Model employer? - Page 2 - Politics and War Forum

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Re: Model employer?
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 3:45 PM on j-body.org
mitdr774 wrote:What about when there is an unexpected delay in incoming parts, or demand drops? I couldnt work a manufacturing job like that without a guaranteed minimum check. All it takes is one delayed truck to shut down an assembly lime in an auto plant. Imagine if your check was reduced because of that?
There are plenty of people who do not have to imagine. Many of them are called business owners.

Also, when you consider that a place like these companies has workers that earn better than average pay in their jobs, they can probably afford a bad week because of a delay like that, because they know they'll make it up later, or made good pay before. As long as they live within their means, there's no need to worry about the week-to-week paycheck, because over the course of the year, they're doing well. Some people can't do it, but many people can.








Re: Model employer?
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 5:35 PM on j-body.org
mitdr774 wrote:What about when there is an unexpected delay in incoming parts, or demand drops? I couldnt work a manufacturing job like that without a guaranteed minimum check. All it takes is one delayed truck to shut down an assembly lime in an auto plant. Imagine if your check was reduced because of that?
down times happen, usually not because of incoming materials since we keep about 2 months inventory on the ground, but when the economy is suffering we take hit in pay. We still get a minimum paycheck. For me it's $15.45/hr if we don't run any steel. There's lots of formulas to determine what we make as bonus pay, but during normal times it's about 185% of my base pay (meaning I get $15.45 + (185% of $15.45)), but everyone knows this isn't guaranteed. I've seen bonuses anywhere from 50% (just a couple of times) up to 275% (once) with many times between 210% and 240%.

For this reason when we're doing good everyone saves some for when the hard times hit. We went from tripling our base pay with 200+% bonuses to running with bonuses around 70% (1.7x base). It hurt us for a while, but we found new ways to make more steel.

We started making steel with chemistries that were harder to run thus the other mills shied away. We expanded some of the products that we run little of during good times because there's not as much of a profit margin (adding titanium cuts into the bottom line, but it's still making money). We also took advantage of the time to make improvements that required a shutdown condition so that when orders picked back up, we could run that much better and faster.

Many people went from making 10k/month to about 5k/month and if you had been living paycheck to paycheck as some still were with high mortgages and 2 or more high priced cars/boats etc. they found themselves putting those new toys up for sale pretty quick. I've been here 10 years and have went through 2 down turns in the economy. I learned my lesson the first time and the last time I had plenty of money saved in a safety account to get me by and take advantage of those fire sale items from those who hadn't planned well.
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