SAMPLE SURVEY - WORKING PLACE CONDITIONS

I invite all machinists on this forum to take a minute to look at this survey and would you change it, add/subtract anything? Are people interested in participating in, say, an annual survey so we can see how work place conditions are changing? I think machinists are best qualified to survey our own working conditions and monitor the working conditions as they change in our industry.

(1)How would you describe your company?
A. Machine shop with own product line.
B. Machine shop with combination product line, job shop.
C. Job shop, no product line.
D. Maintenance
E. Self-employed
F. Other (describe)

(2) Number of employees?

(3) Average age of employed machinists?

(4) Average hours worked per week?

(5) Are there paid breaks? If so, how many minutes a day?

(6) Paid vacation time?

(7) Paid sick days?

(8) Paid health insurance?

(9) Average employment stay?

(10) Work place pressure scale 1 to 5
1 = little to no pressure
5 = Much pressure - want to leave situation

(11) Pay

(11) Additional comments (written)


Any comments/suggestions, I'm open.

Steve

[ 02-12-2006, 04:00 PM: Message edited by: machinehead61 ]

How would you describe your company?
A Machine shop with own product line.******
B. Machine shop with combination product line, job shop.
C. Job shop, no product line.

(2) Number of employees? 7 machinist 1 drill boy

(3) Average age of employed machinists? 47

(4) Average hours worked per week? 58

(5) Are there paid breaks? If so, how many minutes a day? 2 breaks 10 min"s not paid

(6) Paid vacation time? 1 wk after 1 year

(7) Paid sick days? your kidding right

(8) Paid health insurance? only if you die on the job

(9) Average employment stay? seniorguy has 4 years

(10) Work place pressure scale 1 to 5
1 = little to no pressure
5 = Much pressure - want to leave situation 3

(11) Additional comments (written)
I like the guys that I work with every one helps eath other No friction

In categories of company description, you don't seem to have anything for shops incorporated as part of the maintenance program of a large factory, nor anything for places like I spent my last years in the trade till I retired to my own shop, which did the machine work connected with aircraft maintenance, including engine overhaul.Some sort of info on pay scale could be included as an option.

Under shop classification it could maybe
include:

D) mantainence

E) self-employed

F) other (write in)

I'd be under F for research outfit.

As far as pay scale goes, that would be either

A) Not Enough

B) Barely Enough to Keep Me Here Till a Better
Offer Comes Along



Jim

Heck, I should participate in my own survey if people are happy with it.

(1)How would you describe your company?
A. Machine shop with own product line.
B. Machine shop with combination product line, job shop.
C. Job shop, no product line.
D. Maintenance

C.

(2) Number of employees?

20

(3) Average age of employed machinists?

48

(4) Average hours worked per week?

55

(5) Are there paid breaks? If so, how many
minutes a day?

None

(6) Paid vacation time?

1 week after 1 year
2 weeks/2 years
3 weeks/5 years
4 weeks/15 years

(7) Paid sick days?

None

(8) Paid health insurance?

Yes w/ $30 per week emplyee contribution

(9) Average employment stay?

1 year

(10) Work place pressure scale 1 to 5
1 = little to no pressure
5 = Much pressure - want to leave situation

5

(11) Pay

$16/hr

(12) Additional comments (written)

Very hi turn over rate. Sweat shop, prison, not friendly, are common descriptions. Everyone looks over their shoulder when talking to co-worker to see if they're being watched. Our work is low quantity. I'm on a CNC 3-axis knee mill. Average 1.8 pcs/job. Almost every job has .001" tolerance or tighter on some dimension. Lots of tooling for bigger companies. Almost no compliments ever paid to workers. Very crtitical shop.


Steve

(1)How would you describe your company?

C. Job shop, no product line.


(2) Number of employees? 20

(3) 35

(4) Average hours worked per week?
40

(5) Are there paid breaks? If so, how many minutes a day?
No, hide in toilet

(6) Paid vacation time?
2 weeks

(7) Paid sick days?
0

(8) Paid health insurance?
They have some kind of scam, I don't participate.

(9) Average employment stay?
1-18 months

(10) Work place pressure scale 1 to 5
1 = little to no pressure
5 = Much pressure - want to leave situation
5

(11) Pay
Big secret, timid employees $17 hr, Demanding employees $20-29 hr 25 for me.

