Good people to work with - Administrative GTC Machining Employee Review

4.0
Feb 21, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I've worked at GTC Machining (formerly Garrity Tool Co.) for over ten years. When I started working here, the company had a reputation for being one of the premier machine shop workplaces in the city. It was known for high quality, high wages, and a high caliber of worker. After the founding owner sold the company, things started to deteriorate and really took a downturn when a disastrous general manger took over management of the company in mid 2015. He single handedly ran off over a 1/2 of the best machinists and other personnel. Fortunately, that horrendous general manager left the company in early 2016. Since then, some stability has returned to the company and general morale and outlook is stabilized if not improving. In February 2019, the previous owners, Ottenweller Companies of Ft. Wayne, IN sold the company to a new owner who has changed the name from Garrity Tool Co. to GTC Machining. The new owners seem to be a significant improvement over the old owners at Ottenweller Cos. Benefits were immediately improved, even if only slightly. The new owners have, so far, shown a level of respect for the competence and abilities of the people working at GTC. - which the old owners seemed to lack. The morale and outlook has definitely improved since the ownership change. We'll see how things progress. Overall, the best thing about GTC Machining is the quality of people that work here. The management does a good job of hiring quality people with a good work ethic. The lazy, the incapable, or the workers with bad attitudes don't last too long here. In general, I'd say the management hires good people that don't need to be micromanaged, and so they can be quite flexible without making a bunch of strict work rules to keep the employees doing what they should be doing anyway. Overtime hours are generally pretty regular. A 50 hour work week is pretty much the standard and only rarely is work so scarce that hours are cut lower than 50 hours. Usually the opportunity to work more than 50 hours is available if desired.

Cons

Wages and benefits aren't what they used to be. I guess benefits have been reduced everywhere, but this doesn't seem to be the shop with the highest pay and best benefits anymore.

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GTC Machining Response
7y
Thanks for this very thoughtful and even-handed review. This is a great company, with a reputation for producing extremely high quality work. The company's most valuable asset is our people and as such, we're putting a lot of emphasis on wages benefits and training. Since taking over, we have switched to Anthem health insurance with a range of options from high to low deductible, and have a 401K with employer match. Since this review was written, we changed the vacation policy so it is earned more quickly, starting in the first year, and added an extra 4 weeks of sabbatical after 10 years and every 5 years thereafter. As for wages, we are hiring aggressively so are aware of market rates. We are putting in place a process of comparing new hire wages with existing personnel at review time so as to be fair to everyone. We have already offered one new leadership training class and are also investigating a self-paced programming course to develop/improve Mastercam skills. We hired a consultant to work with machinists 1:1 starting in mid-June, to optimize their code and learn advanced programming. Skill development is being formally introduced into the annual review process as well. This is just the beginning (we've only owned the company since Feb 1, 2019). We'll be doing formal planning with the leadership team for 2020 in Nov-Dec 2019 using lean principles and continuing to improve over time. Your input for further improvement is welcome!

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Pros

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Cons

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Pros

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