The fall of a once great company - Production NLMK Employee Review

Twenty years ago, this was the place to be. Excellent pay, excellent benefits, great retirement, and the list goes on. It was a job "the valley" wanted to get and retire from. Safety. The management preaches safety constantly. They're required by their new "NPS" system to have safety contacts so they print out a piece of paper and say, "stay safe" and walk away and count it as a contact. The truth of the matter is, safety ONLY becomes a concern if someone gets hurt and has to file a claim. Production always supersedes safety as management wants to hit that "KPI" and get their slice of the pie. The turnover rate has become insane. Don't buy the BS and believe they are even close to the "industry average". People are leaving before they even make it through orientation. Nobody wants to work for a company that considers the employees a number. Secretive BS pulled behind closed doors while employees are left in the dark. In futile attempts to hire skilled maintenance they've broken the contract (with acceptance of the weak or paid off union) to give more wages for "senior" electricians. Quick tip NLMK management, you can't hire anyone because nobody wants to work for mediocre pay with no real bonuses and ever rising benefit costs. It's not the pay rates, the problem is in the management. Unfair treatment for one department while literally telling other departments to get bent. It's proof that NLMK only cares about something when it can effect their production. There's a reason people with 20+ years of time are leaving and it certainly isn't the nearly stagnate wages. Forced overtime, 6-7 days a week scheduled, know what you're working Saturday night 11pm on Thursday as late as 5pm. Someone calls off, they reserve the "right to manage" and force someone to work a second 8 hour shift. The ONLY good thing is that they are offering double time for those forced/covered shifts. The only reason that is a thing at Farrell is because the Sharon Coating plant had it added to their contract. You never know if you're going home after YOU work YOUR assigned shift. Benefits were good but at slowly being taken away. The company has constantly pushed to remove the PPO insurance plan in exchange for an HSA plan that costs them less. Multiple instances of people on the HSA (new hires forced onto it) with medical bills not being covered, prescriptions, etc. The company wants to force it on employees so their overhead is reduced. Bonuses. That's the funniest part about NLMK. We receive something they have called a "shipping" bonus. Nobody in salary nor our union can actually define how it is calculated or what makes it "better" for the workers. I can however say in just about 3 years of having this "shipping" bonus, I've accumulated just over $470 takehome. Most other companies in our field make more on a bonus in a month than I've received in nearly 3 years. It's a pathetic joke and a monthly bonus that's less than my hourly rate is simply a kick in the chin. If it wasn't for it being direct deposited, I wouldn't even cash it as it's an embarrassingly low amount for a "bonus". A couple years ago they gave out retention bonuses that made employees actually think that management figured out the problem, themselves. They gave maintenance a bonus and the union body went up in arms. In total they gave us about $4000 for "retention" bonuses. However, that ended quickly as soon as business "picked up" and we were back to business as usual. In the later part of 2022, they rolled out this new "system" they called NPS. Starting in one department, it's still "rolling" through the plant. It was an attempt to bring management and the workers together. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on offices, salaries, hardware, etc to build "war rooms" for departments and make this some big thing. The one they spent their first "area" in has been used probably 3 times in 6 months since the program progressed to another department. That "NPS" system blew over like a fart in the wind and management is back to their old selves again. Line walks ended, communication with workers ended, salary back behind closed doors constructing new and better ways to make the workers have to work harder, longer, or whatever. NPS is literally non-existent in the "kick off" area, as all the employees had already figured would have happened. Many people in the union hoped that it would turn a new leaf for NLMK, however it just proved the entire program was simply an attempt to pat themselves on the back. Straight back to only caring about themselves and treating workers as a number. It's bad enough the workers have to work swing shift, sometimes backwards rotations, some departments on 7 days for months at a time, forced overtime when someone calls off, only 5 PTO days you don't have to schedule by November of the previous year. Management wants to take more and more and offer pittance in return, like the less an 9% worth of raises in 8 years and an increase of nearly $250/month on insurance premium. Take this to heart management of NLMK. $0.50 an hour raise was considered decent in the year 2000. Today McDonalds workers are making $15.00/hour. Now, if they reply like they do to many reviews on here, I want you (the reader) to realize. They asked people to leave a five star review on indeed. Good luck with that as the majority of the workforces overall moral is bitter at best. The reply will simply be a misdirection or a simple "nuh-uh" which is the same responses people got during that pitiful excuse they called NPS. Dodging the problem and holding yourself on the hilltop isn't going to save you or the company that was once so great. When the contract comes up in 2025, I'm rather certain along with many others, that it will either save NLMK or end up being it's inevitable death. If the company doesn't show appreciation to ALL of it's employees and give a little on the next contract, that turn-over rate is sure to break some records. We already have people with 20+ years giving up seniority, 5 weeks vacation, and starting fresh due to bad management. A bad contract will simply cause the majority to follow suit.