The raises they give to full time, hired employees (Not temps) are a joke, small percentage of what the company profits throughout the year, the biggest raise I saw in my 4 years working there was around 60 cents. The yearly average I would get is no more than 10-15 cents, and these are with above average yearly reviews by upper management. The excuse Bergstrom uses in order for employees to get paid more and further in the company is to acquire a mastery. All the mastery program does is give Bergstrom an excuse to give employees that most likely have been working there for years already (and already deserved a $1.50 raise), a proper raise. They then place most of these masters in positions around the company for which many are under-qualified. Many are placed in the CAPPS department, and due to their lack of education, end up modifying the books and leaving them worse then before. Most of the books are filled with grammatical errors, badly worded instructions, and leave out vital information. Keep in mind that these books are supposed to be used by every assembler in the assembling process.
This company takes no responsibility for their lack of attention to their overall process of assembly. When an assembler commits a mistake that goes past the auditor and makes it to the CAT facilities, most supervisors would point full blame to the assembler, completely overlooking the auditor that was supposed to catch the mistake and failed to commit to their task. Many times I heard the excuse of "well the Auditors weren't even there when the company started the cab assembly operations" but fail to notice that that in itself was a crucial mistake on behalf of management. The auditor is a vital part of any assembly operation and should be held to full responsibility when they fail to do their job, as well as the assemblers. Many auditors appointed to their positions have had little to no experience as an assembler, and are expected to find inconsistencies based on a "Look here, here, there and there" sheet of paper and loosely overlooking nuts and bolts to check for tightness.
Since the beginning of my time at Bergstrom as a temp I was lied to, told that I would get hired in 30-60 days and it took a full 6 months to get hired. Once I was hired I was told I would get my full 2 weeks vacation and only received a fraction of it, and to add to that, I wasn't able to get a full raise until almost a year later (which didn't help much since the raise was like, 12 cents) due to the timing of which I was hired.
In no way am I knocking the Supervisors in charge of overlooking line operations at Bergstrom, though there has been more than a few rotten apples, many of them understand the employees and get pushed around by the higher-ups to meet impossible demands, unfortunately some also take that out on the employees working under them, which is no good, but only a result of a vicious cycle. I'm sure of the fact that if giving raises was merely based on employee performance and the supervisor's call of judgement, Bergstrom would be filled with many more happy employees, who get paid a lot more than they are as of now.
I could keep going, but I'm tired of typing.
So all in all, Bergstrom is a great place.
