I have been looking for manufacturing, assembly, production positions all over the Midwest. It’s absolutely shocking how many of them want you to work rotating shifts.
Look at the image I submitted. That company wants you to work 3rd shift one week, then 2nd shift the next, then 1st shift the next, and then repeat it over and over. How in the hell is that healthy?
And this requirement for rotating shifts is prevalent in so many job ads now. WTF is going on with the world?
Full job ad here:
It’s a way if keeping the less favorable shift times at full working capacity while not having to pay more for those times.
Typically (back in the day) you may pay day shift employees $12 an hour, but in order to get enough people to choose night shift, they’d have to offer $14 an hour.
Then, of course, if you started nights and were actually asked if you’d like to move to days, if they needed more on day shift, no one would ever want to swap and except a pay cut in order to do it. Of course, if you got to keep your higher rate and move to days then everyone on days would get mad that they weren’t making as much.
So yeah, it’s all corporate bullshit so they can move you around to any hours they’d like in order to keep the 24/7 operation going and all shifts balanced with workers without having to change any pay rates.
A lot of people in this thread are saying the same thing. I can understand the surface level math of it all. But there has to be a cost to losing employees due to the harshness of the schedule and then having to hire and train new employees.
Look at the job posting that I posted. They are offering a referral bonus of up to $5,000. They probably would not need to do that if they weren’t having a hard time finding willing employees.
Just looking at the surface level math and saying it is because they don’t have to pay a differential is not taking in to account employee turnover or the need to pay referral bonuses to attract people.
Referral bonuses never happen at the start. It’s always after something like 6 months or a year of the referred employee being there, so depending on the job, there might not be great odds that both employees will still be present a year later.
Also, if it’s a job where the time to train isn’t that long, a high turnover rate may be exactly what the company wants. No raises, no long term employees trying to start a union, lower retirement costs, less people signing into benefits, no accrued sick time being used, etc.
Some companies operate on a “fuck you” budget.
That sounds like a problem for a year down the road, but if the company hits its marks this quarter the CEO gets a bonus.