And they wonder why they cannot get, or keep, good employees.

[roo_ster]

Employees are no longer people, but mere human resources.  Akin to wood pulp for a paper company.

[lupinus]

Changing the OT rules ought to open them up to some liability.  Not sure what retaliation would be if that were acted on.

I think a lot of companies view hourly employees as replaceable.  In many cases, they are.  However, it costs money to replace people and many managers highly underestimate the value of the better, experienced, and knowledgable guys.  I am on call part of the month as production engineer.  I know that if certain operators are on shift, I am not likely to get bothered unless something serious happens.  Not always the case with others.  We only have 1 operation per shift and it is part personality and part experience.

Yep. And the even more screwed up part is how hard it is for a good manager to avoid it.

They're monkeying with our schedules in a way that means I can not do one of my primary tasks. To put it mildly, they're screwed by this. My boss, and his boss, are having to fight to basically make a whole new two man department for me and one other person in a similar boat in order to get around this. Rather than just being able to OK my schedule not being dicked with a *expletive deleted*ing the operation.

[MechAg94]

Yeah, I didn't mention micromanagement.

[KD5NRH]

A McDonalds I used to eat at occasionally on the way to work had a help wanted poster on the drive through window with salaries. Cashier/line employee, $10.95/hr. Manager $11.95/hr. Janitor $12.95/hr.

Spotted a help wanted sign on a fleet of taco trucks in San Antonio that listed starting pay at $11.75-$14.50 depending on experience in food prep and driving record.

[lupinus]

Spotted a help wanted sign on a fleet of taco trucks in San Antonio that listed starting pay at $11.75-$14.50 depending on experience in food prep and driving record.

Not to bad.

Hell once you reach cap in my place you can make almost 16 an hour to be a mindless box pushing drone at cap. Course if you are unlucky enough to have a brain, be fast at it, or be given a job with advanced training and responsibility you'll be rewarded with the same rate of pay as every single other person. And the increasing stupidity and dicked with schedules.

[zahc]

hiring folks off the street with a piece of paper and no experience in the industry, rather than moving good people up the ladder as they're recognized....

....is what is wrong with America. I asked my manager if I could promote some of our better operators to technician level and start giving them engineering tasks and projects. I was told no, because upper management want a higher degree count. So we are interviewing degreed people from different companies who know nothing about our operation, and not hiring any of them,  when for the same salary we could get 1.5 or 2 people with years of experience on the floor. And the sad part is the really good operators don't last...they move on to something better, draining the company. I am inches away from doing the same thing because I can see that there is no growth potential for me despite huge opportunities to contribute.

[MechAg94]

Most of our operators are happy settling in for the long haul to retirement.  They will do that if we pay enough and don't jerk them around.  Our plant isn't so hard to run compared to others.  Some of the younger guys chase the money and advancement available at larger chemical plants. 
We have a really good pair of mechanics maintaining the big reciprocating compressors we have and my boss works hard to take care of them.  Everyone, including me, likes working for my current boss.  I am in no hurry to move anywhere. 

[Stand_watie]

....is what is wrong with America. I asked my manager if I could promote some of our better operators to technician level...

What do mean by "technician"?, I had thought of the term as the same as operator. Do you mean what I think of as "craftsman" or "maintenance" (depending on whether they skillfully re-align the pump or beat on it with a big pipe wrench)? Engineer? Something in between?

[Boomhauer]

My old agency pulled the "we will give you comp time- time off at a later date- instead of paying you overtime" scam. Which would have been OK if it was only very occasionally I had to work over on a shift, but when I was constantly, nearly daily having to work over and never getting paid OR getting my time off (kinda hard to get time off when you are grossly undermanned), it really became a sore spot with me.

My current job pays true overtime, and furthermore, anything outside of our normal work hours (7:30-4:00PM) is considered OT even if we haven't hit our 40 for the week yet. We may not have industry leading pay but our management does give a *expletive deleted*it about us, including all the way to the company owner, and that looking out for us and family work environment will keep me here for the foreseeable future.

