Here is for all those worker bee's out there! My husband had worked for the same company for 14 years. He was treated with dignity, and was paid for every hour he was there. Unfortunately that job was lost due to the poor economy and loss of customers. Before he had that job he was a Master Auto Mechanic. He has kept his ASE certifications up to date and he has also worked on many friends and families cars. When he lost his job he began to hunt for new jobs. He had 3 job offers. One would have been for a shop where he would be paid for every hour he worked but he would have to work every Sunday. One was for a company where he would not have to work
Sundays but he would only be paid flat rate. I don't think the average person out there understands Flat rate.( I don't think my husband or I totally understood it either we do now to our misfortune.) A Flat Rate Mechanic only gets paid for the work that they get during the day. The company will give them a car to fix, and say this job should take you two hours to fix. If you take longer than two hours tough, you only get paid for two hours. Now if you are the top mechanic in the shop, Flat rate can be a benefit, you are able to do the job fast, and fix the car before the two hours and then move on. But if you are a lower level mechanic this could be your DOOM! That is the situation my husband has found himself in.
He is expected to be at the shop that he works at from 8:00am to 5:00pm. He then either gets little bits of work, or no work at all. He told them when he interviewed that he did not have all the knowledge about the new computer systems and that he needed to learn, and they said "Don't worry, we will put you by the shop Foreman and he will help you. That lasted about 4 weeks. In those four weeks they paid him salary. Then they said you are on your own now. And he went from getting $1125.00 every two weeks to making the first pay check for two weeks of $350.00, to now about $789.00 for two weeks to sometimes $820.00 for two weeks. Sometimes $620.00 per two weeks you get the picture. You can not feed a family of 4 on $1400.00 a month. You can not pay your mortgage, monthly bills, health insurance and buy groceries on this. You can not afford to even have the employee health plan on this because then you will make less than $1000.00 a month.( so basically my husband is at this dealership for 50+ hours and gets paid for about 25 hours if he is lucky slave labor right!) The service writer assigned to my husband only gives him the work no one else will do, and the work that pays the least. All the mechanics in the shop tell my husband that they had at least a year of training beside a seasoned mechanic before they were put on their own. They say to him " They just threw you in here." If the economy was wonderful and people were bringing their cars in to be fixed then maybe my husband would have a chance, but with the poor economy even the top mechanics are not making over 40 hours. There are days when they all stand around doing nothing. And guess what the company does not pay them for those nothing hours, they get paid nothing (but they are expected to be there!). One day this week my husband was at work for 8 hours and he got paid for 2 hours. He stayed for 11 hours one day to get paid for 7.(when my husband asked if they had enough work for him to make forty hours they assured him all the mechanics were making 40 hours or more) So I had a little sit down chat with my husband last night. I told him you need to figure out how much more of this you can take. You have lost 17 pounds, you are mentally and physically stressed. When you are home you have no energy, you just sleep. You need to decided if it is time to leave. You keep saying you are there to get the online training, but when you are home you do not have the energy to do the training. Also I don't see that you have the desire to do the training anymore. I think with the failed promises, the lack of work, and extreme decrease in pay from them he could quit and still be able to reopen his unemployment claim, and then find a job where he can get paid fair wages for the hours worked. Any way as my husband talks to other mechanics in this shop he finds that many are losing their possessions because they are not making enough to survive. Something should be done.
If my husband and I did not live on an extremely strict budget, if we had not had savings, no debt, and food stored in our house we would be absolutely destitute by now. This is what some people are going through. I've met so many people who just can't make ends meet with one job. So many people I work with have two jobs. This is a depression, not a recession. My husband right now would be better off working for minimum wage for 50 hours a week than for what he is getting paid. It is Sick! Guess I just needed to get it out there. Anyone who feels the same way or is going through a tough time comment let me know.
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