For the last 12 years I've been working in a tire factory doing production shift work (all 12 hr shifts, 7-7 rotating between days and nights). The new job I've just started pays about half what I was making starting out and it's the best decision I've ever made…
I've seen the company slowly and methodically over time pick away at our compensation and benefits,which for the insane work environment and expectations was absolutely needed to keep employees.
I've seen them create multiple classes of workers that do the exact same jobs but because you where hired after a certain year you'll never make as much as those hired before you and will do the exact same work until the day you retire. I've seen them take away our company paid pension, “free tire” benefit, and medical once you retire which you used to have until the day you died. Extremely small raises that never kept up with inflation which goes back far longer then before even COVID came along.
But apart from all that I've seen the quality of life of the factories shift workers drop dramatically. Not all but a VERY HIGH percentage of managers are the absolute worst people in every way the company could find in the area and it really shows. Micro management and control to the point I had to start taking anti anxiety and anti depression medications around 5 years ago just to be able to go into work everyday.
They track EVERYTHING you do and I mean EVERYTHING. Swipe clocks for time keeping (even 1 minute late gets you 15 mins off your pay and an attendance incident), a computer system at every machine that makes you answer from a list of choices every time a tire isn't built in an outrageous pre determined time that is chosen by time study “engineers” (anywhere from 1-2 minutes). You also have to fill out on these giant white boards your production EVERY hour and detail every single thing you did to explain why you haven't reached the set targets which are mostly unreachable. On top of those two very depressing types of tracking for productivity a computer system also tracks and posts how many tires you've built every hour.
Heavy handed discipline system that “doesn't discriminate” I once worked with a guy who returned from work who was off with cancer for the better part of the year and was put on the “attendance program” because he met the criteria for it (the amount of incidents and total days missed reached a threshold). I couldn't make this shit up if I wanted sadly….
When you live in a “have not” province in Atlantic Canada and a large employer knows that even though they've butchered the compensation and benefits they are still the best paying job around, this is the type of work environment you get.
Oh and there was a death inside one of the plants last year that 10000% was the management's fault for having one person run a two person machine short handed. Nothing was ever done from the investigation from the department of labour and literally the very next day it was business as usual. In fact the companies official statement was to blame the person for what happened.
The company is Michelin North America, there are three plants in Nova Scotia I've worked at two of them and could write several novels on the things I've seen. Don't buy their tires and don't EVER consider working for them.
P.S. I literally just worked my last shift last week and when it finally hit me that I would never have to go into that hellscape again I balled like a baby for probably 10 minutes lol My new job is amazing and also unionized I'm REALLY looking forward to going into work now with the positive and relaxed work environment.