[RoadKingLarry]

What do mean by "technician"?, I had thought of the term as the same as operator. Do you mean what I think of as "craftsman" or "maintenance" (depending on whether they skillfully re-align the pump or beat on it with a big pipe wrench)? Engineer? Something in between?

My differentiation between technician and operator Which is what the Navy taught me) is basically that an operator knows how to turn it on and run it, a technician in addition to knowing how to turn it on and run it also knows how to fix it when it breaks and maintain it to keep it from breaking.

[Firethorn]

My differentiation between technician and operator Which is what the Navy taught me) is basically that an operator knows how to turn it on and run it, a technician in addition to knowing how to turn it on and run it also knows how to fix it when it breaks and maintain it to keep it from breaking.

In some cases I've seen, you can subtract some of the 'run it' parts in that while they know the basics, they don't have the training/experience to utilize the equipment properly. 
Radar operator - able to turn the equipment on, adjust it's modes, read out and interpret the output, etc...
Radar Tech - able to fix it, adjust it's modes, read test patterns to ensure correct operation, etc...

[Calumus]

My old agency pulled the "we will give you comp time- time off at a later date- instead of paying you overtime" scam.

A buddy of mine works as maintenance in an apartment building. Apparently this scam is normal practice down here. He's been averaging about 30 hours a week of overtime for close to 2 years. He's still waiting for a chance to use some of his comp time... He's a good guy, not a very bright one..

[zahc]

What do mean by "technician"?, I had thought of the term as the same as operator. Do you mean what I think of as "craftsman" or "maintenance" (depending on whether they skillfully re-align the pump or beat on it with a big pipe wrench)? Engineer? Something in between?

In the land of PN junctions, the terminology is as follows.

Operators move wafers around, the fab, load them on tools, follow work instructions,  but do not make any judgements or decisions. This is hourly pay and often contract work.

Process Technicians follow higher-level guidelines to inspect, test, and disposition nonconforming material. They also run offline or otherwise special experiments for Engineers, where SOP does not exist. This is hourly work.

Process Engineers write the work instructions, disposition guidelines and experiments, and disposition material in situations where no guidelines exist. They also own yield and scrap. For example, if a Process Tech makes a bad call and scraps material, it is still the Process Engineer's fault (he should have written better procedures or intervened himself; it is never possible to throw techs under the bus). This is a salaried position.

Equipment maintenance is separate. It typically has a tech+engineer structure, with techs doing repairs and preventive maintenance, and engineers writing the PM procedures and owning equipment uptime,  performance and cost. There is crossover between Equipment Engineers and Process Engineers because the process results are tied to the equipment. In some facilities they are consolidated into one Fab Engineer.

My beef with my current role is that I am both Process Engineer and Equipment Engineer at a start-up company, for a very large department. I also have no dedicated technicians, so I get pulled into technician level work by production imperatives, resulting in long irregular hours and substandard engineering results. The work is, as startup HR departments are wont to describe them "exciting and dynamic", but the pay is merely average and the general trajectory of things is a train wreck and quite "no-win".

[Stand_watie]

In the land of PN junctions, the terminology is as follows.

Operators move wafers around, the fab, load them on tools, follow work instructions,  but do not make any judgements or decisions. This is hourly pay and often contract work.

Process Technicians follow higher-level guidelines to inspect, test, and disposition nonconforming material. They also run offline or otherwise special experiments for Engineers, where SOP does not exist. This is hourly work.

Process Engineers write the work instructions, disposition guidelines and experiments, and disposition material in situations where no guidelines exist. They also own yield and scrap. For example, if a Process Tech makes a bad call and scraps material, it is still the Process Engineer's fault (he should have written better procedures or intervened himself; it is never possible to throw techs under the bus). This is a salaried position.

Equipment maintenance is separate. It typically has a tech+engineer structure, with techs doing repairs and preventive maintenance, and engineers writing the PM procedures and owning equipment uptime,  performance and cost. There is crossover between Equipment Engineers and Process Engineers because the process results are tied to the equipment. In some facilities they are consolidated into one Fab Engineer.

...

