Derrick Reviews

Hourly pay. Derrick prides itself on its huge end of the year Christmas bonuses. However, they tend to use these bonuses to buffer and hide the fact that they simply do not pay their employees enough in hourly pay. Trained Welders starting at $14/hr? 4 year degreed Engineers at $16/hr? Yes, you do gross a decent paycheck by the end of the year. However, to do so you must work the mandatory 47.5 hours a week (for all shop workers and some office personell), and rely on a nice bonus (which is soley dependent on the profitibility of the company). Not to mention that bonus gets taxed at an outrageous 45% . A bonus should be a bonus, not a makeup for lack of pay. Derrick does not have a structrured pay scale, everything is "merit" based. I use the term merit quite loosely. More often than not it appears to be a popularity constest as opposed to who's actually doing the best work. This causes many workers to become discouraged and wonder what it actually takes to obtain a decent raise. Derrick is also becoming quite famous for their yearly layoffs. They have a turnover rate that is larger than any other company that I know of. Upper management relies on the plant foremen to decide who stays and who goes, which ultimately means the older guys who arent necessarily the best fit for the job stay, and the younger up and coming guys leave (hopefully for greener pastures).

Communication throughout the company is horrid. Owners are great but have surrounded themselves with yes-men that take their huge salaries and tell them what they want to hear. Wages are unfair and raises are unstructured and unfair. Competence has nothing to do with earning more money. Hard work does not get noticed, only lots of overtime, so there's no motivation at all. Doing more and knowing how to do more equates to nothing. Mandatory 10 hour days and 50 hour work weeks so it appears employees are getting decent salaries but it's only because they work more on lower wages and the added bonus at Christmas is essentially the rest of their salary. So with the company making less money and insurance going up every year: every year that goes by an employee makes less money. The paid time off would be decent for a 40 hours a week job but for 50 it's low. Taking a day off means you then get to work 40 hours that week - the same amount as most other jobs every week. Parties are nice but you can't pay bills with beer and wings. A union is unwanted but may be needed.