End of the year = salary review?

At the end of every year, there will be a scramble for a few things to be done. The social calendar will also be full with wedding invitations, fashion shows, sales and the scrambling of private companies to consolidate their spending to get favourable tax treatment. Some spend it on their staff by taking them on trips or to suddenly make them go for that training which the company had planned for some times. Some, like me, do their tax reduction measures by increasing my overhead from early in the year.

That overhead increase will of course be to increase the benefits for the staff which mostly by increasing their salary. The increment standard in legal firm is no standard at all. If you need to know, the legal firm workers, be it lawyers who work for other people or legal clerk or the lower support staff such as despatch riders and receptionist and the tea lady, do not have a union to call their own or even a place to exchange ideas on their working conditions.

I may stir a hornets nest here but that's a fact. The rate of salary and increment for the staff will be set by legal firm owners themselves by referring to how much their lawyers got paid in their earlier employment. I only review the allowance of my chambering student upward from the previous RM500 to the new amount of RM1000-00 when I found out that no one wants to become a chambering student if they are paid the previous amount. In 1998, I was paid RM300 with no claims for my master to take me as her chambering student.

Back in its original state, in the olden days, chambering student was the one needed to pay their master. Its a grateful gesture by them to appreciate all the  Okay, yes I know, its already 2008, so why do we need to follow the tradition of 1800s. So let's pay them according to their worth and we can then be justified to treat them like slaves unlike me and my partner when we were chambering being paid very little but still treated like slaves.

We took them for dinner during Ramadhan, isn't that enough?

However, I do review the salaries of my satff at the end of the year but the chambering students in my firm do not get the same treatment. We do take them into account when we gave out ang pow for Eid celebration. They got their 'duit raya' the same as the other staff.

This year, the staff has started their campaign on their bonuses by talking loudly about other companies which had given out their bonuses. For now, due to unfavourable economic status, we kept mum first. We have been discussing about their salary, but we still haven't make our decision yet.

Much like Santa, we are watching who's bad and who's good but in the management style of way.

I hate this part right here, to quote a phrase...