[sparks1978]

My mother Was told she would have to take a 33% pay drop. But this is just for the girls of her department but the rest of the company only have to take 10%. She also has to drop he hours buy the same percentage, but is there a law on the largest pay decrease and do they not have to ask everyone to take the same pay drop??

[ScottGem]

No, there is no law on salary cuts. But such cuts need to be applied without discriminattion. However, such cuts could be applied differently in different departments as long as they are applied to everyone in the dept. There might be an issue if your mom's dept are all female while other depts are mostly male.

[Zazonker]

There may be a discrimination issue here, if, for no valid reason the company is "picking" on one department. However, in the financial mess we are all in, I would recommend taking a hard look at it before fighting it.

1. If your mother wants to stay employed, the company needs to continue to exist.
2. There may be very valid business reasons that department can take a bigger hit than others.
3. Law, or no law, a business has to survive in order to be able to pay salaries.
4. A good business will communicate issues with their employees to help them understand what there options are. Unfortunately, by this definition, there are very few good businesses. Remember, the people trying to do the communicating are employees, too.
5. Recommendation: Take what they'll give her in the short term, assuming management knows what they are doing. Reconsider your options when the economy recovers (or some one shows up at your door offering you a better job at more pay).

[Fr_Chuck]

In the end, many companies are either laying off 30 or more percent of their people, or cutting pay by about 25 percent in many places I know.

In a lot of the construction industry, at least the equpment side of it, they are cutting pay 25 percent plus laying them off one day a week.

A few other places have let up to 50 percent of the employees go to cut back.