Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Feast or Famine

This job has always been about feast or famine. 50+ hours one week, 35 the next. It was all good though, because you always atleast broke even over a few weeks. Lately though, not so much. Un employment in Las Vegas is over 9% now days and continuing to climb. It is expected to reach double digit levels in 2009.

Our particular branch has NEVER laid anyone off....ever. In an effort to continue this trend, all hourly employees have been given an extra day off. One of our company mottos is "Share the pain, share the gain". Indeed after a rough spot morethan a decade ago, the owner instituded a 10% across the board pay cut. Many employees left at that time, but many, many more stayed. Since that time the pay cut was rescinded and a profit sharing program was instituted. Last year I collected more than $1,100 in profit sharing......not to bad!

Today, we find ourselves short of work. Some mechanics have been sent home after 1 hour due to a lack of work. It was the luck of the draw. Unfortunately, one or two mechanics seemed to always have the bad luck and get sent home early. After being unable to control this on the front end with dispatching mechanics to calls, our manager decided to try to share the pain amongst everyone by giving everyone a 32 hour work week, and hoping that they may actually work close to 4-10 hour days.

At the very least it is hoped that it will help to equally distribute the "pain". The manager explained that he likes the "crew" he has now and does not want to lay anyone off. He also said that he wanted to be pro active and find a solution(If possible), without corperate giving him instructions to lay people off.

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