Pros
Good pay. About 45k - 54k per year for entry level area manager. You will get paid time and a half for overtime and there's lots of it because production will always be behind. You will learn how to be an overpaid babysitter to the much catered union employees. You will learn how to deal with an everchanging production environment during a typical 8 hr shift. The experience you gain is incomparable because this is the worse case scenario for a production environment in today's era.
Cons
where to begin...? This company in Akron, fired all their newer area managers in the past two years except for the ones that been there for a while. I think upper management did this as a reason for thier failures to keep up with production. They cut a lot of race tire accounts and pretty much only make NASCAR tires and some of the top fuel drag tires there now... The company has their hands tied because the union cripples them with thier unwillingness to cooperate on many issues such as working different jobs within a shift due to lack of work or equipment breakdowns or component shortages. In order for this company to survive in this NASCAR business, they would have to cross train their labor and move them frequently to different jobs because in a union, you only can do one job, and if that job is unavailable then good luck getting them do so something else. The plant is old and equipment breakdowns are daily as well as component shortages. Trying to move labor and getting them to work is nearly impossible. If the guys dont' get their way they will sometimes even break the machines on puropse to create down time. Because they are union, it is hard to write them up on simple workmanship issues and attendance. They even have last chance of last chance letters to save their people from getting fired. Some of the guys use FMLA as an excuse to miss work. There is no consitency between departments or even shifts within the same department. The area managers don't like to work together and blame each other for reasons of not meeting production goals. There is no flow of productivity because all the daily inventory is done by hand and it is very hard to know what they currently need for their tire machines. Usually they only get a shift or two notice when something is going to run out. Most of the responsiblity falls on the area managers and there isn't enough support from upper management to help them with their decisions on safety, quality, and workmanship issues. I gave this company everything I had and did a great job for them. However it wasn't enough and I feel they let me down drastically... I left a good job for this one because of high optimistic hopes withing the company. If I could've done it over, I would've never took this job because it ruined my career. Tryiing to find another job at this level isn't exactly easy and with everyone out of work it makes it tough to find just an average paying job. It's even more sad that the union guys will attack their own brothers and sisters who do take pride in their work and strive to be productive. For example... If a person has good numbers on a previous shift, then the person following will deliberately do less because they feel the person before them did too much and then they will make them feel guilty by leaving more work the next shift! lol