Pros
Built a flood wall to protect the plant. Boot allowance every year, ok dental and vision plan, 401K match but average. Helping the community by donating time, and raising money for good causes. Performance pay if you don't take more than four days off a year. Union for hourly employees, which only protects us from not getting fired for no reason since Pennsylvania is an at will state.
Cons
Pay is now bad for the area. Kawneer used to pride themselves on how much they pay, that it was in the top three paying companies in the area, now they don't care anymore. Medical insurance is horrible, coverage isn't good and you have to pay around $100 a week for family medical coverage. That wouldn't be so bad if you got decent raises but raises are so small that each year when insurance goes up, it wipes out your small raise you just got. In most cases you are making less money in the new year. Kawneer steals a week vacation from us in February because they shut down during that time. If you have only one week vacation that year, you are out of vacation for the entire rest of the year! Company pretty much controls the union, no sick time, no personal time. For people working I believe 25+ years, you get one personal day off! I would be embarrassed to offer that. Can't get sick or you get a hit, if you get more then 4 hits a year, you lose performance pay. So people come to work sick, and get everyone else gets sick that works around them because of the hit policy(another safety issue). The company has a written policy about their hits but the company doesn't have to follow it, which doesn't make any sense why they have written polices. Kawneer doesn't accept doctor excuses for being out sick for one day. If you are sick for one day, you get a hit. Use to lose hits every six months, now it takes a year to lose a hit. If you get 6 hits a year, you are fired. They ask for advice with ways to improve working conditions / moral but they don't listen to hourly employees at all. Preach safety as being # 1 but profit is, and always will be. They care about the customer and making customers happy which is great, you don't have a business without customers but they couldn't care less about their employees. People are quitting for better jobs, and that is something I didn't see before. They buy junk equipment from companies that are looking to file bankruptcy so they could try and save a few dollars but it cost Kawneer more because of all the down time because of equipment issues. Most supervisors don't have any idea on how anything works or how it is supposed to run, won't listen to shop employees to help improve anything. Plant manager seems confused at communication meetings why nobody likes working here anymore, just look at all the negative changes you made at the plant since coming here a few years ago! We are told at meetings that our location is one of the best plants, that we make good money, etc., but every time contract time comes up, they fight us tooth and nail, and more then half of the employees cave and agree to a bad contract. They tell us in meetings how the parent company Alcoa will make an extra 1 or 2 billion a year, by buying another company, etc., and the PM gets excited telling the news but we don't see a dime, he might, we won't. Always bringing up closing doors around contract time to try and scare people in signing a bad contract. Their employee recognition program is a joke. They are supposed to recognize people that work six months straight without missing any time, they only do that with employees that they like.