[Re: Loose Cannon: Bluffs and Raises for DMers, Direct Newsline, Monday, December 10, 2007]:

Trade Post: Will trade monkey, organ (liver) and tin cup for family healthcare and dental plan or best offer.

Phil Claiborne
Director of Circulation
(The) Elks Magazine
(Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks of the USA)
Chicago

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At a minimum, wages must keep up with cost of living inflation for the area in which the company resides. The best practice is to pay your employees what they are worth. If one employee is more productive than another pay the one who is more productive more (with deductions in salary increases applied for bad attitudes.) This will keep the good employees and discourage the bad employees.

Employers who are in a bind with a lack of money for raises can give more vacation days or floating sick days. At least the employee has more free time to get over the fact that they are not being paid as well as they should. Additionally, adding more benefits in general always helps one feel better about a lackluster paycheck (e.g. more days off, summer hours, Friday hours, dress down days, work from home days, just-because-you-need-it days, etc.)

More importantly, why hasn't the cost of health insurance decreased? Especially since the major reason why states agreed to put smoking bans in place was to lower the cost of health insurance. When exactly did the decrease happen? Or was an "airline tactic" employed (cutting salaries so upper management could get huge bonuses with the cost savings)? Surely, if health insurance costs decrease as promised more money will be able to go into employee and employer pockets!

Heather Winnicki
Sales Executive
Direct Media Inc.
Greenwich, CT