Oil Pay cuts.

[BiggestNizzy]

I work in a small machine shop, I've lost 10-15hrs over time a week and had a 20% wage cut so far things were looking by grim in Jan/beginning of Feb but things seem to be picking up, we have seemingly more work going through the doors and are ticking over. Like others have said I'm just glad to still be in a job.

That said Everyone is facing a grim reality, the personal stresses coupled with the stresses passed on by management from company worries and ever growing customer demands with shorter lead times are fast becoming one of the biggest problems creating a highly strung workforce resulting in a higher rate of scrap jobs and overall lower productivity.

Think that there will be a lot more casualties before it's over!

seems to be the way Tier 1 guys are pushing shorter delivery's and we are competing against companies who are buying work so prices have been slashed. They are pushing quality hard if your not at the top you will get dropped.

Also heard a small firm in Irvine had the rug pulled from them today. A customer owed them £500k and went under causing cash flow problems. Today the main creditor pulled the plug. From what I heard there order book was half decent as well.

[flyingscot68]

I jumped ship from Aberdeen O&G last September, I could see what was coming so I left to do something else and see if anything more interesting came my way.

Working in Aberdeen felt like being in an old boys club. Every aspect of the industry there that I dealt with was so badly run, top heavy with managment and lots of people with high paying jobs and not a clue, always friends or family.
The industry there was very in need of a re-adjustment, just a pity it took a world wide price crash to start it, Aberdeen was never going to survive anything like that due to the high cost of extraction caused by the inneficiency.

I'm now working on a recycling plant. The money is similar to O&G just befire I left but due to the number of ex O&G workers willing to come in for a cut price rate, the rates here are looking like they'll start to drop off too.

Amazing how one industry in trouble can affect so many others, and so many people.

[111Robin]

Working in Aberdeen felt like being in an old boys club. Every aspect of the industry there that I dealt with was so badly run, top heavy with managment and lots of people with high paying jobs and not a clue, always friends or family.

I have to agree with this, it's not what but who you know unfortunately. Last place I worked was very top heavy with people doing who knows what, they seem to forget that without the "grunts" designing the kit they sell there would be no reason for them to be there. However they remain employed, so I must be wrong, maybe it's just a big social club for them to meet up and talk buzz words, hey ho.

[Rosssco]

Working in Aberdeen felt like being in an old boys club. Every aspect of the industry there that I dealt with was so badly run, top heavy with managment and lots of people with high paying jobs and not a clue, always friends or family.

I have to agree with this, it's not what but who you know unfortunately. Last place I worked was very top heavy with people doing who knows what, they seem to forget that without the "grunts" designing the kit they sell there would be no reason for them to be there. However they remain employed, so I must be wrong, maybe it's just a big social club for them to meet up and talk buzz words, hey ho.

x2

[thinfourth]

I'm now working on a recycling plant. The money is similar to O&G just befire I left but due to the number of ex O&G workers willing to come in for a cut price rate, the rates here are looking like they'll start to drop off too.

Amazing how one industry in trouble can affect so many others, and so many people.

I could never work in a recycling plant

I am far too keen on recycling

I would always be getting treasures


Oh

And want any valves

[Callummarshall]

seems to be the way Tier 1 guys are pushing shorter delivery's and we are competing against companies who are buying work so prices have been slashed. They are pushing quality hard if your not at the top you will get dropped.

Also heard a small firm in Irvine had the rug pulled from them today. A customer owed them £500k and went under causing cash flow problems. Today the main creditor pulled the plug. From what I heard there order book was half decent as well.

The whole purchasing system is heading towards a melt down, some of our customers are only giving 24hrs to quote jobs then expecting delivery in 3 weeks. Some of the non stock materials take that amount of time to be delivered, not to mention any wait for specific tooling and God forgive you need to coat the part that can easily take another week! You can loose the whole time frame without even getting the job on a machine!

There have been a lot of good engineers lost, concessions and engineering decisions seem to be very ropey at the moment too. The whole quality thing is a mare, seems we just about have a systems audit about every week from a customer, lost count the amount of hoops we have jumped through recently.

Jesus that never good! Shows no ones safe regardless of the order book!

[BiggestNizzy]

We are lucky is some ways as weldclad and coating has come inhouse to reduce delivery times.

Had a buyer on the phone today complaining that a part is late when he is the one holding it up. Also had a fag packet sketch to help them out and it's impossible to make!

The tier 1 guys have been cutting their approved supplier lists over the past few years I can see this continuing with any quality or delivery problems marking you down hard.

Where do you work?

[Victor Meldrew]

The Oil company I work for is still profitable at $38 a barrel but only just. They did make a small profit in 2015 but expect to be cash flow neutral in 2016. Not had any cuts to offshore company staff positions yet but some of the contract staff have gone and the ones that remain are on reduced terms.

A large part of our annual pay was a retention bonus and an end of year performance bonus. Retention bonus has been scrapped and the performance bonus is looking unlikely again this year. All overtime has been stopped. The company have stated that staff reductions and salary cuts have not been ruled out and may be considered if things don't improve this year.

We have had several discussions with our private banking manager around future proofing our finances if the company does decide to make reductions in staff. The advice from the bank to anyone in a similar situation is to make whatever changes need to be made now rather than later. From what I have heard, most companies who have cut salaries have reduced them by as much as 30%

[campbell]

Busy time for HR all round then :-/

[mxvx]

Poor souls...

(Biting my tounge!)

[campbell]

Nah, they need to use their CIPD Employment Law module some time!

[Ryan]

5 years ago I started my Mechanical Engineering degree at Aberdeen thinking it was the one industry around here that had the best job prospects.

[GBOBM]

Did the people who are contractors put money aside for the times they may spend out of work or was there the assumption that the work would always be there?

[Dominic]

Did the people who are contractors put money aside for the times they may spend out of work or was there the assumption that the work would always be there?

I think some did, some did not.

[111Robin]

Did the people who are contractors put money aside for the times they may spend out of work or was there the assumption that the work would always be there?

I certainly did, always lived well below my means fortunately as I knew the industry was likely to dip again, plus I sold the Elise to help with the finances although it wasn't a necessity but as it was just depreciating it was the sensible thing to do. Unfortunately there were a lot of contractors who splashed the cash giving us all a bad name, maybe they're in a different boat now. For me it isn't necessarily the financial hardship, it's the effect on my morale which is at an all time low and even if things did pick up I have no idea if I have the confidence to get back into work after all of the knock backs and no responses. I've had a few ideas for starting up on my own but again the confidence just isn't there to make the jump. To be honest I would rather not return to O&G anyway, so hopefully this situation will turn out for the better for me personally, I just hope it happens soon.