Similar Story
I was a tech support manager for a public sector body. We had had a pay freeze for several years and it looked like the next financial year was a bit stronger. I negotiated promotions for virtually my whole team, clarified with the admin / finance manager that the money was there and had a wonderful week holding one-one meetings to explain why each of them was getting a substantial increase in salary. We then got called in to the IT Directors office to be told that there had been an error in the budgeting and the funds were not available. My other colleagues all claimed that they had not informed their team members that raises were on the way (liars) but I refused to toe the party line and told the boss that not only had I informed each member formally that they were getting a raise but had been explicit in how much each would get. Furthermore team members had already made significant personal spending decisions (one was finally replacing that knackered old banger with a newer model and another had put his house on the market to up-size for space for his new baby). By making it an issue of personal credibility I was able to force through the promotions for my team members. I did find out later that the 'budget crisis' was actually a request by the CEO to make further voluntary savings, if the other managers had stood firm the raises would have been awarded to their teams too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
