You’ve just discovered someone is being paid more than you, and it’s made you – understandably – angry. You want to have your hourly rate reviewed. You’re feeling ripped off and demand justice. Well, here’s what you shouldn’t do if you want to negotiate a pay rise as a temporary worker.

The first step is to stop discussing money with colleagues. It’s none of your business what they get paid, and none of theirs what you are paid. You negotiated and accepted the rate that you have, and they did the same. Negotiating your pay means balancing the fine line between what the job is ‘worth’, what you will accept, and what the employer is willing to pay. More often than not, it is the budget of the line manager that dictates the pay rate of a temporary worker, but not all of the power lies with them. There’s no harm in asking your recruitment consultant if it is possible to get a higher base pay rate, but this is something you should do when accepting an assignment and not after you start work.

We had this happen to us just last week. A temporary employee who was hired by another temp agency found out that they were making less than the people2people temp workers. They called us and demanded that they be given the right to work through us. Please understand when we say there’s nothing that we can do about that. It was this other agency who introduced the employee to the on hire employer and they clearly have an employment relationship with them. We have absolutely no rights or responsibilities for other casual employees who work with different agencies. The only thing we could do was explain that the temp worker had to discuss this with their own agency, and that it would best if they do did so, calmly.

This one is our favourite. Look, we’ll be upfront and admit that we’re a commercial organisation. We charge a margin on top of the temp workers’ pay rates because that is the source of our revenue as a business. Like any business, we have to be profitable to be a going concern. Agency margins are getting squeezed all the time. There may be some industries where a high margin is still the norm, but we live and work in a free market. You can’t think of what we charge the on hire employers and what you get paid and think that the difference is pure profit. This difference accounts for all of your costs including workers comp insurance, other insurances, payroll tax and super. Then there’s the costs of doing business, advertising, consultant salary, administration, rent, systems, equipment, and so on.

Here are some tips on what you should do if you want to negotiate a pay rise;