I see, that's quite a different structure to what I'm used to. Here it's operators (who are expected to do what you expect of techs), maintenance who do the complex equipment repairs and building projects, supervisors manage hourly employees and give marching orders, and the engineers designing projects etc.

[charby]

Employees are no longer people, but mere human resources.  Akin to wood pulp for a paper company.

That is the Warren Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway approach.

Employees are not longer an asset but a liability.

[MechAg94]

Operator and process technician are interchangeable in my company.  Mechanics and instrument/electrical technicians maintain the individual pieces.  

I guess I would carry part of the process engineer role, but we don't do experiments.  We are a an OSHA PSM (process safety management) site so I get to maintain Management of Change documentation and a bunch of other stuff.  Thankfully, this site doesn't have much in the way of environmental reporting so I don't have that to deal with.  We only have 11 people so we do what is needed to some extent.  

[MechAg94]

I don't know what the law is, but I always heard if a company had an "official comp time policy", they had to award comp time on a time and a half basis since it substitutes for OT.  If their policy is to give comp time instead of OT pay, I wouldn't be surprised if they are open to some serious liability.  The employee needs to have some records of it though.

[charby]

Changing the OT rules ought to open them up to some liability.  Not sure what retaliation would be if that were acted on.

I think a lot of companies view hourly employees as replaceable.  In many cases, they are.  However, it costs money to replace people and many managers highly underestimate the value of the better, experienced, and knowledgable guys.  I am on call part of the month as production engineer.  I know that if certain operators are on shift, I am not likely to get bothered unless something serious happens.  Not always the case with others.  We only have 1 operation per shift and it is part personality and part experience.

I've been hoping for some overtime rules to change also. Maybe coming in the next few months.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/15/pf/overtime-pay/

I hope they pick a realistic annual income number, something above the medium household income.

[Mannlicher]

evidently there is a huge disconnect between what some folks think they are worth, and what other folks are willing to pay.  Frankly, with there being a shortage of some 20 million jobs in America today, there is a lot of competition for the positions.  Supply and demand comes into play.  Companies can hire for a lot less then they used to get by with. 
This is the future.  Might as well get used to it.  We have exported millions of jobs over seas.  We have created technology to replace millions of other workers.  We have allowed many millions of illegal immigrants to walk in, and take jobs away from Citizens.   How can you expect any good will come out of all that?

[MillCreek]

^^^The free markets in action.

[Jamisjockey]

^^^The free markets in action.

No. What we have is a bastardized, club footed with a lisp version of the free market.  When government can subsidize people not to work, give tax breaks to companies who bring in foreign workers, and subsidize people who will take a lower wage for jobs that should be worth more, you no longer have a free market.

[Hawkmoon]

^^^The free markets in action.

I disagree.

Sending jobs off-shore where labor is cheaper is certainly part of a free market. Allowing illegals to flood the labor pool at home is NOT part of the free market. (Unless your definition of "free market" doesn't include any provision for workers to be legally employed).

[MillCreek]

It is the best free market for corporate leadership and the 1% that lobbyists, court decisions and legislators can buy.

[RevDisk]

It is the best free market for corporate leadership and the 1% that lobbyists, court decisions and legislators can buy.

Actually, ayep.

Between illegal immigration squeezing the bottom and regulations/taxation squeezing the middle (ie anyone that can't afford to buy the regulatory process), it's a cluster. We're making more than ever, just with less people. Toss in outsourcing overseas. As automation increases and the needed labor pool shrinks, things are going to get interesting.

People are worried about hajis or Climate Change or zombies or whatever. I'm mostly worried about economics. Government spending is drastically increasing, overwhelming financed through debt. We'd need to double tax revenue just to break even. Government answer is inflation, as always. It's going to be increasingly nasty as purchasing power drops, wages continue to stagnate, taxes stay the same or increase and the private sector job growth lags the way it has been.

Hell, inflation and wage stagnation alone is a nasty combo in the long run. At the risk of sounding too OWS, I expect it to be more than one but less than four decades before we have an economic revolt of some variety.

[wmenorr67]

I've said it more than one, our greatest enemy isn't outside our borders.