. Is this appropriate? Would it be appropriate to ask them to update my pay more often than that 1 time per year?
My original employment contract gives a AUD dollar amount, which I signed. So I do understand that I signed that amount and that they dont "owe" me anything other than that.. However it does still seem reasonable to have that number updated based on current rates.
Thanks for any input.
Edit: For clarification, my employment contract isn't for any set amount of time, but is open-ended. Meaning I didn't agree to "2 years at ($) pay".