IBA decided that they will no longer be giving COLA - merit based raises are enough. UF's payments have inflation baked into the contract, but the employees keeping the site running have to just eat that cost? Sounds fair.
UF also pays uptime bonuses which originally went to the engineers that supported the site. All that money goes to corporate now and they'll tell you PSP is the replacement.
PSP points are insufficient and might pay a tenth of what the bonuses did - not an exaggeration. The Jax site was also told that HR would come in to explain how the points were distributed. It seemed like there was no rhyme or reason beyond "Corporate gets a LOT and we'll give you enough to distract you a bit from all the other stuff you're mad about." We're engineers, we can do, and we did, the math. HR never came, and at one point we were told that the boss's boss was going to come in to explain it -- yeah, because that's a completely fair and safe power dynamic.
The Jax site supports "two" sites, thus they have higher staffing, but they only get raises/promotions for one site. So, if a 5 man single-site were to get 3 promotions/raises, Jax, a 15-ish man site, would get the same number. That sounds fair, right?
PTO benefits just got slashed. Previously we could carry and sell back some - that has been drastically reduced. You can't spend your vacation and flex time if you're always covering for other people and just regain everything you burned. And because the majority of the site are higher tenure guys, they accrue it at a higher rate.
They system and tech is from the 80s on half the site. Not a joke - there are a significant number of things that if they were to break, you're gonna go on Ebay to source.
Documents / Procedures - The storage system is absolutely infantile - Metadoc was not made for work instructions. We often used obsolete procedures because the system is so old that mandatory upgrades should have been installed a decade ago, but they can't upgrade it because "It's expensive, and maybe UF will want to do it when they re-up the contract."
401k match just this year got moved from 2.5 to 4% (national avg is 4.8%)
Belgium employees get automatic raises to stay well above inflation because IBA is mandated to do so, but somehow when it comes to the US ones there's always an excuse. "Oh, well the sites are paid for, but not generating revenue yet so there's no money." Not. Our. Problem. IBA loves to play a "small-company" façade, but it's nonsense. IBA does NOT care about the US employees.
At Jax alone, there are multiple employees that have had so many medical problems as a result of how much work they've put into this company, and IBA will continue to work them to the bone.
Management is ridiculously stingy with their budget. Just an example, it is company policy to expense new safety boots every year for each employee - you better believe we heard the "Oh, well, maybe decide if you think you really need them."
Instead of hiring new engineers, IBA has been considering hiring "Technicians" instead - I can promise you, I promise you, that you WILL be asked to do the same duties as an engineer and you will NEVER be paid the same. If you are a technician, do not leave that MCR and fix a thing if you're not being paid. It's nonsense - if you're doing the same job, you deserve the same pay (with a minor correction for time in rate), not an entirely different job code just so they can pay you less.
Engineers - You will not be paid more after you get qualified to operate. You will not be paid more after getting Adv. Operator. Raises come by "merit based" or with promotions, only. And the raises that come with promotions are not exactly amazing - ask the team what they were offered to take the POne STL position in the past.
