Here’s the situation. I’ve worked for about 9 months in a field work job for an environmental company. My department has 3 people and has been understaffed the whole time I’ve been there, largely due to it being a shitty job that no one who is qualified for it would want to do, and also an extremely high turnover rate. I am currently the longest tenured employee. We are a nationwide company that is understaffed at every branch.
It’s not a good job and I have no intention of staying there past the end of this year. I accepted it because I need some experience in a field related to my degree, and the pay and benefits are decent. The pay is only acceptable because under my former boss, we could pad our hours as much as we wanted with no questions asked, so we got a lot of overtime (however, we do work a lot of overtime and travel a lot, especially recently). That boss left and was replaced by a new guy, who has dramatically increased our hours and is definitely a “do-gooder” type. We’ve been extremely nervous this whole time that he was going to crack down on our punches, and it seems likely that tomorrow is the day shit hits the fan. We have a “team meeting” scheduled in the morning, one of the topics being “time sheets”. I am not willing to continue in this job if I have to be honest with my time cards. It’s a lot of hard physical work and travel, and the pay is barely worth it as it is, and would be much less so if up to 15-20 hours a week were cut from my paycheck. Conversations with my coworkers seem to indicate they’re on the same page.
We have tons and tons of leverage that I’ve gathered in the past weeks in preparation. My boss is pretty open about our cost of operations so I’ve learned a lot. I know that our work typically generates $2-$5k per day for the company, and frequently more than that (last Thursday was a $15k job done by 2 people for example). As mentioned, hiring is nearly impossible. They’ve been aggressively hiring for 3 years and in that time have hired only me and the 2 people I work with. We’re practically irreplaceable, especially since the nature of our work is not easy to train someone for. It took me 6+ months before I felt like I knew what I was doing and I still have lots to learn. They also just signed a lease for a new facility for my department, which will cost $12k/month for 3 years, which would be an awful investment if there’s no one there to work in it. Then lastly there’s the fact that we’re doing massively important jobs this week for two of our largest contracts. I have info on my computer that would make finishing one of them impossible without it, and the other needs 3 people all 5 days. Padding our timesheets is a well known practice in our company, everyone I’ve met from other branches willingly admits to doing it.
I’m planning to meet with my coworkers tomorrow before the meeting to see how serious they are about refusing to cut our hours. I’m thinking we can either continue with our current ways, or demand a hefty raise (either salary or hourly). I think we can insist on this given the size of our department, the difficulty in hiring and training, and the fact that we are the highest performing branch in the country. Losing all three of us would cost the company many huge contracts most likely, as there is no one else in the company capable of doing our work and we can’t borrow workers from other branches since they’re even more understaffed than we are. I literally think one week without us could cost more than all three of our yearly earnings combined. I just wanted advice on how this should be handled. Obviously it’s scary to make these types of demands. I will be fine regardless of what happens. I have money saved and don’t plan on working here much longer regardless. I’m young, living at home while I save to go back to school, and have money saved, whereas my coworkers are middle aged and have houses and kids and stuff. The other option is to say we’ll stop while continuing to do what we do, while possibly working significantly less hard and getting less done. I don’t think that will work, but it is an option. I think that resisting this aggressively the first time they say anything about it isn’t ideal, but also think tomorrow is a perfect situation given the jobs we’re doing this week. Thanks in advance for any advice