| | | quote | Originally posted by aaronkoch:
Why'd ya yell? What's that mean?
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I worked for Roush for a year as a Powertrain Engineer, and it was not a good experience. Its probably on the Forbe's list of "places with the worst employee relations"
I'll hit some of the bullet points, but bear in mind it'll be far from all-inclusive.
-I relocated approximately 150 miles to begin work there, and they offered no relocation benefits at all.
-To start with, I hired in at about 15-25% less money than all my classmates got right out of school, which I accepted because I was told it was a "probationary" salary and that at 3 months service, I would receive a performance review where I'd either be let go, or get a "substantial" increase.
-After begging, pleading, cajoling, etc. I finally got a performance review AT 9 MONTHS, in which I was given high marks, but then told that "the company didn't have any money to give me a raise". To put this in perspective, they were billing my labor hours out to customers at $70/hr, and paying me $24.03, and contributing 0 to retirement.
-I had an expense report for several hundred dollars of my own money that got denied because of a $.05 error in rounding on their employee mileage expense spreadsheet. It took almost 2 months to finally get the HR/accounting people to understand their mistake and pay me back.
-I had another expense report for something like $130, that I ended up just eating because it was for materials on a project that was already overbudget, and my boss wanted me to break company policy and fraudulently charge it to another project, which is a terminable offense.
-In the time I was there, the employer matching on retirement accounts went from a pretty meager 20% to NOTHING.
-The vesting for retirement accounts there takes 3 years, which means if you don't stay 3 years, you don't get to keep any funds they contributed. This sucks, but given that their other retirement policies were shitty, the grand total they contributed to my retirement in the year I was there $78.xx, yes 78 dollars, while my own contributions were over $2000.
-The health coverage was the worst I've ever had, and it was expensive. I made one claim against it, for a routine doctors visit and a prescription because I got a bladder infection. The total co-pay that the insurance had to make for everything was only about $100, AND THEY FOUGHT ME, ON THE BASIS THAT IT WAS A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION! I had a pretty cool doctor, who wrote me an affidavit explaining to the insurance company that "if Mr. Kimmerly had had this condition since before adopting insurance under your plan 7 months ago, the infection most likely would have spread to his kidneys and disabled him long before he came under my care"
-I had a boss who expected me to work as long as it took to get the job done(fair), but then piled on enough extra reports and presentations for me to prepare, that I'd be in the office until 9PM or later EVERY day, long after he was gone. I even worked every day, even Thanksgiving weekend, including coming in ON Thanksgiving, with my wife no less, and he still had the balls cite a "lack of effort" to a higher-up the following Tuesday. All this, and I was specifically instructed NOT to record any overtime hours.
-What most people don't know, is that over half of Roush's engineers in the Allen Park/Dearborn area are actually Canadian working here w/Visas. Most of the management is Canadian, and gives extreme preference to fellow Canadians/University of Windsor alumni. This meant that the few of us who were US citizens were perpetually assigned the '**** ' jobs, or would be assigned projects that were not turning out to be successful, to absolve the Canadians of ever having to face any consequences of screwing anything up. (though to be fair they were every bit as good/better than a lot of US guys I've worked with)
-In the spring of '09, Roush decided to cut costs. They did this the same way a lot of companies did, by laying people off. I had two qualms with this process:
One, that I don't recall seeing a single Canadian get let go, though I saw dozens of US guys get dismissed.
Two, it was done in a most dramatic fashion, akin to a sports draft. Every Friday morning, there'd be a closed meeting with just management, and they'd decide how many people to cut from each department that week. Then suspense would build throughout the day as rumors circulated on who was gonna get "axed" Then in the afternoon, management would come get people and tell them they were laid off, immediately, as in "pack your **** and get out."
-As you may expect, this happened to me as well. I made it through the first three or four rounds of cuts. On the day I got cut, my boss invited me and the one other remaining guy in my group out to lunch, at Cheli's chili bar in Dearborn, and proceeded to tell us how lucky we were, and how a lot of departments were gonna take losses. At 3:45PM, he then came and asked me to come down to the "big man's" office. Given the "led to the slaughter" mentality of what had gone on in previous weeks, I was a bit nervous. Lying to my face right to the very end, my Canadian boss told me "Don't worry, it's nothing bad like that" I arrived to find a couple of guys, the boss, and the HR woman, presenting me with a folder of papers on how to apply for unemployment.
-After telling me I was getting laid off, they then told me to "stay late" that evening because the (Canadian) guy who was going to be taking over my job responsibilities was late in returning to the office, and I shouldn't "inconvenience" him.
-Worse still, they put me on a "temporary layoff" for two weeks, saying that if new contracts came in, I'd be back to work. The conditions of this layoff were such that if they called me back to work, I needed to report within 24 hours or I'd be fired. If I got fired, I'd be ineligible for unemployment, and if I just quit and left, I'd be ineligible, so I had to stay in the Dearborn area, with no income.
-After 2 weeks of tense waiting, I was given another 3 week temporary layoff. This meant that I spent over a month generating expenses and paying bills, with no income, but i couldn't leave, for fear of loss of unemployment benefits.
-Since I was only a year before getting canned, no place will hire me now, because of my work history, (understandably) they think I'm a retarded, unreliable employee who doesn't play well with others. Without employment lasting over a year at any one place on my resume, I CAN'T EVEN GET A DAMNED INTERVIEW to demonstrate to them that I am not a retard.
-The HR woman then called me (and left a message in my Facebook) on the 23 of December 2009 and informed me that Roush had an opportunity working on-site for a powertrain customer in Indiana, and was I interested, and I had to give her a yes or no, right then. She had no details about duration or compensation to give me, but figuring the only way to demonstrate that I'm not a retard to other employers is show that Roush was willing to hire me back, I said yes, even though she couldn't give me ANY details.
-After that conversation 12/23/09, I called back once a week about the position. Not one of my phone calls was answered, or returned. I also emailed this HR woman, and despite being a legitimate candidate for a position as well as working with her for a year, she has had neither the professional, nor personal courtesy to return any of my communications via Facebook, email, or telephone.
I never really wrote any of this down, since I never wanted to "burn bridges", but its just too damn much to bear right now, and the duration of my unemployment is actually costing me my marriage right now. Wife moved out, is looking for a divorce lawyer presently.
If anyone here has wondered why I've been such an ass the last year, this is why.
/RANT
Now, does anyone know the various installed heights of pressure plates intended for each of the Fiero transmissions.
(working on cars is all that keeps me distracted from the train wreck that my life is)
[This message has been edited by KurtAKX (edited 04-02-2010).]
