Run from this place as fast as you can if you want to spare yourself a lot of pain… figuratively and literally.
I worked at this facility for a number of years. A brief history… this plant was a Depuy Synthes / Johnson & Johnson facility until it became a Jabil plant in April 2019. The site still manufactures J&J medical implants, but the employees work for Jabil. When the company changed hands, the employee perks and benefits got significantly worse. A lot of people jumped ship. To incentivize people to stay, they came up with a plan that let people keep their J&J benefits and benefit rates, but only for 18 months, which resulted in a second wave of people quitting. The result was a mixed workforce where two people would have the same title but massive differences in their benefit costs, PTO banks, etc., simply because of when their start date was. I was a lucky one that transitioned and I felt guilty having a gifted PTO bank while my equivalents had none. They also laid off a ton of temps during COVID, so a lot of the workforce now is very green. Management gets upset when newer employees make scrap parts, but it happens all the time because the training is inadequate.
The people here are mostly wonderful, but everything is wrong about the plant. The pay here is absolutely not competitive and they have struggled to get new employees because everyone wants to work for Corning down the road and get paid far more. Promotions are very difficult to secure and the company is completely inconsistent about how they give them (I saw amazing operators who didn’t get to the 3 level for 15+ years). Jabil Elmira has no meaningful employee recognition program and people who work unbelievably hard are not recognized. They tried creating one in the form of awarding people raffle tickets for door prizes for good work. It’s a joke and completely inadequate. I have never felt less valued as an employee in my career as when I was here.
The plant is an ergonomic nightmare with repetitive motions, unsafe body positioning, and strains everywhere. They had a nurse and an ergo engineer at one time… I watched as they both left and weren’t replaced. Management gives this issue almost no attention because they are completely focused on making money and chasing every individual piece of scrap. I developed musculoskeletal problems after 6 months here (I no longer work there and still have them) and during my first doctor visit he said “we get a lot of people from your plant”.
Do yourself a favor, spare yourself the toxic culture and the physical and mental anguish and find a better career elsewhere.
