Posted by Shael I work for a misogynistic asshole who thinks men can and should sit on their asses all day long and do absolutely nothing while women bust ass and that they should do every fucking thing that he or another man says. I'm sorry, but I don't think this way, my stepfather...well...he expects the same treatment. Anyway, it's either too hot or too cold where I work, my boss is an asshole who hates women and thinks we need to be "put in our place", his words, not mine. The worst part, it's not just my boss, it's bosses in most departments all over the mill that believe women are inferior. I would rather be treated as badly or as well as a man than be treated differently than a man. The whole situation wouldn't bother me half as much if he treated the men as badly as he treats the rest of us. Shael

Sounds like a scene out of North Country.

Posted by fedge Sounds like a scene out of North Country.

unfortunately, Shaels' not kidding... where she works is like a Darwinian experiment gone wrong. We in the rest of the experiment (mill) refer to the finishing room as where the women, weirdos and wussies get sent. In my department, we have women working with us, but it takes a very special type because people where I work are rude, crude, redneck-y and more than a big bigoted. An investigator for the company was at our mill in the late summer, early fall and made the comment to the manager that stepping into our mill was taking a step back 50 years when it came to the way the personnel thought, acted, etc.

Most of the people I worked with took that as a compliment, as scary as that was.
And Shael, you need to kick tim fernandez right in his ballsack.

Posted by Samurai unfortunately, Shaels' not kidding... where she works is like a Darwinian experiment gone wrong. We in the rest of the experiment (mill) refer to the finishing room as where the women, weirdos and wussies get sent. In my department, we have women working with us, but it takes a very special type because people where I work are rude, crude, redneck-y and more than a big bigoted. An investigator for the company was at our mill in the late summer, early fall and made the comment to the manager that stepping into our mill was taking a step back 50 years when it came to the way the personnel thought, acted, etc. Most of the people I worked with took that as a compliment, as scary as that was. And Shael, you need to kick tim fernandez right in his ballsack.

I'd have to step down to reach it.
There's no way for them to pay women less, which is the only good thing about it really. New hires get paid a lot less than I do for the same work, which isn't very fair, at least I don't think it is. I make 17 to 18 an hour for what I do, new hires get 14 to 15, because my classification is rank or level 16, they reclassed my job to a level 12 or 13 job for new hires in a recent blanket agreement between the union and the company. Also, they get less vacation time and it takes longer to accumulate it and getting any time off for them is next to impossible other than personal days.
Where I work, we get the rejects and the idiots that can't make it or can't be trained to do more difficult jobs. If they're real idiots, they get my job when I have to move up to one of the other jobs I'm trained on in the line of progression. In order to move up, you do have to demonstrate some mental acuity, like the ability to read, write and operate a computer program and read a tape measure, but you'd be amazed at the amount of people that never get further than just putting header panels into rolls because they can't get the handle on a really simple computer program, read a tape measure, operate a pretty simple power tool, thread paper through a piece of equipment where there's a huge diagram showing you which way to put the paper over the rollers, or read a digital display.
What really gets me though...Samurai's job is much more physically demanding and much harder, something I couldn't do because my ankles are shot and they don't pay him nearly what the job's worth. Honestly, he should get more than I make, but they explain the pay scale this way...Sam doesn't deal with product going out the door, my name and ID number goes on every roll I touch, so the company can kick me in the ass if there's a problem with it and I didn't catch it before it went out on the truck.
Sam should still make more than I do for what they ask of him though, as hazard pay.
As far as sexual harassment goes...someone recently got a manager and some others some time off and one fired due to threatening a lawsuit. The woman involved is one tough bitch, and I say that with the utmost respect, I really like her a lot, but damn...she did jobs I only wish I were tough enough to do, she used to work in shipyards in Conn, Mass and VA. The men are so bad where Sam and I work, that even she had had enough. She likes her job here, that's the only reason she stays, she enjoys working in the machine room. Which is why I felt bad when they tried to drive her out over this, anyone that actually likes it up there, I have the greatest respect in the world for.
Personally, I can't complain, it's not the people I work with so much as it is the managers. Even the facility manager knows this, he pointed to the management during his little spiel in a facility wide meeting about worker morale and it being lower than it has been in years.

Shael

As a side note...one of my coworkers is filing a sexual harassment/mistreatment suit against my boss. Yay.
My boss allows one guy in particular to sit all shift doing absolutely nothing when the machines aren't running shipping rolls and demands that the women on the line do the shit jobs around the department.
I spoke with my operator today and she said that she's waiting to see if they make him clean the elevators from the machine room tonight, dunno if they did or not and I won't know till tomorrow night.
They're used to send rolls down to the automated belt system where I work. Rolls are pushed into the elevator or lowerator, lowered down, kicked out onto a turn table and onto a series of belts where they either go to roll storage in the back of the building or to the belts that go to the roll ramp or roll wrapping, where I work.
These things are nasty, there's hydraulic fluid, oil and grease everywhere. You have to lock out the circuit breakers and a 6x6 pole, well, it's more like a log, that has to be stuck underneath the platform to keep it from crushing you because the hydraulic cylinders that raise and lower the platforms are unreliable even with the pumps powered down and locked out, you can't guarantee that the platforms will stay in the raised position, so the 6x6 has to be put in place, once in a while you have to use a hydraulic jack to raise it enough to put it in, then to add insult to injury, you have to go in through an access door in the basement and clean about 5 to 10 tons of paper out when they need to weld in the shaft. It's the shittyest job in the room and because we're in roll handling, it's our responsibility to do it. What irks me is that they think it's a woman's job because they call it "cleaning", it's more like mucking out a horse stall than it is cleaning because you end up using a rake, shit in your hair and covered in grease.
It's not that I mind doing the shit work, that's not the issue, it's when they target the women and expect us to do it all while the men aren't made to do anything at all.

Shael

ah... we never get to hear the good gossip at our end.
we're off in the twilight zone.

Posted by Samurai ah... we never get to hear the good gossip at our end. we're off in the twilight zone.

And I thought the gossip at my company was bad.

Like back when I was in Albany...there were a few people who thought I was 'Dukes bastard son! I'm not kidding!