Posted by repeet
For the last decade we have watched policies and practices slowly enacted that are intrinsically wasteful. We complained. We were told that we didn't understand the big picture. Then we saw these practices take work away from us and out to vendors.
Now, if the work could truly be done by vendors cheaper, then we would have grumbled and reexamined our position. But, what is happening is that something that used to take one of us two to three days to repair, comes back from these vendors with POs attached for thousands of dollars. The company only pays us a little over one thousand per week, gross, and we used to repair it in an average of three days. That’s a saving for each piece, of what contractually IS our work, of one to six thousand dollars per unit. And I'm not talking about a couple of incidents here. The shops alone have been so decimated that were talking about thousand of units a year, if not tens of thousand. So now the company pays the equivalent of a months wages for what we used to do in a week.
So we wrote grievances, with documentation (actual POs) to illustrate our case (which we still have). We were told that we were obstructive, and counter intuitive to the company’s business plans. We were told, as mechanics, that we needed to write a business plan explaining our position, and if it had merit, that the appropriate business response would be made. We did, we even have a Power Point presentation (and still have them). Those business proposals (good thing we have collage graduates and post graduates in our ranks) were sent up the chain of command and disappeared at the vice-presidential level.
So now, with ninety five percent of the work that we used to do being sent out, at a cost of five to thirty times more than it used to cost the company for us to do it, we're being asked for our permission. Permission to be laid off, and the fraction that's left paid substantially less, so the company can "save" more money.
In a pigs eye.
