Traco Manufacturing Reviews

Short List: - They hire through a temp agency first - Owner is highly opinionated and does not seem confident in his own company - Promised/Earned raises are not actually given - A lot of foul language even by those you might least expect it from - Smokers stink up the warehouse - Poor restrooms and break room - Lack of clear company direction - Very little paid time off - Very low employee morale Detailed List: Traco hires by going through a temp agency. After 90 days of working that way, you can hire on permanently. There is a 60 day waiting period after that before qualifying for benefits. So that is at least 150 days of waiting to get hired on before getting any real benefits. The owner/CEO/President actually praised the Chinese government for their "pro-business" policies during a company meeting. He didn't seem very optimistic about the outlook of the company and blamed all the company's problems on the "government bureaucrats." He claimed that global warming is bunk because several of the palm trees at his St. George home died. He also mentioned a major client lost a lot of business due to a lack of natural disasters which in turn lowered Traco's revenue for 2013. The company meeting was extremely political and to me seemed VERY far right wing. At the very end of the meeting, he announced a 10% cut in hours indefinitely. He called it "9 days work, 1 day play" but instead we work 7.2 hours each day (7 hours and 12 minutes). This effectively lowers our pay 10%. He calls himself a professional baseball player (on LinkedIn), but if you search for his stats online, you'll find he never made it to even AAA baseball and only played for a few years. It was also abundantly clear that they really only care about their salespeople, not the warehouse/production workers so much. Other employees are not getting the raises they earned and supervisors are not getting their quarterly incentives that they were supposed to get. Several employees bad mouth one of the higher up supervisors. That supervisor seems nice on the surface, but he has a vicious and dark side. Several of the employees use very profane language. There are several smokers. When they smoke, they prop the door to outside open and smoke right next to it. It stinks up the entire warehouse. One of the smokers recently died of lung cancer, yet that didn't deter any of them from smoking. There is a severe lack of restrooms. They are planning to add more, but only one person can use the restroom at a time (one for men, one for women in the warehouse). The men's restroom is always messy, dark, and noisy from the broken fan in the ceiling. If you venture upstairs to use the salespeople's restroom, you'll find it much larger, cleaner and quieter. However, the door doesn't lock on the men's restroom upstairs. The break room is small and dark. The drinks are $1 for a 20oz bottle, but the snacks in the snack machine are overpriced, for example, 90 cents for a normal sized candy bar. There are old microwaves stacked on top of the snack/soda machines. The trash cans are often overflowing. The one table is old, round, and dirty. They are planning to expand the break room which might make some of these things better. To clock in or out for work or lunch, you must place your hand between pegs just right as your right hand is read to verify identity. This is a good way to spread germs with the entire workforce. They do provide Purell nearby to kill the shared germs on your hand. But often the Purell (and soap and paper towels) is empty and not refilled very quickly. Traco presents themselves as a "state of the art" company, but most of the machines there are decades old and constantly breaking down. They have a "perf" machine which was just pieced together from an old cutband machine. Their digital press isn't very old but breaks down frequently (and runs with Windows Vista). They bought a very expensive machine from Italy that they seem to hope will save the company, but claim they could only find one person in all of the United States qualified to run it. On their website is a picture of the building with a large mountain behind it. That is misleading as they are located in an industrial section of Orem with railroad tracks and houses right behind them. They don't have a clear direction for the company. They build and sell small shrink wrap machines. They sell boxes and other packaging materials. They print labels for companies either on plastic (PVC/PET) or "pressure sensitive" (stickers). There is one guy who can run the digital press and only two guys who can run the other press room machines. They cannot take time off during the same period. You only get 5 days of PTO, 3 floating holidays, and 7 paid holidays. They have a bell ring when it's time to start or end breaks/lunch which reminds me of my elementary school days. Breaks are 10 minutes each, lunch is 30 minutes. I accidentally broke a drill bit and the supervisor of that department told me "I'm going to kill you." Although she wasn't meaning it literally, it still isn't something to tell a coworker. She was upset because she said Traco doesn't like replacing broken drill bits. Many employees complain about their jobs and how they are treated. Many of them are supposedly actively looking for other jobs that pay better and treat employees better. There is very little room for upward movement. They are very slow to train anyone on machines (other than cutband machines). Overall, I liked the people I worked with and most of the other people there. However, upper management is atrocious and highly unlikable. Traco is a company I strongly advise to avoid unless absolutely desperate.