Company benefits or lack thereof

As readers of this column know, I’ve worked for several manufacturers over my career: some good, some not so good. One thing that they have had in common, though, is they all provided benefits in some form.

Early in my career, I worked at a company in Chicago for a few years that paid well and had great benefits for that time. We had something like 12 paid holidays, terrific company-paid health insurance—but no dental or vision coverage—and a pension plan paid 100% by the company. Those were the benefits for regular laborers at the plant. Eventually, I reached salary status at the company when I became the machine programmer. In addition to the benefits listed, I received what was similar to a modern 401(k) program. I could contribute up to 7% of my salary, and my contribution was matched 100%. In retrospect, I was an idiot at the time to leave. Ah, the young and the restless.

I left that company to work as an applications engineer for a machine tool builder. I took the job assuming I would be paid biweekly like my previous job. Not! I wasn’t paid weekly either. Monthly! I had to not only stretch my paycheck but adjust to the government taking a bigger percentage due to the size of the checks. Sure, I got a refund at tax time, but I needed money when I was paid. I stuck it out for a couple of years there and then moved on. During those years, people changed jobs for even a quarter more an hour and didn’t think twice about it.

Then, I worked on contract for several years. I got decent pay but no benefits to speak of. If I took off a day, I didn’t get paid. If I wanted insurance, some companies didn’t offer any. The ones that did provide insurance charged what seemed a prohibitive price. Typically, there was no pension or 401(k) and no paid holidays. I did get paid 1.5 times my normal pay rate for overtime.