Gather around, boys and girls! It's time for a story.
So I (sort of) recently left [trailer manufacturing company]. While I was grateful for a job outside of customer service and for their willingness to train me to weld, gratitude in either direction rarely pays the bills. I was there for a little over 2 years and really got my mig skills down- some of my welds were borderline art. People would stop by my station on the way to the bathroom to watch me work and ask for tips. Our safety supervisor stopped by to take pictures of my fabrication process to be used in company training (true story). We all had to go through a welding course in December of last year and I passed all my tests on the first try. Word is that only 4 of us did that, out of probably 80-100 people. Near the end of my time there, I was quite literally 1 of 2 people that knew how to run the plas table – the other guy being the one that trained me, but he was now running another line as well as driving a forklift due to lack of people.
One day, I hear that there was an opening for being the official plas table operator (work that I was already doing for a few months by then). I figured I would be the best person for it as I was the only one that could do the work while this being a step up. They gave the position to one of our forklift operators. But they jerked him around saying they needed to find a replacement for him first- they did this for 3 months before he quit. They decided that rather than giving me the position, they'd just close it altogether and gave me an excuse about how the HR guy was supposed to close it after they offered it to someone else but didn't before he (the HR guy) quit. Of course rather than talk to me about it at ANY point, my supervisor would just say “I'll look into it” and drive off on his golf cart in hopes that I would forget. It wasn't until I cornered his boss that I got any answers. I also applied for a QA position, which I heard nothing back on, and would have applied for line lead of the GN line (my line) when my lead went to another, but they just moved someone else into it without even opening the position.
A few months later we're getting a lot of new hires. Come to find out, preppers (what we called general laborers) were getting paid more than I was; welders getting paid significantly more. Now I believe that if a person works 40 hrs/wk, they should be able to make ends meet, but these welds didn't justify the pay, let alone being paid more than someone who has proven their worth as well as had a specialized skill set. I brought it up to my supervisor a few times only to be given a generic excuse about attendance- an excuse thrown at quite literally everyone trying to get a fair pay. I wasn't even on a verbal warning at this time.
As one could expect with new hires, they didn't know what to do, so their lines fell behind and the rest of us got punished for it and had to do additional mandatory overtime (we already worked 50hrs/wk). I wasn't going to have any of that, so I'd leave at my regular scheduled time. Eventually my supervisor comes to talk to me about it and in his generosity he decided to drop one of my occurrence points for leaving early. I told him that since they won't pay tenured employees better and actively avoid me regarding promotions that I'd have no reason or desire to stay later. But he kept pushing it. I told him that if I left, nobody would be able to run the plas table and the line would have to shut down.
“Oh, we'll find someone!”
“But how long will that take?”
“You don't need to worry about it, we'll find someone.”
“Well then, I'm going to finish my shift and whatever happens, happens.”
And that was that. I quit with a phone call the following Monday, saying that I'm leaving the door open, but they need to pay me more. My current line lead had already put in his two weeks and his last day was after I left that Thursday. The GN line would need about ten good people to run optimally- by the time we left, they had four. One was in and out of therapy due to a wrist injury (and was the most outspoken about wage discrepancy), one was new to welding all together, one was a terrible welder and had a habit of throwing impact wrenches and the like at walls, and then there was the guy I trained, who is just fine but can't do all the work.
Fast forward to today. Here I am at a new job and working with a lot of people that left [trailer manufacturing company]. We had a company meeting and I was talking to one that happened to be my former line lead when I intended to take that position. According to him, after I left [trailer manufacturing company], they had to shut down GN production completely and the line has since been converted into another dump line, which, if true, is FUCKING HILARIOUS!
I tried to be fair. I gave them the option to retain me. I wasn't asking for so much that I could buy a mega yacht, just enough to be able to afford a roof over my and my son's heads. But they let their stupid fucking pride get in the way and now they lost the line with the biggest and most expensive trailers. Sucks to be them.