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Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

In Finland we have salary bands for some jobs, but it's usually just the minimum. Some have a maximum, but there are always "personal bonuses" the employer can give on top of that. But these are usually "old" professions like teachers, nurses, factory workers.

For IT jobs I haven't seen an official salary band anywhere and there basically is no union mandated maximum and the minimum is mostly a suggestion.

We also get universally negotiated percentage raises every now and then, but it's like 1-2%. Personal raises are on top of that and can be a LOT more.

The maximum cap sounds just stupid. When you hit the limit, why would you do anything past the absolute minimum to stay at that level?

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> The maximum cap sounds just stupid.

Conceptually unions are a democracy and people are selfish. Why should I let some other worker make 10x what I do when I can instead have them make 1x and spread out the other 9x around including to me?

This "spread it around" sounds like some trickle down ecodomics madness to me =)

If the company can't pay more to a high performer they surely won't just give thast money to the average folks. It'll just go to C-staff bonuses and conference trips to exotic countries.

(Provided that the average performers are above the union minimum already)

> This "spread it around" sounds like some trickle down ecodomics madness to me =)

Trickle-down would be giving him the full 10x salary, then by his own choice he'd be doing something with it that benefited everyone else.

Forcing it by spreading it around instead of paying him is more like socialism or communism.

>Forcing it by spreading it around instead of paying him is more like socialism or communism.

THat's how a lot of companies in Austria apply wage increases per union mandates. Take a budget and spread it around so that workers bicker amongst themselves for not receiving what they think they deserve.

In here the unions negotiate a flat percentage raise for everyone, usually 0-2% "index raises" they call them.

All others are performance based and determined by the employer.

The likely two outcomes are -- 1) the upper limit of salary band for everyone in the same role is raised high enough or 2) the high performing person is leaving to a place that pays it with a band or without.

You realize this sounds like you being selfish? You’re taking merit out of the equation, looking to take from others, so that you get more.

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