Read the Fine Print in Those Contracts

[kangaroo]

I thought I would start a discussion on things ROV personel had discovered in their contracts that reduces the amount of pay they actually receive from their employer.

Let me start with this one I discovered recently:

My employer reviewed their policy on travel rate, and now pay full offshore rate door to door. They pay a performance bonus to the individual based on performance of the compnay for the year and number of days spent offshore by the employee. Even though you are on full offshore rate when you leave home, you can spend many days in transit either in the workshop or in a hotel overseas waiting for visas to be approved. Now, here comes the snag, when I checked a payslip after doing just this – 12 days in base waiting for a Visa to come through – I noticed that the days in the base were actually marked on the payslip as onshore days, not offshore days, even though I was being paid full offshore rate under the Clients Job Number. When I went back and checked previous payslips this had been done for all my travel and standby in hotel jobs. Counting the number of days listed onshore in my payslips means I will be duped out of 35 days towards my offshore bonus at the end of the year.

Multiply this by 60 ROV employees and the company saves quite a bit of money at Bonus time!

[thinsub]

Is an offshore bonus not just the company holding back some of your wages anyway?

[Ray Shields]

As you said, the company says it pays bonus "based on performance of the company for the year and number of days spent offshore by the employee"

Being paid offshore allowance and actually working offshore are two different things. As you see, there are times when you still get the bonus without actually going.

This may have been a deliberate ploy by them or it was written by someone who didn’t realise the difference between being paid offshore bonus and actually being offshore.

It may be worthwhile approaching (or several of you would be better) and ask if they will correct the wording in their bonus scheme.

It is up to the Company how much bonus they pay (remember they dont have to pay any!) but the point of the bonus is to encourgare workers, so if they wish to encourage you, then they will correct it 🙂

Thinsub – Offshore bonus/offshore allowance, call it what you want. They are not holding anything back. Its just a different way of getting paid. Think of it as the salary being a "retainer" and the offshore part is paid when you do work.

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