I am home again, waiting to be able to take some more pills before I pass out again. And as I sit here waiting, one thing keeps popping into my head: incentives. The way I get paid is kinda funky. It isn't as simple as working so many hours under a fixed pay rate. I do have a fixed pay rate or $9.66/hr and a set schedule of 40hr/wk (plus the occasional mandatory 6-8 hours of overtime on Saturdays), but there is more than that. Also, affecting my pay is my productivity, my quality, and my attendance for the week.
Productivity: Every line has a few factors that figure into a rate of production (machine, cure time on rubber, type of rubber, handling procedures, etc). This base rate is what you have to do every night. Of course there are reasons you can't hit this rate, but downtime aside, there is really no reason you can't exceed this rate. And exceeding the rate is the first step to making extra money. At a max, you can get paid for 148% of the rate, so instead of 8 hours worth of pay, it is closer to 12. This is your incentive bonus. The pay rate also fluctuates with incentive. Instead of it simply being my fixed pay rate for the extra hours, it is dependent on overtime as well. ([fixed pay rate]*40 + 1.5*[fixed pay rate]*[overtime])/(40 + [overtime]) The more overtime you work, the higher your incentive. Even with a couple of bad days, me and my partner still average at least 3 hours a night.
Quality: Aside from write ups, and potential layoff/termination, making bad parts affects your pay. Rather simply, they yank your incentive bonus. Which, if you think about it, makes sense. Why reward you for making bad parts faster. Take the time to do it right first, then work on getting faster.
Attendance: Any week where you work all of you scheduled hours, you get 12% of your base pay (before incentive bonus) as a bonus. There are some restrictions about overall absences, time of year, etc, but for the most part, if you are there, you get it. If you come in 5 minutes late, you miss that 12% for the week. This is kind of a two step thing. It serves as a bonus giving you an incentive to show up consistently, and letting those who can't really get an incentive bonus get a little extra cash.
So, to recap, since I only worked 1.5 hours, I lost: [Base] 6.5*9.66 + [Incentive] 3*9.66 + [Attendance bonus] .12*40*9.66 = 139.57 gross. And that number will be higher if there is mandatory overtime this weekend since it would have affected both my incentive pay rate, my attendance bonus, and will prevent my from getting paid overtime. Add to that the $30 I spent at CVS on meds to help get over this... it is just depressing. Oh, and every other day I miss this week will cost me about $106 gross as well.
