On Thursday we were sent an email by our director telling us there was a ‘get together’ at 9.30am on Friday.  I wasn’t too worried as he likes to have occasional meetings to give us a pep talk - how wrong could I be!

It turned out that we were all being asked to take a voluntary 7% pay cut, effective from April, in the hope that this will save jobs.  There have already been around 250 redundancies worldwide, so management are hoping that pay cuts might mean they don’t need to make any more.

We were given until the end of the week to decide whether to accept or refuse the pay cut, but I’ve already signed to say I accept.  I don’t feel I have a choice to be honest - I’d rather have a job paying 93% of my salary than nothing.  It was stressed that there may still have to be cut backs, but who knows what will happen further down the line.

I work in the electronics industry, and out major customers are the car industry, so we need a big turnaround before things will improve, so I’m not too optimistic.  We’ve been told the pay cut is temporary, but who knows?

I’m going to have to have my IPA payments reassessed as once the cut takes effect there’s no way I can afford to pay the same amount.  I phoned Moon Beaver, the company who collect my IPA payments (it changed from Clarke Willmott this month) and they said to phone nearer the time and they will send me a change of circumstance form.  I asked what to do about April’s payment as I’m paid on 25th and the payment is due by 30th and they said to put the money aside.  The only problem is I won’t know how much!  I’m just going to put aside what I can afford and hope for the best.