(11) Additional comments
Racial problems,never lay off a minority
boss hides in office,sends a moron to do the dirty work and make estimates (all jobs take 5 minutes according to moron).
Safety is ignored, in case of accident blame employee.
Zero quality control, it's all aluminum, those numbers don't mean anything.
Government contractor, I no longer work there, make less and enjoy it more.

(1)How would you describe your company?

C. Job shop, heavy industry.

(2) Number of employees? 100 +-

(3) Average age of employed machinists? 50

(4) Average hours worked per week? 60+ for me, less for everone else.

(5) Are there paid breaks? If so, how many minutes a day?
Not officially, but if you want a break you just take a walk.

(6) Paid vacation time?
2 weeks 1 year
3 weeks 5 years
4 weeks 10 years
5 weeks 20 years


(7) Paid sick days? 2

(8) Paid health insurance? Yes, copay from 15$ to 30$

(9) Average employment stay? 20+ years

(10) Work place pressure scale 1 to 5

5 = Much pressure - do not want to leave situation

(11) Pay
15$ to 35$

(11) Additional comments (written)-Long hours but most people like working there, we have mostly all together for a long time. Can be stessfull as some jobs have values into the millions with no room for error.

Like most shops, upper managment doesn't have a clue.

(1)How would you describe your company?
A. Machine shop with own product line.
B. Machine shop with combination product line, job shop.
C. Job shop, no product line.-----this one
D. Maintenance
E. Self-employed
F. Other (describe)

(2) Number of employees?
17

(3) Average age of employed machinists? Physical age 40, Mental age: about 4 & 1/2

(4) Average hours worked per week?
36.25

(5) Are there paid breaks? If so, how many minutes a day?
For however long you can remain hidden in the back of the old metal store

(6) Paid vacation time?
20 days less than 2 yrs service
25 otherwise

(7) Paid sick days?
Managememt: how ever long they want their golfing holiday to last.
Employees : 0

(8) Paid health insurance?
no need here, unless you really fancy going private

(9) Average employment stay?
15 mins(I kid you not) to 34 yrs(what a mug)

(10) Work place pressure scale 1 to 5
1 = little to no pressure
5 = Much pressure - want to leave situation
18

(11) Pay
between $15 and $20 depending how much ass kissing you are prepared to do

(11) Additional comments (written)
King Charles the first was executed in 1649

Boris

Parts of the above answers are not to be taken seriously , but I'll leave it upto you which parts

olddude-

sends a moron to do the dirty work and make estimates (all jobs take 5 minutes according to moron).

Click to expand...

In our job shop, quoting has no apparent rhyme or reason. All over the map. And under bidding is the average. No routing proceedure that the quote was based on (they don't have the time, but can sit around the office talking about last night at the casino), no set-up time. They quote one piece and multiply that by the number of parts in the job. All the machinists say the same thing, quotes are off the wall.

Steve

(1)
C. Job shop, no product line.


(2) Number of employees? 6.

(3) Average age of employed machinists?

Machinists, me, 29 and 31 months.
College kids, 22
One very good employee 50ish?

(4) Average hours worked per week?

me and the good employee, 60hrs
college kids, 7hrs

(5) Are there paid breaks? If so, how many minutes a day?

I take a break when I need it, I let everyone else take a break when they need it, abuse my policy and C-YA later.

(6) Paid vacation time?

2 weeks

(7) Paid sick days?

8 days

(8) Paid health insurance?

Cadillac of BC/BS, cost me $150 a month, but I can get a new heart and lungs for $100.

(9) Average employment stay?

Thats tough, very few short stays, I would say a year.

(10) Work place pressure scale 1 to 5
1 = little to no pressure
5 = Much pressure - want to leave situation

3, big difference to me between pressure and stress, stress comes from assholes above you that expect the impossible, pressure comes from a nice healthy workload that keeps you on your toes and makes the day go fast.

(11) Pay

Pretty crappy.

