A unilateral pay cut (by half!!!) for no reason other than you’ve been saddled with a pouty director? You really shouldn’t stand for it. Do you have contracts stating a specific wage? If so you might have some legal recourse (or at least ammuition for a decent threat). If not, stage a strike. Quit if you have to. If the director really thought he could get by without the forign “desk staff,” you’d be gone already anyway. Unless I’m missing something here.
I work at a government agency and am making less than the guy who was there before me, but it was explained to me that they paid according to level of education; he has a PhD and I do not, thus the lower pay, even though I can do translation and he couldn’t since he didn’t know any Chinese. If this is true, though, and I think it is because the government is all about rules and levels of education, then the salary for my position is the same whether a foreigner is currently in it or not, since I am technically not a foreigner.
At least you knew what your salary would be going into the job. Then again, either the job requires translation or it doesn’t. If your responsibilities are greater than your predecessor’s, maybe you need to re-write your job description and try for a higher pay grade.
The job does require translation; I don’t know how he got around it. My guess is that he demanded that they translate everything into bad English and then he would edit that. But one of the first things I learned is that the structure is quite rigid and paperwork is paramount. Since my employment goes year-t0-year, I’ll just be happy if our department get their government contract again in January so that I may remain employed, though a raise (and a new year’s bonus) would always be nice.
I should add that I’m not being considered for a high-paying government position, even though I got the highest score on the editing/translation test and am a native speaker with a college degree, simply because I do not hold a foreign passport. Now that’s truly ironic in an Alanis Morrisette kind of way.