So the company I work for who I won't name because I still currently work there has had a massive change in management at the local level. We are a forge, we take steel, heat it and beat it. Big hammers, scale and debri galore. IMHO it's not the hardest job, but it's the hardest I've had and best paying. Let me preface this by saying I have been with the company now for 2 years. Just two I know but you'll see the significance of it soon. So as I've said we are a forge and that is a fairly unique field and we have received an influx of managers supervisors and engineers…from automotive manufacturers. Cool, so just for back ground, we are not a fucking automotive plant and we don't even do shit for cars, at all in the whole company in the entire world. As you can imagine, they didn't know what the hell they were walking into. I hope you are still reading because this gets good.
I started in janaury 2022 and since then we had a lot of advancement opportunities and not a single one went to a current employee.
2 General Managers (One was pushed out after a year)
1 plant manager (outside hire)
2 production supervisors (outside hires no experience in industry)
4 Supervisors for the machining/shipping (outside hires)
1 quality manager (2 quality engineers quit after either not getting an interview or not getting the job, also no experience in forging)
1 quality engineer to replace the 2 (outside hire, no experience)
1 EHS manager (outside hire, brighter than cold iron)
1 HR Manager
1 HR assistant
1 continuous improvement manager
That's in the span of 2 years folks. Not one job went to a current employee. So now that it's been established that working hard will not result in the potential of moving up, we keep that in mind. These people from automotive do not have the relevant experience to motivate employees and fix inherit problems we face. But that's ok, because it doesn't fucking matter what we want. They keep pushing us for productivity and quality but know nothing of either. We voice our frustration on deaf ears. Working conditions have plummeted. Here's some examples:
We had four 15 minute breaks and a 30 min lunch now we have 2 breaks and a lunch
The company provided water bottles all year and Gatorade in the summer, now we have 2 water fountains across the entire forge and HR won't provide cups
Had an 8 point attendance system with the ability to work off points after 90 days of perfect attendance. Now we have a 4 point system where there's no option to work off a point, and the points last a year from the date
Start time was 530am now 600am, however only our shift was allowed to vote on the choice, the other 2 supervisors never gave them a vote. And now they are pushing us to start at 600am even after pitching a fit that they broke our trust
My first year I earned 2.75 in raises. My 2nd year I got .52 in raises despite me being a much better operator than last year. Too bad I talk shit to management. Starting pay went from 21.47 to 20.
Shit sucks and just keeps on sucking. Upper management tries to smooth things over by talking to us, but then forgets their privileges and gets embarrassed when we ain't having it. GM said in response to an employee missing his son's basketball games because of the time change that the GM too was making sacrifices just like us. In fact he doesn't even live in the state, he Flys in every single week to work and only gets to see his kids like twice a week. Oooohhh ppppoooooorrrr youuuuuuuuuu. You live in Texas and chose to take the job in Tennessee. You want to save the company money while traveling and lodging on company dime. You talk about how the pay scale is getting rescaled to better match our experiences and skillets, but you don't fucking know what we even do. You call it a factory, we call it a forge.
It's cool though, this child of inherit privilege is in the current phase of fucking around and will soon be entering the find out stage. You see all these changes, it doesn't do anything but piss us off. That's it, yall do it well I commend you for it. There's not a single person on the floor who could say management is doing a good job and thats inpressive. So they keep pushing production more and more while not doing anything to sustain us. If anybody worked in this field you know you have 3 options and can only pick 2. It's Production , Quality , Safety. Pick 2. They picked production and production amazingly. And we have had an uptick in Injuries this year, the most recent two being within 24 hours. One guy had his middle caught in a machine and now he doesn't have that finger anymore because it turned to charred hamburger meat. The only person hit their thumb with a hammer because he didn't have access to proper equipment and had to do his job a different way.
I've got an interview with the local union soon, and if things play right I will have the most fun fucking over this management team. You see we are all men, not machines so now that we are being treat as an asset instead of people we an looking elsewhere. Union rep said they working on a big project to which I said if they needed like 8 workers and the reps was speechless. So if things play out right, I'll be getting a union job and taking about 10 employees with me. I'm so damn giddy with excitement.
Yall fire anybody who even talks about unions, you have 1on1s with people who say the word union. Well if you can't bring the union in, then it's time to get out for the union.
Thanks for reading