(Lincoln Journal Star) -- More businesses are freezing or cutting pay, reducing hours or requiring unpaid days off, and cutting contributions to retirement plans. Several companies with Nebraska operations have recently announced pay and/or benefit cuts. Some of those companies have yet to lay people off. Others have done so but are trying to avoid doing it again.
A Watson Wyatt survey of 117 companies across a broad range of industries in December found that 19% planned to freeze salaries during the next 12 months. It is only recently that companies have begun thinking of pay cuts, said John Bremen, global practice director of Watson Wyatt’s compensation practice in Chicago. Keeping employees on the payroll leaves a company in better shape to respond when the economy eventually turns around, said Ben Blackford, a doctoral student in the Department of Management at UNL.
