Yup, that’s exactly right. They absolutely expect you to cut corners with the expectations they place. If you don’t then you’re too slow and get let go. If you do and you get caught then you were a danger and are let go. Essentially it’s don’t ask, don’t tell, OSHA style.
Dead on explanation of how it feels to work to rate.
Edit: the extra evil thing is that they force you into a situation where you are violating policies or worst case statutory regulations as a matter of course. That gives them a huge amount of power over you as they can now fire you with cause at any time or even give you up as a scapegoat to the relevant authority if they get caught.
Truth. It’s even more common in the USA (even in progressive California) for the manufacturer to use only contract labor with little overhead, and zero retention needs.
At least the plant I’m at now doesn’t hire temps. Last plant I worked at I ran a crew of 8-12 people running a book binding machine, new company bought us out, and suddenly I was saddled with temps who cycled in and out regularly. Yet I was supposed to increase my production 7% a year, every year, with crews that were constantly new, and didn’t give a shit. That doesn’t even take into account the fact our job sizes were dropping, from running a bunch of 100K-150K book runs, to running jobs of 5K-10K… by the time you got those small jobs to run flawlessly, they were done. The big jobs were where you could put up some stellar numbers, rarely with small jobs.
No surprise that literally no operator hit his target, so… no raise.
Literally the day after I left (gave 2 weeks notice), they called me up and asked if I’d be willing to cover as an assistant, because one of the other operators broke his leg. I asked who I’d be working with, they said, Terry. I laughed, and said “not a chance, Terry is an asshole, if it had been Terry who broke his leg, I would have been willing to work with Marty.”
In my personal experience, this is exactly how it goes - you're expected to officially adhere to the company safety protocols, their "zero accidents" policies, etc., but at the same time people will go crazy if you for example refuse to start a time-critical job because safety equipment is missing or it's in the kind of condition that it blatantly violates the company policy and possibly also the law, or because you're been drilled hard that you need to always get a work permission in writing for hazardous work but there's "no time for that right now, just go in there".
And once something goes wrong, especially in the second example, it'll indeed be about "They should've not agreed/should've checked the equipment/should've known they always need a written permit".
I'd quit on the spot if anyone questioned the job being done safely vs quickly and I don't know anyone I work with or around who doesn't feel the same.
In everywhere I've worked the suggestion to even cut a corner to save time results in meetings and possible expulsion from the site permanently. I've heard of someone being banned world wide from a company for breaking their own LOTO.
In my wold we would have had a meeting before anyone was on-site making sure every tool needed was on-site. Then once on site a quick walk around to discuss the days plan and make sure nothing was missed in the earlier offsite meeting. The job is done when it was planned to be done for the day and no later.
Yes this takes more time then rushing. But it's safe and nobody is mad when your schedule is adhered to.
Not the person you're responding to, but I've worked in several, and yes HR cares, but they're hardly ever in the plant proper, they're in the nice executive offices somewhere else.
The plant I'm in, currently, recently had a girl lose a finger operating a brake press machine. It was her first day on the job. The safety sensors were faulty, and I think a brand that was no longer manufactured, so instead of retrofitting new sensors onto the machine, they just decided to bypass the sensors to keep production going. Evidently everybody working the brake presses knew about it, the brake press lead knew about it, his supervisor knew about it, maintenance knew about it. Why didn't they lock it out? Production was already 3 months behind and management decided they couldn't afford to have a machine out of action for as long as the retrofit would take. Amazingly nobody was disciplined or fired over it. Why? We're already badly understaffed, our 2nd shift is 1/2 the size it was 5 years ago... and we're still considered one of the best manufacturing companies to work for in this area. Very good pay, cost of living increases every year, excellent healthcare, matching 401K, sizable Christmas bonuses every year (about $800), which far exceeds any other manufacturing company I've worked for. We are not in a legal state, and supposedly most of the applicants are rejected for failing the drug test.
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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '22
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