Workplace reviews and discussion: 橋椿金屬股份有限公司

Public holidays off and regular working hours

Having public holidays off is fake, and regular working hours are fake too.

Some time ago, in order to increase production capacity, they unilaterally changed the employment contract.

Later, to avoid being reported, they held a labor-management consultation, but ultimately disregarded all objections.

The middle and lower-level managers ignored the frontline staff’s opposition and applauded the approval of the AB-shift rotation.

They were only short of standing up and applauding, plus one day off per month, bowing and shouting,

“Long live, long live, long live forever”—in other words, working unpaid as free labor.

I. Royal relatives and cronies can do whatever they want—certain personnel responsible for parts of a production line

hide away and play on their phones. Even when an abnormality has already appeared on the production line, they finish playing first

before dealing with it. If someone without connections uses their phone to communicate work matters via LINE,

they will be suspected of playing on their phone. Yet this gentleman plays so openly that even after being discovered,

nothing happens to him. At most, he is transferred to another line.

II. The job duties do not match the position—at the factories I worked at previously, the job openings were at least more closely aligned.

At least there would not be situations where someone with a higher job grade does lower-grade work. At Chia Chun, the title says “engineer,”

but the duties range from loading and unloading materials to handling product issues from the preceding process.

Even casting and melting issues from the preceding process are dragged into this department. There is no choice: casting and melting belongs to the king’s people,

and everyone else is the king’s horse!

III. New employees and occupational safety concepts still need to be properly implemented—the quality of new employees varies too widely.

In the first group, all sorts of people get hired through interviews. Some boast of having decades of experience in traditional manufacturing,

but do not even understand the operating range of production-line automation sensors and robotic arms; they only talk about their past glories!

Others are hired simply because they worked in sheet-metal fabrication at some traditional manufacturing company. In another group, because the factory is hot,

machine designs lack spatial awareness. When replacing parts or inspecting and repairing equipment, the spaces are cramped, and Lockout/Tagout (the safety lockout and tagging procedure)

is not properly implemented.

There was once a colleague performing an inspection and repair who was nearly injured when someone on the line accidentally activated the equipment. Fortunately, there were only minor abrasions. As for the senior management,

there is not much more to say. Whether workplace-safety requirements are actually implemented still depends on the mindset of those at the top.

IV. Only production capacity is reviewed; yield is not—speaking of the AB shift, because production capacity was low, weekend production began.

It was initially thought to be temporary, until a colleague asked in a meeting when it would end. Management only replied: “That depends on when your production capacity meets the orders.”

However, even if the orders were met, weekend production lines would continue to operate.

That statement was equivalent to saying nothing. Instead of reviewing yield, they only want to increase production capacity. The products clearly have casting and melting problems,

but the downstream QC team only blames the middle-stage process and completely dares not scrutinize the upstream casting and melting process. Even when there is a problem with the mold,

the same thing happens. One senior manager even said things like, “It’ll be fine in two days.” Such remarks continue to circulate throughout the production line:

that if a mold abnormality is left for two days, it will get better. Truly a miracle of the materials industry!

V. Such a huge factory with so many production lines, yet there is no MES—everything is done through primitive, improvised methods. As if that were not enough,

it is like the Great Leap Forward’s delusion of turning iron into steel. Do they think they are starring in Fullmetal Alchemist?

The process-development position is supposed to improve yield and production capacity, but it has been reduced to doing loading and unloading, cleaning, and pushing product issues to the front end on-site.

All the problems are in the middle and downstream stages; the downstream QC team pushes everything onto the middle stage, while no one dares to push issues to the upstream casting and melting process.

They have plenty of equipment, but do not value the integration and analysis of software-based production data. The production line has piles of data,

yet everything ends up going its own way.

Finally, my advice to young people is to think carefully before considering this job. When a workplace has too many royal relatives and cronies, even if you do the right thing,

it will still somehow become your fault, because senior management is never wrong. The mistake is that you joined this company. Finding another factory would be much better than Chia Chun.