Before I tell the whole story I want to first give a background of my work. I am a graduate of Agriculture and I have been working in the pig industry particularly pig farms here in South East Asia.
There are a few things which I think is pretty normal working in a pig farm which I have accepted when I chose to work in the pig industry but may be considered too extreme for jobs in other industries but yes the general working condition in this industry is shitty I probably just learned to accept most of them.
1. We work on a 26-4 basis. Meaning we work 24 days straight and have a 4 day day-off straight every month (for very small farms days-offs and leaves are basically the same)
2. We are not allowed to leave the farm premises unless we are on day-off or are on leave
3. We typically work from 7-4pm but depending on the section of the farm you work on you may be assigned for night shift
4. We get a LOT of contact with different disinfectants and we are required to take a bath for a minimum of 2 times a day.
5. As we live in a farm we are mostly in the very rural area like so rural there is little to no cellphone signal. Heck we might even consider it very lucky to have a stable 4g or 3g internet while inside the farm.
6. Food is free or subsidized
7. Communal bathroom some farms even have security guards that watch us take a bath to make sure we take a bath properly.
Now on with my previous work (farm A). I was an assistant supervisor which a good enough position that pays slightly higher than the minimum wage but we do not pay any utilities or rent plus the food is free. I live in a company dorm and has 1 room mate which is also my colleage on my section. The food is bland but we have the option to order cooked food from outside as long as it does not contain pork. Additionally the owner is very generous and provided the farm with high speed internet that is solely for the use of the employees as long as we don't use it during working hours. And the owner has allowed us to bring our gadgets so we won't feel bored while inside the farm.
While I was at work I get contacted by my former work place (Farm B)which I quit a few years ago because the work environment was toxic and the pay is low (I was a manager when I left that work 2 years ago but my pay is only slightly higher than the pay in my work in farm A). When I was contacted they offered to double my salary from farm A and I will still be a manager). And I will still have the privileges of a Farm Manager I am enjoying before
1. My own solo room and it is air-conditioned
2. My own bathroom
Now as I needed more money at that time I accepted. Now lo and behold the place is worse than I before.
1. I still have my own room but it is no longer air-conditioned and it is drastically smaller than my previous room
2. The only meat we are allowed to take inside the farm is fish and canned fish
3. Food is no longer 100% free but we are given uncooked rice, culled chicken and egg juice (culled chickens are male or old layer chickens so the meat is tough. Egg juice are just eggs without the shell because they are too deformed to be sold it is still edible but the shelf life is very short and it limits the amount of things we could cook the egg with.
4. We only have a freezer for meat so even if I am fine with eating vegetables there is no way to store vegetables for 26 days. We mostly just rely on our own home grown vegetables and only limited vegetables can grow inside the farm.
5. Internet can only be used for work and access has been whitelisted to only allow bandwidth for apps used by the farm.
6. We are required to return to the farm on the afternoon on the last day of our day off
7. We are only allowed to bring smartphones inside the farm. Our own personal gadgets like small tvs, gaming consoles, laptops are no longer allowed
8. I am now both the manager and the supervisor of the farm.
9. I was not even allowed to use the company internet to have a video call with my psychologist and said I should use my own mobile data (mobile internet is basically non existent here (I have a lot of data but for a context YouTube videos defaults at 144p)
I don't know if being a farm manager at a pig farm is harder than being a manager at other jobs but based on the two pig farms I have worked on:
- Farm Manager of big pig farms (the ones that at least follow the minimum requirements of the department of labor typically manage more than 50 people
- Farm Manager makes sure that the supplies like food, medicine, vaccine, disinfectants never run out as well as the food for the employees.
- Farm Manager has constant communication with purchasing department, HR, Accounting, Sales, Feedmill as well as upper management
- Being a Farm Manager involves a lot of walking and phone calls. We need to walk by foot to oversee what is happening in every section of the farm and make sure everyone including supervisors are doing their jobs. A farm of more than 50 people is more than 3 hectares. Just going to all of the different buildings and sections of the farm once gives me 10000 steps minimum on my fitness tracker.
- We are required to know all the specialized skills in the farm: Medicating, Piglet processing, Artificial Insemination, Semen Processing.