red-circlingn.
/ˈrɛdˌsəːk(ə)lɪŋ/, /ˌrɛdˈsəːk(ə)lɪŋ/, U.S. /ˈrɛdˌsərk(ə)lɪŋ/, /ˌrɛdˈsərk(ə)lɪŋ/, Canadian English /ˈredˌsɜrk(ə)lɪŋ/, /ˌredˈsɜrk(ə)lɪŋ/ Business (chiefly Canadian).
The action or process of reclassifying an employee or a job at a lower level and freezing the rate of pay. Cf. red-circle v. 1.Red-circling typically occurs following a re-evaluation of jobs in an organization, when a post is deemed to merit a lower level of pay than it currently attracts. The pay of red-circled employees is frozen until that of workers already at the specified grade reaches the same level.
ΚΠ
1956 V. D. Sweeney United Steelworkers Amer. xxii. 198 This formula would result in saving costs to the company... It would result in red-circling of 50 per cent of the hourly rates and create more employee dissatisfaction.
1966 Winnipeg Free Press 22 June 6/1 Red circling means the job has been reclassified at a lesser rate of pay.
1976 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 15 Sept. 1/2 The alliance said red-circling is not permitted and that an employee can only be demoted if he is proved to be incompetent or incapable of performing the duties of his position.
1984 Lake Park (Iowa) News 11 Oct. Don McKee..emphasized that there would be no ‘red circling’ (freezing of salaries of workers who were found to be overpaid by the study).
2007 W. F. Cascio in F. J. Crosby et al. Sex Discrim. in Workplace xi. 149 Red-circling may have operated to the detriment of women because most of the employees being downgraded at Boeing were men.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2009; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1956