New colleague on higher salary than me, best course of action?

[Chris1986]

Afternoon all, after your award winning advice please.

Currently I’m employed as a generator engineer. I
travel between customer sites and service their backup generator(s). It doesn’t set my heart on fire - but pays the bills.

There’s a team of us in ‘the north’ of 7 engineers, I’ve just found out that the engineer taken on a few months ago, who is less experienced than me, earns £4,000 a year than me!

I wouldn’t expect that everybody’s wages to be exactly
the same, to the penny, but for him to earn £4000 a year more, doing exactly the same job, surely that’s not fair?!

I’ve considered a few ways to handle this since finding out. The first, was go nuts, but that won’t work. The second was just to ask for a salary review, but that would probably be denied. The third was to raise a grievance, but I’ve raised grievances in the past at my place, and they just dismissed it without having a hearing, because that’s just what they’re like! Is there some kind of legal standing on rates of pay between colleagues?


Thanks I’m advance for your help

[theberenger]

While you wait for one of the more knowledgeable contributors to come along, one thought that occurs to me in the first instance is to check that yours and the other engineer's contracts are in fact the same. For example, does his contract provide for him being called out in the middle of the night on an emergency response basis, where perhaps yours doesn't? Or is there some other clause or provision, not applicable to you, that might account for the difference?

Before you go and raise your head above the parapet, it'd be worth making sure you're not missing something.

[Chris1986]

Hi, thanks for your response. The service engineer contracts were all rewritten last year and unified. His contract is word for word the same as mine.

[ULA]

Have you considered a more informal route either by a discussion with your supervisor/manager or HR?