battery technician

assembly technician

journeyperson electrician

technician

manufacturing manager

Saft

There are two types of people at SAFT Jax, Original hires, and everyone else. As a temp you will be made to feel like disposable property. There is a HUGE Good ole' southern boy club so don't be vocal if you don't: talk like a hick, like football, or own a truck.

Prepare to kept at temp status for well over 6 months if not a year. Your schedule will be modified without warning. It's not uncommon to be sent home mid shift and told to return 5 hours later to work for 12 hours.

As a temp you will likely start on the weekend shift (Fri-Sun 12 hours a day). During hiring at Remedy you will be told that you're expected to take a break from the machines every two hours to refresh and refuel. Nothing could be further from the truth. You will get two 15 minute breaks and one 30 minute lunch in your 12 hour day and if you go long by as much as a minute you will be spanked for it. Trust me it's not enough time when you're working in a 65° 0.25% humidity environment for 12.5 hours a day.

Expect to never see your manager. Expect your shift supervisor to make false reports to your manager about you. Expect your team leader to be absolutely useless and in their position only because they've been employed there a long time.

The pay is good. That's about it.

Bring your lunch with you. If you're lucky you can drive like a maniac to the nearest fast food drive through and eat single handed whilst driving like a maniac back to the plant. If you encounter even a slight delay though, you will go over your lunch time.

I enjoyed working for Saft, however, there is a bully culture with the long timers to the new people. The company is unionized ( which isn't a bad thing ) but the long timers get grandfathered in and are extremely lazy and protected by their tenure. They also like to bully the new hires. If you tell HR they are quick to  handle it, but most new people are too afraid to report the bullying.

Sadly when a lay off comes the new hires that work their hearts off get layed off, while the lazy grandfathered in people keep their jobs. I have seen many long timer folks sitting on buckets behind machines and hiding while others ( usually new hires ) do the work. If they have any type of tenure their job performance is completely ignored. What a sad thing that is.

They pay is great, but don't expect to stay there long regardless of how hard you work. That truly won't matter come lay off time. 

Saft needs to rethink the way they choose and keep their employees. Appreciating tenure is a good thing, but ignoring the performers that care about the work they do, and the goals they strive to meet and exceed is a huge mistake. Stop rewarding the lazy people with high paying jobs. Just because somebody has managed to slip through the cracks of time doesn't mean they are pulling their weight, or even care about the company and it's goals. 

Do better, Saft. I know you can.

Is an excellent ethics culture strict with policy which is very important and vital for safety at the facility.   It enhances your confidence and motivation and learning.  You gain a lot of knowledge utilizing many different types of tools ,  torque wrenches understanding the importance of torque,    building harnesses , blueprint reading,   learning your constant current electrical.   It gets deep and gave me  an opportunity to grow and learn with a different standard for specifications needed and efficiency understanding and implementing the process documentation.  SAFT  is a team focus environment and you can excel at the facility you can advance there are several tests written, 
 hands on my skill test they will come watch the product being demonstrated the process of time studies something out the ordinary they will come out and reevaluate.  Communicate with the employees.  Continuous improvement is always in the plan always room for improvement you learn detail aspects of specifications measuring reading getting their understanding .  You get familiar with the five s's ,  you get familiar with the ISO9001 standard learn how to audit keep up with documentation and specification with the product you're working on from the beginning to the end of the process there is a very good workplace to work for. 

Management wasn't that great the company went through many changes via leadership . The leadership issues wasn't able to relate with employees far as safety quality and production . Equipment was out of dated  and need attention  there was always  problem with the robots and production machines constantly  only had two maintenance worker that if one area is down then production stops the order is never met  , they had unattainable production goals, under staffed , 12 hours + with only two paid breaks ,and 30 min lunch ,  they love to fire people who has real life issues ie, there was a veteran, of 21 years navy chief , that was fired   just because he wasn't able to switch his availability to a different shift due to his doctors appointments. That action alone let us know as employees that a company with the US Armed Forces Flags hanging  in the production floor let alone they take pride in our military , that they would treat someone like that said alot for Saft. Sorry for my rambling it just didnt sit well with me witnessing this kind of action done to a fellow veteran and thats why i decided to  go to company that values there employees .Any body that works for Saft just take advantage of the OT if not run.

