If I liked the company. I have done so in the past.
Yes, if it were part of a general cost-saving program to save the company. No, if it was just management’s way to reduce costs at the least inconvenience to themselves.
I already have, so yes.
It was either that or get laid off, so I took the lesser of two evils, especialy considering today’s economy.
Yes, and have done so.
To expand a bit…
In 2002 my workplace was a small struggling startup, and went through a big financial crisis. What the owners did was to lay off a couple of people, and offer the rest of us a deal - 20% off salary, 20% off work (basically, they converted us all to 4-day part timers)
If necessary, I probably would have taken the reduced pay without the reduced hours, but I appreciated the deal that they offered, and thought it very fair. A year later the company had recovered sufficiently that everyone who wanted could go back to full time and full pay. I don’t recall that anybody quit in the interim.
Partly as a result of surviving this period, I last year made over $100k on stock options. So I’m very happy with how things turned out in the end. 
My current job is 100% commission, and my pay has been cut just be sheer virtue of lack of sales. If I worked a regular hourly or salaried job though, and I had to choose between a layoff or a pay cut, I’d probably take the pay cut and keep slogging as best I could. I know several people who have had to make this choice recently and they have all taken the downgrade in payscale. Jobs are hard to come by right now and I’d rather be making some money than no money.
Yes. Especially if it meant that others wouldn’t get laid off.
J.
My SO recently took a 10% cut. But that was only on base. He makes enough in commission that it shouldn’t hurt us.
Some of us already have, indirectly. Wife got laid off, went back to work part time, family took a 25% gross paycut.
Yes. In the mean time, I’ll start looking for greener pasture…
Yes. (For what it’s worth, I currently work for a nonprofit rather than a company.)
That actually happened to me. I had just been hired and, after taking a big loss, the firm asked everyone to take a pay cut.
It worked because everyone (with one exception*) took a pay cut – the president, the chairman, all vice presidents, etc. And the pay cuts were progressive – lower levels took 10%, higher paid people took 20%, the president/chairman took 30%.
After a few months, we all got bonuses that were roughly equal to the money we lost. At the end of the year, we had earned pretty much what we should have.
I suppose in some situations, I’d balk, but I’d rather take a cut and keep a job than refuse and lose it.
*Basically, the “face” of the company.
Yes.
I work for a company that does something like this every year.
You sign on at a given salary, with small raises every year. The company takes 1% out of every paycheck. At the end of the year, if the company finished in the black*, you get that 1% back in a lump sum check. (Right before Christmas, actually.) If the company finishes in the red, they keep the money. It’s something that’s been going on for decades, and everyone’s pretty used to it; you know about the policy when you sign your contract, and you can take it into account then.
*It’s a nonprofit theatre company with several hundred employees. We tend to operate in the red about half the time. Funnily enough, there’s an old circus custom called the “holdback” where they give you your first two weeks’ pay on the day you quit. It ensures some loyalty in the beginning, then makes sure that the employee in question can make it home on that paycheck if they’ve been spendthrift.
If the brass showed their commitment by going first, and taking massive hits to the paycheck(I’m talking from 1m+ a year down to 1-200k a year), then yes.
Else no.
Hell no. I think my boss should’ve shut down the business five years ago when it obvious he wasn’t going to start making money.
Not by choice. I have actually been through this twice. I once took a 10% cut without any choice in the matter. I left ~6 months later when I found a better opportunity.
At another company I was given the choice with an optional employee “bone us” plan. Give up 10% with it all being repaid double in 9 months when we met our targets (nothing returned if the targets were not met). Yeah right; maybe if they had set the targets reasonably. Hell, many of the targets were out of my control and the control of anyone on my team. There was no transparency into the progress being made. Needless to say, everybody who contributed lost.
The main point is that no company with more than ~20-50 employees has loyalty to its employees. Mom & pop shops may sometimes be different, but rarely. No decent-sized company is going to help you out when the going gets tough for you. No decent-sized company is going to compensate you in any meaningful way when they get a windfall unless you force the matter. That means strong negotiation, bonuses set on concrete targets in writing, compensation based on objectives, etc… The minute they try to turn this around and ask for deferred compensation or a reduction in pay, weigh your options and leave is anything better is out there. Do it professionally of course, never burn a bridge, but always act in your rational best interest just like the business would given the chance…
No, probably not.
Yes.
The company I work at is very generous with profits, and very open about its finances. Plus, the managers are also the staff (nobody is just an executive; the president mostly does design work, for example), so there’s very little ‘us vs them’ sentiment. And they’ve done the same for me, offering to help when I was in the hospital.
Still, if things got to that point, I’d be shopping myself around.
Probably, if a) management did the same; and b) more likely if it were a situation like reduced hours in exchange for reduced salary. But this is mainly because I trust the management of my firm to be fair to its employees, and because I know that there are basically no available jobs in my field right now. But if management didn’t increase my hours again as soon as business picked up, I’d be out the door as soon as I found a comparable job.
Yes, to avoid being laid off. Then I would call a headhunter and start looking for a new job.