(11) Additional comments (written)

I really can't complain, I run the shop and deal with our local customers. The owner gives me pretty much free reign. Hes busy getting and purchasing for government contracts and dealing with long distance customers, besides, hes in an office 4 miles away. My hours are from when I get there until when I leave. The people are cool, the area is beautiful, the work is fun and rarely repetitive.

On the other hand, Machinehead, I understand what your saying, usually the owner has me quote on the machining for the jobs hes bidding (I do all the quoting for the local customers, and he keeps his hands completely out of it). But when he doesn't send me the quote or the deadline is NOW, he wings it and its usually a disaster.

Steve, Great start. There's some research that suggests employee satisfaction has more to do with such things as the quality of their immediate supervision and co-workers.

When you have a great boss, competent and friendly co-workers, and meaningful work -- then things like paid breaks aren't such a big deal. One way to tell a great company for a crummy one is how quickly the parking lot empties near closing time. Do folks want to come to work in the morning -- and want to finish up what they're doing at night?

There's also the whole Herzberg satisfier/dissatisfier deal. Dissatisfiers are things like the things you've already listed: adequacy of hours of work, paid breaks, vacation and sick time, paid sick days, and pay. The research suggests that these need to be just "good enough" to retain people -- otherwise they're dissatisfied and look elsewhere.

Satisfaction comes from other stuff like meaningful and interesting work, great colleagues, good bosses, respect from others, and the like. You might want to work that angle into your survey? Of course there's this -- how many folks want to go on record as saying their immediate boss is an idiot? You could probably Google Herzberg and satisfier, dissatisfier to get a list of things to consider.

1) Manufacture own product line www.orioncorp.com

2)150+

3)Age? 18-70 Lots of guys with 40 years in

4) Hours 62

5)Breaks- 30 minutes unpaid for lunch, 2 paid 10 minutes breaks

6)Vacation I cant remember I just started, after one year you get a check for a perrcentage of last years salary on the aniversary of you starting its like 1000 bucks

7)No paid sick days

8)Insurance is about 20 bucks a week, taken from pre-tax dollars

9)Average stay? I dunno, 15 years is easy to find, lots of guys with over 25 years

10)Pressure? Its two fold, on one hand there is NO pressure to get it done fast, but they are VERY expensive parts and there are no second chances. "Take as long as you want, but screw it up and it's your a$$"

11)Pay- It's the most I have ever made, which isn't saying much. If I really bust my hump his year I should gross 50K

12)I actually love my job. I go in early and stay late, the money is good and its a clean nice shop. This has never happened things are going to good, I am waiting for my house to burn down or something.

PortPirate, thanks for responding. I suspect that companies with their own product line will have less pressure than job shops. So far the survey is confirming this.


Steve

1) My portion of it is R&D. I make pieces for prototype automation and some of the production equipment. Nothing real fancy but it's interesting and getting more advanced all the time.

2.) I'm the only machinist. A couple other guys can do some machining. Company wide 400 (?).

3.) I'm 35. The shop I started at I was the youngest by far. It was me and every body else was at least 40 then (1996). There's going to be alot of job openings in another 10-20 years.

4.)Approx. 45. Depends.

5.)I don't take formal breaks. If I need a Mountain Dew I go get one and then when I have to pee like a Russian racehorse in a hour, I go. Unpaid lunch.

6.)5 days at 6 mos., 10 days at 1 yr., 15 days at 5

7.)5

8.)BlueCross/BlueShield.

9.)The company is not very old. I'd guess 3 years just because they are growing so fast now. I've been there 7 mos.

10.)2-3 depending on what stage the project is at. As long as I work smart and put in a honest day, no problems.

11.)Nunya . Making a living, sure not getting rich.

12.)I really enjoy the job. A growing progressive company with pleasant co-workers. It's such a change from the first place I worked at. Eight years of politics, stupidity, decreasing benefits, lots of pressure without any real solutions, one month mandatory overtime, the next mandatory weekends for straight time (you had to take a weekday off).

Machinehead-Good thread

Jon, thanks for responding. Knowledge is power and we are accumulating knowledge about our livelihoods that nobody knows. The more responses we get, the more accurate the information.

I anticipate getting into a "discussion" with our management about pay/output. I've already been told that I am too slow and need to speed it up. I find that almost everybody in the shop has been told the same thing.

Our management thinks that squeezing us harder will make us profitable.

