CatMan
Hot Rolled
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2005
- Location
- Brandon, MS
Does it ever get any easier?
The 15 man shop I run is finally experiencing the economic effects of COVID, at least that's what we think it is. I run a 15 man shop that's owned by an out of state millionaire. We make a machine that sells to government entities. We last got an order for machines on June 18th. We typically get/need around 10 orders a month.
Got a decree a couple of weeks ago that everyone was to take a week off (unpaid). Me and the parts guy were exempt from that blow as we still had to come in and answer the phones and do customer support. We've never laid people off in the (30 years+) history of the company. The week off was bad enough, but the worst thing is that we couldn't promise there would not be more unpaid vacations in the future.
Yesterday another decree came down that all salary employees were taking a 10% pay cut and the shop is having its hours reduced 10%. This is on top of no raise this year, and suspending 401k matching earlier in the year.
Dealing with the unknown is the worst. Nobody knows how long it will be before sales pick back up (post election I'm guessing). Me and the supervisor are working hard to make sure that we keep the shop busy in the mean time. I've got two guys that just bought a new house. I'm trying to retain the newer guys as I need to space out my employee tenure. So far everyone is sticking around, although it would help if one or two didn't.
This sucks.
The 15 man shop I run is finally experiencing the economic effects of COVID, at least that's what we think it is. I run a 15 man shop that's owned by an out of state millionaire. We make a machine that sells to government entities. We last got an order for machines on June 18th. We typically get/need around 10 orders a month.
Got a decree a couple of weeks ago that everyone was to take a week off (unpaid). Me and the parts guy were exempt from that blow as we still had to come in and answer the phones and do customer support. We've never laid people off in the (30 years+) history of the company. The week off was bad enough, but the worst thing is that we couldn't promise there would not be more unpaid vacations in the future.
Yesterday another decree came down that all salary employees were taking a 10% pay cut and the shop is having its hours reduced 10%. This is on top of no raise this year, and suspending 401k matching earlier in the year.
Dealing with the unknown is the worst. Nobody knows how long it will be before sales pick back up (post election I'm guessing). Me and the supervisor are working hard to make sure that we keep the shop busy in the mean time. I've got two guys that just bought a new house. I'm trying to retain the newer guys as I need to space out my employee tenure. So far everyone is sticking around, although it would help if one or two didn't.
This sucks.