TL;DR – I strongly believe that our company is openly taking advantage of people, some people have been getting hurt, a lot have been getting kicked up and down the road on promotions, and we have leadership openly violating company policy. I’m taking 1 month of PTO in the middle of two stalled interviews for two promotions
Hey Reddit, could use some advice regarding some stuff been going on at work. I’m going to keep details at minimum so I don’t potentially violate any NDA’s, especially considering my wife works with me, and any retaliation could have a big impact on the goals my wife and I have been working our ass off for that we finally got the green light on. As the TL;DR said, I strongly believe the company is openly taking advantage of its staff from top to bottom, this doesn’t sit well with me on a worker’s right level, but especially on a human to human level.
I’m just going to bullet point some things to avoid rambling.
-
Employees being “forced” to use equipment that should be red tagged for failed safety switches, or damages leading to equipment being dropped or not stopping. Very well known, overly reported issue.
-
Promotions for staff and leadership being delayed over and over again, forcing staff to cover leadership roles in an “acting” or “interviewing” role for months at times, promotions well earned and proven by staff being dangled because of “admin and HR” reasons, and new leadership forced to go without proper support or headcount.
-
We have a very well observed and recorded history of current leadership openly violating company policy, harassing staff both verbally and physically, time clock theft that only some are held accountable and others are openly not, social media recordings of leadership drinking on the clock both on and off company property during the work day, etc, etc.
-
Mismanagement of departments, resulting in departments unnecessarily taking on responsibilities, departments unnecessarily suffering with increasing workload and resolving other departments issues.
-
Days long openly willful OSHA violations in high foot traffic pedestrian areas.
There’s obviously a whole lot more going on that I can’t go into detail or really want to describe, the list detailed could be occurring anywhere, but much more would be getting too close to violating NDA’s, and I reeeeeaally do not want any retaliation. Why is this so important to me? Part of it is for “selfish” reasons, but what this simply comes down to is that none of this is okay, people are being hurt, and it’s never okay to take advantage of a worker for any reason. The selfish reasons are that I played an intimate part in physically building the company and installing equipment for the company, I’m endlessly passionate about what I do. My wife and I both work there, everything that happens there has a huge impact on our relationship collectively and individually. I’m the last person that I’m concerned about here, I just care about everyone being whole, but I have also been having promotions kicked up and down the road for the last couple months that would be LIFE CHANGING for my family. We just got the approval on a property, we’ve been working toward this specific goal intentionally for years, and we just got the approval (even if I don’t get any promotions).
So those are the selfish reasons. What this all comes down to for me is that it is so morally and ethically wrong to treat your workers this way, especially when these issues that are causing your workforce to suffer are very well known and documented. If I don’t get a promotion, it would really bum me out as I’ve worked for this and had this carrot dangled in front of me as a “guarantee” since I started working there.. I literally only care about seeing everyone whole and taken care of, but most importantly I do not support this on a human level at all.
I’ve met with HR, OSHA has gotten involve at one point, there have been big meetings happening. I have certain leaders asking me to write directly to the head of the company, as others have done before that were “being treated like me and jerked around”, and it caused company wide reform. We’ve slipped away from this again, and I strongly feel the company doesn’t represent their own value and principles at this moment. Everyone says I’m doing the right thing and it needs to be done, which I agree it does 100%, even though HR and the department leadership has said this hasn’t ruined any of my chances of promotion, I and TERRIFIED of retaliation, which could impact the goals my wife and I have been working so damn hard for, and we’re just approved for, the day after taking a month long PTO sabbatical from work that both HR and my leadership strongly encouraged as “they have clearly broken me.”
Work Reformation needs to happen, bad, and workers rights needs to be a strong topic of discussion again. It’s sad to think we might actually NEED strong Union representation in such a critical field, but it’s been shown for decades it needs to happen in my field. So here I am, asking if I’m doing the right thing or if I’m just recklessly putting my family and our goals at risk for the sake of others. To be clear, before I even went to talk with my leadership and HR about this, I already had another job offer and offer letter ready to sign. It would be 100% irresponsible toward my wife and my family to not have us covered first, even if it meant putting our goals on hold for another year.. but THIS opportunity could definitely be missed for the land I’m trying to by for my family… all my family just so they can all have somewhere to come out and build.