u/lunch-koi

Americans need to grow a fucking backbone

My fiancé and I have been working at a factory for 7 years and 4 years, respectively. We both started with good qualifications, got promoted quickly, and learned almost all the machines in our department. For me, my output started at around 16,500 pieces a day and reached almost 88,000 pieces a day until about 3 weeks ago. (I lowered it to 49,000.) I'm one of the most experienced and productive people in the department. I used to fix my machines myself when it was within what I was allowed to do instead of sitting around waiting for maintenance to come. I was number 5 out of 87 employees in production numbers. There's a huge shortage and massive demand for this product, so sorry in advance to the customers who are going to start feeling the impact of us recently discovering that we don't have any Giveadamn.

A little while ago, I was talking to a "runner" who has been there as a temp for about 10 months. Most of his job is bringing me parts so I can keep the machines running without stepping away from them. And honestly, he's also one of the most useless runners we've had come through. He started at $13.25 an hour. They raised him to $15.25/hr because people kept leaving that position constantly. Then they gave him another $1.75 raise on the condition that he learn one of the easiest machines in the area, which technically made him a machine operator and gave them a reason to justify the raise. About a month ago, he got another $2.25 raise and was hired on when they finally decided to train him on that machine. Now he's at $19.25. To be clear, I'm not upset that he's making that. That position should have paid better a long time ago.

My problem is that after all the time I've spent there, all the experience, all the machines I know, all the extra effort... I make $19.38/hr. And my fiancé was making $19.11.

I talked to my manager about it. Or more accurately, I blew up at him and told him I wasn't the only one upset about this. A lot of us are upset. He told me that in the upcoming annual reviews, they would give raises to "fix the problem."

My fiancé had his review two days later. He got the usual bare-minimum raise: $0.31. So we decided that if they want to pay us like brand-new hires, then they can get brand-new-hire effort. I went back to my machines, lowered the speeds, and stopped doing the repairs myself. I'm acting like I was just hired, and tbh, it's weirdly calm and relaxing.

The only good thing that came out of this is that it made us start looking for other jobs. We started discovering that the skills we have are in demand in a lot more places than we'd imagined, and that our current employer had been getting them from us for cheap. My fiancé is about to start training for a job that pays $74,000 in the first year. I'm still looking, but honestly, I'm happy that I finally accepted that my time and knowledge are worth a lot more than what they were paying me.

They think suppliers control widget costs and can negotiate only so much on those inputs. They simultaneously think salaries are special and having employees take a pay or benefits cut, not get their raises or bonuses, being hired at wages that were too low or benefits that were too poor to begin with, etc. are just magical financial levers they can pull when their latest dumb venture didn't work out for entirely foreseeable reasons.

Currently, my husband and I are focusing all our concentration on searching for another job with good pay. And of course, there have been tremendous advancements in job search methods, including AI, which has made many things much easier for us, such as applying and easily creating a resume. My husband also discovered a tool called Interviewman that gives him instant answers during the interview, and he has now started using it during his interviews, and it is very effective.

Guilty by association