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Clemenger Group announces pay increase for some staff in wake of previous complaints

Clemenger Group is set to give staff who had a temporary pay reduction in 2020 and earn less than $200,000 a 5% pay increase, Mumbrella can reveal.

The decision to give staff the increased pay, to be paid monthly, was announced last week by the group’s management after Mumbrella reported significant unrest within the group following changes made to staff pay and hours, among other things.

As previously reported, staff at Clemenger Group agencies such as CHE Proximity, Clemenger, Traffik and Porter Novelli were forced to take reduced pay, reduced hours and/or enforced leave in 2020.

A spokesperson for the group told Mumbrella: “This annual increase is greater than the reductions of last year. The salary increases are permanent.

“Clemenger’s approach to managing through the COVID pandemic has always been focused on doing whatever it could to protect jobs and do the right thing for its people which we will continue to do in good times and bad.”

In addition to the pay increase, CHE Proximity will also be giving staff an additional three days annual leave to use, to compensate for the enforced leave taken during 2020, at reduced wages.

Mumbrella received numerous complaints from staff and former staff at the group following the initial article, which revealed that the group posted healthy profits in 2020. 

Complaints from staff against management included that staff were told that they had to accept the pay reduction, “as it wouldn’t look good, or help keep staff if we didn’t” and that “a few weeks after they cut our pay to save jobs, they made about a quarter of the agency redundant”.

Additionally, those staff that remained were required to work extra hours to make up for the additional workload from the redundancies.

“They then worked us all six days a week, and extra long days to pick up the slack. Anyone who spoke up was warned that they were lucky to still have a job,” another staff member wrote.

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