I suspect that this situation is more widespread than we realize, that owners all over the country think that their employees are too slow and need a "kick-in-the-pants" to make a profit.

This will be worse in the job shop sector because of the competition with other shops. Owners know that if they raise prices, they loose the work, thinking that another shop down the street has better, faster machinists working there. In reality, a lot of work is going out to guys working in barns, garages, corn cribs, basements, etc...

Service people are making visits to some pretty strange places these days. We lost work here in Rochelle. We bid on some work and found out that the lowest bid went to a guy in my church. I went to his house to discover a machine shop in his barn. Ain't no way he's gonna charge $60-$70/hour. One of his CNCs went down and the service guy showed up to fix it, the owner apologized about the service guy having to get lost in the country looking for a shop in a barn. The service guy said don't worry, you wouldn't believe where he has gone to fix machines. Just about anything with a roof is being used to house machine shops these days to get an edge over the big shops.

And the pressure gets ratcheted up another notch for job shops to stay in business.

Nothing like getting your job dangled in your face when you can't meet the quoted times and you have a family to feed and medical bills to pay for.

Steve

MachineHead, good call about the job shop. I tried working at one this summer. It was very high volume, high pressure and the hours came and went, one week lots of OT the next you were lucky if ya got 30. Good guys though

PortPirate, you're not kidding about good guys. Some of the people I work with are outstanding. If I owned a shop and they worked for me, I'd be giving them so many compliments it would make them wonder if I was feeling alright.

Criticism is the norm in this business. Management would rather have teeth pulled than have to say "great job".

And I always thought it took just as much effort to say "great job" as it does to say "what took so long?".

What do I know?


Steve

PortPirate, thanks for responding. I suspect that companies with their own product line will have less pressure than job shops. So far the survey is confirming this.


Steve

Click to expand...

Yea I think he's right. I worked for a great company this summer some guys including my boss had over 40+ yrs in that place.

(2) Number of employees?
75-100
(3) Average age of employed machinists?
50+
(4) Average hours worked per week?
when busy 55hrs

(5) Are there paid breaks? If so, how many minutes a day?

(6) Paid vacation time?
Yep, I can't remember how much there was, but it may have been close to 3wks a year for the first 5yrs, going all the way up to about 6wks a year.

(7) Paid sick days?
Can't remember.
(8) Paid health insurance?
Yea but now I think employees have to pay into it a bit too, something like 10%
(9) Average employment stay?
15yrs??
(10) Work place pressure scale 1 to 5
1 = little to no pressure
5 = Much pressure - want to leave situation
depends on how many orders they get in. Once again, like portpirate, this place worked on big parts and really subbed out all but their one off small parts that they made on a bridgeport. So their mentality was "we'd perfer you spend a few hours extra then ruin the part" Some of the final parts they made in there probablly were would probablly cost close $100,000k and went into machines for the chemical processing industry.
(11) Pay
Great no complaints. Started around $15hr, and probably maxed out at $30hr for the top guys who were working 50-60hr weeks at time and a half.
(11) Additional comments (written)
Great place to work 2nd generation family owned, I was hired to fill a production surge this summer. They made some real specialized products taht are not patented but the Chineese have tried time and time again to copy unsuccessfuly due to a bunch of trade secrets. Lots of work in there they just had to do in this country. To know how to do some of their secret processes you needed about 20yrs at the company.

Other then that some of the fairest people I ever worked for. I told them what I thought I wanted to make and they offered me even more!

Adam

Hey Adam. how are things going for you? School going good? Thanks for responding and hope the semester is good to you.


Steve

A little update for my response.

I was fired thursday, March 23.

Too slow. I was hired in July as employee no. 215.
The last person hired was no. 225.

10 people have come and gone in 8 months for a shop that has 17 machinists in it. Those left behind were really ticked about me getting fired. The next day the foreman rounded up 8 people and told them if they didn't speed it up, they were next.

When I said good-bye to the owner he noted that if another check didn't come in that he would have to borrow money to make payroll on friday. All of his customers were stringing him out to 90+ days and it was up to $400,000 outstanding that was owed to him. His suppliers are hounding him for their money. I'll miss the guys but not the pressure.

Steve