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Ruger Announces Layoffs
- Thread starter Zappa
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greencobra
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indirect labor "tied to employee performance" and no production workers. hmmm, just cleaning house, getting rid of some mid-level deadwood perhaps?
Lank
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I am worried about this- there are numerous douchebags that could be the next pres.
greencobra
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probably ![[laugh]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/012.gif "Laugh [laugh]")
greencobra
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maybe their making room for a new design team to freshen up a butt ugly pistol line. those center fire semi autos are chunky, clunky and ugly. remember those p-85s? the same designer must still work there. i'm surprised they didn't put the ruger spin on the 1911s. but, big fan of the redhawks and nm blackhawks here. don't mess with perfection...except of course the .45 acp/ 45 colt rh. lol
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This is going to make it VERY hard for those people to find new jobs, especially within the industry
I don't understand the wide disparity in the aesthetics of Ruger's product line since the SR series came out. Half of what they make has been refined to be pleasing or classic and the other half looks like an 8 year old was given a crayon and a Kel-Tec catalog to sketch ideas from. One wonders if their is a feud or two different schools of thought in their product development department?
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These are probably efficiency people who walk around the factory with a stop watch measuring cycle times and creating a standard of how many parts an average worker should make in a shift.
Worked for a company who hired a guy to be an engineer, but he couldn't do the job, so they transformed him into something like that and he made some cool spreadsheets that dazzled the boss. He quit the job after 4 months and me and the other engineer about threw a party.
Worked for a company who hired a guy to be an engineer, but he couldn't do the job, so they transformed him into something like that and he made some cool spreadsheets that dazzled the boss. He quit the job after 4 months and me and the other engineer about threw a party.
“It was for the needs of the business and tied to employee performance,”
Wow Would do not want to be one of those employees. I really don't think that was a good idea for Ruger to put that statement out.
Wow Would do not want to be one of those employees. I really don't think that was a good idea for Ruger to put that statement out.
greencobra
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yeah, that team goes outside the proverbial box, for sure.
84ta406
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Our shop does this every time you scan in and out of production jobs. Your job card has a predetermined rate and when you clock out with final quantity the computer puts your rate in a spread sheet. Honestly though you can walk around the plant and know who is making rate or not in 10 seconds by seeing their parts boxes and their movements.
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Thing is you can't really measure a person's rate unless the machine is running well and has no issues. Now, I've never worked in mass production before, always for places that did a lot of changeovers because they were job shops or low to medium production and when you come in to do your shift you never know what the guy before you has left you.
Even when you're pretty well set, things can go to shit quickly.
I think the telltale signs of who is working and doing a good job, or at least trying to, are they're at their machine, not on their cell phone, and they have good parts, not a bucket of junk. My first job as engineer was a union shop and those who knew their stuff did great work. Those who were below their level... they're the bane of a union shop. Not that they weren't trying, they just didn't have the intangibles.
It wasn't an easy job though and the shop wasn't air conditioned and before I quit, they weren't allowed to have coffee or beverages at their machines anymore. I can understand if the rate went down considerably after that
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Well, with these people gone the employees are Ruger should be pretty happy they don't have people walking around thinking they're big shots anymore. Quality may actually improve now that people can work at their own pace... maybe. Wages for the factory floor are pretty low.
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They're going to get 6 months of unemployment insurance at probably 75% of what their wage was. They'll be fine.
Not a bad severance package, but still doesn't insulate the company from any recourse over a bone-headed termination statement. Most likely, folks will move on, but why crap on them and open up the company to risk?
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Don't see how Ruger opened themselves to some sort of lawsuit. Unless you're union, a company can fire any employee for any reason, even if it's just because they don't want them working there anymore.
I use to joke with people I worked with that managers would walk out to the floor and fire people because they don't like the color of their shoelaces or their haircut. Nothing you can do about it, but you will get a 6 month paid vacation... I mean, unemployment out of it.
