Daimler Trucks North America – “A bad choice for a career”

Pros

This is a good place to build up your catia experience and then move to Boeing after 4 or 5 years for some better pay. But we have a lot of vactaion, holidays, and sick days. A new 401K plan. Good work life balance. Extremely low stress. 2 health care provider choices Kaiser and Blue Cross. F.S.A. and H.S.A available. A new annual 2% merit program.

Cons

Compensation has taken another turn for the worse here. The hourly resident contractors are still working with a 10% paycut even though salaried engineers got their 10% back plus several bonuses at the beginning of the year. So now we are seeing hourly resident contractors leaving. Starting Jan 2011 the compensation package was completely redone. It was a complicated mix of salary, retirement, and health care benefit changes. It was rolled out in a classic shell game method with so many changes we didnt realize how much we lost until we went back to our desks and ran the numbers. The biggest loss was the pension. If you get hired here you will probably sit next to someone who will get 3000/mo when they retire and you wont get squat. Health care premiums went up to 360/mo from 160/mo. Co pays and deductables went up. Coverages decreased. The 1 thing I really dislike about this place is that they are constantly making changes to your compensation which makes it difficult for taking care of your family and planning for retirement.

Advice to Senior Management

We know nothing about retirement planning yet you expect us to do it all now. How would you like me to manage your retirement plan?Ididn't think so. But you expect me to manage my own? You got some nerve. That new Schwab 401K is very poor as far as 401K plans go. You took our pension and hung us out to dry!