Working at saft is a nightmare, unless you are part of the good ol boys club. Where you still want to do all the things like you did in 1980, even if it’s 2020. This company may be making product for the future, but the management, the mindset and even the equipment are all from the past. There are no rules here, so even if they tell you that you needed to have 5 years experience before you’re eligible for a bonus. They are lying, because they have made an exception for someone else. If they tell you that you can’t get a random raise or promotion in the middle of the year, they are lying, because they have 100% done it for someone else. Management and HR at this company are complete garbage. They don’t care about you, or how you succeed in your career. They care about the elite few, and the elite few only. So if you can somehow find your way into this club, then kudos to you!! 

The one good thing is that it’s almost impossible to get fired. You have to be blatantly stealing time or sleeping on the job. But don’t worry. You have to do that weeks, sometimes even months before you get your 3 warnings and they fire you. So you must try unreasonable hard before you get fired. 

     Work as a team. Get written up as a team. You wasn't involved in the incident; tough luck. Have fun trying to explain to HR when they have no knowledge of the jobs on the line.  Easy way out is to write everyone up and blame the workers. Incidents occur on a norm. Problems don't get fix because they don't evaluated the situation. Working harder rather than working smarter.
     Jobs are very demanding. If you can do your job well, be prepared to do another job along with it. It'll just keep stacking. There is only one shift (8 hours: 7am - 3:30pm Monday - Friday) but be prepared for mandatory overtime (12 hours: 5am to 5:30pm, maybe even some Saturdays too).  Work as hard as you want but recognition is only acquired when you socialize with "certain" people.

Too much value placed upon degreed candidates even though near nothing learned outside the company lends itself to the tasks at hand. They under value employees with the real world experience in manufacturing that could actually benefit the company and customer base. Zero consideration for employee life  outside of the work setting. Too many chiefs and very little knowledgeable leadership, often clueless individuals in charge complicate simple issues simply because ego won't let them ask for help.
All the eggs in one basket type operation, where you're never sure if you'll have a workplace week to week. There's buried potential but the trick is getting the right "suit n tie" to pay attention to a feasible plan to turn it around. In the mean and between time the employee churn n burn is head spinning. Great talent enters and leaves untapped. There's a middle management clique or two playing games with folks because they only see the little picture but, are skilled at manipulating upper management because they don't have the time, energy or awareness to interface with the labor force at the bottom making it happen.

They lost their contract for their biggest customer because of quality issues related to changing previously approved processes and materials. The result was lost hours and extremely long temp to hire positions, that honestly didn't result in being brought on to permanent status for most of the temps. Layoffs galore and with the loss of hours, they would force you to use vacation days to make up for it. When they did have a contract, they would enforce mandatory overtime, sometimes for weeks at a time.  Constantly changing upper management, replacing inexperienced people fresh out of college with more inexperienced people fresh out of college. The same problems revisited over and over with less and less positive results. Middle management was biased and the good ol' boy systems runs rampant.

The leadership is weak and have limited vision out side the box. They over look many qualities the many people have to offer, losing them to other companies. The hiring process is a joke, even if you are lucky to get selected for an interview. The members conducting the interview are clueless about the position, they should have a subject matter expert SME on the interview board. Time management versus quality production still in works still have lots to improve here but if you like overtime this is the place to be. Benefits offered are good but you must be hired to take advantage. Getting selected is a like the lottery you just hope your number is selected to begin the process. Hours of operation are around the clock but the lack of communication is hurting, 2nd shift is usually left out of functions and events the company has to offer. Even with all of this said I believe things will get better.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Battery technician 13 salaries reported	$24.38 per hour
Assembly technician 18 salaries reported	$23.11 per hour
Journeyperson electrician 5 salaries reported	$37.10 per hour
Technician 5 salaries reported	$25.98 per hour
Manufacturing manager 1 salary reported	$117,500 per year

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