Now, I'm the type of employee who likes to bounce around to different companies because I love seeing and experiencing and learning new things in manufacturing, so I'd view it as an opportunity to grow as an employee. I've found it worse to be employed when you work for places where you're salary, not paid for your overtime, threaten to be stabbed by your boss in the neck with a pen, talked down to by a Millennial for not taking out the trash (which was never a part of the job description I signed up for), lied to by management about overtime, followed into the toolroom by a supervisor every time you have to change a tool, or other bullshit.
Unfortunately, I've found out in my 5 short years of working in manufacturing that it's mostly politics that runs the places anyway and it's politics that makes the decisions who stays and who goes, not necessarily the bottom line.
greencobra
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it's called "employee at will." you can leave, or be terminated, at any time for no reason. if a company has that in place, a new hire will sign a document stating they know about the policy. most people blow thru the paperwork and never realize they signed it. you get a copy in your package, the original goes on file in hr. just sayin'.
When publically traded companies start putting out that they are cutting headcount based on individual performance the stock generally will go up. It's taken as a sign that the corporation is paying attention to the p and l and getting rid of dead weight.
Does not surprise me at all that they would publically announce it that way.
tuna
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I'm not one for aesthetics for the most part, a gun can be ugly, and if it looks and feels right, I like it.
I like most of Ruger's offerings. And I'm bored with their quality. They may make ugly guns, but they work. I've never had a problem with any of my Rugers.
If they're finding people who aren't working well and firing them, doesn't that make sense? Isn't not working well a great excuse to fire someone?
I like most of Ruger's offerings. And I'm bored with their quality. They may make ugly guns, but they work. I've never had a problem with any of my Rugers.
If they're finding people who aren't working well and firing them, doesn't that make sense? Isn't not working well a great excuse to fire someone?
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This potential liability issue has nothing to do with "employment at will" but disparagement and interference with re-employability. Most big companies have "no recommendation" policies and managers are specifically not allowed to give references. This is due to the possibility of litigation due to an unfavorable reference which Ruger has, for all practical purposes, done for the recently decruited.
Also, your statement you cannot fire an employee for "any reason" is false. There are numerous protected reasons that cannot be used - race, religion, national origin, seuality (at least in MA), reporting a crime by management, etc.
You can fire an employee for no reason at all, which means for any reason at all, as long as it's not discriminatory.
They decide they don't need X number of employees, they can just flip a coin to see who goes. Realistically it's usually done by either highest pay or worst performer or least needed skill set or a combination of all those things.
If you're the highest paid, slow guy with a bad attitude, you're gone.
Thing is you can't really measure a person's rate unless the machine is running well and has no issues. Now, I've never worked in mass production before, always for places that did a lot of changeovers because they were job shops or low to medium production and when you come in to do your shift you never know what the guy before you has left you.
Even when you're pretty well set, things can go to shit quickly.
I think the telltale signs of who is working and doing a good job, or at least trying to, are they're at their machine, not on their cell phone, and they have good parts, not a bucket of junk. My first job as engineer was a union shop and those who knew their stuff did great work. Those who were below their level... they're the bane of a union shop. Not that they weren't trying, they just didn't have the intangibles.
It wasn't an easy job though and the shop wasn't air conditioned and before I quit, they weren't allowed to have coffee or beverages at their machines anymore. I can understand if the rate went down considerably after that
There are systems for measuring all of this. My shop for example, the second the spindle stops turning for any type of maintenance issue, we can clock off of the job and clock in on other sub categories that measure indirect work accounts. That way the time that is clocked towards the actual job stays true to the data. You then can calculate productivity and utilization or employees based on this data. Quoted time divided by actual time = productivity. Hours logged into jobs divided by hours worked is utilization. Utilization cannot always be blamed on the employee, that just shows how much of their time they were not doing their job (for whatever reason). The productivity number is an exact measurement of what they were doing with their time when they were supposed to be doing it.
Unless you work for the government, then you get a promotion and a raise.
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