process technician

industrial mechanic

maintenance technician

health & safety manager

plant manager

Tate & Lyle

If you enjoy working in dysfunctional companies you will love it here. I thought I had hit a home run when I was first hired but it only took a few weeks for me to realize that I had left a better company and job to take a step backwards. The pay is good for a reason - it is the only thing which keeps most people from leaving. The benefits are average, the conditions range from good to terrible depending on the area, and the management ( what there is of it ) is mediocre at best. There is a very high turnover rate for new employees. I hired in with six other people. Four had quit before our second year was up. I am now the only one left. There are some good jobs there but it is almost impossible to get one unless you have at least 15 years seniority. Even then there is no bidding process to get a better job. Tate & Lyle believes in the caste system. An employee is placed in a job upon hiring and usually stays there forever because they do not want to lose a trained employee to another area. 

Even though those at the top claim to place a priority on safety it is not a very safe place to work because of the chemicals and processes involved, the fast paced production schedule, and the pressure to meet output goals. Everyone works tired. There is a high and fast burnout of employees because of the long hours, the job conditions, and knowing that the only reward for doing a good job will be having more work shoved at them. 

If money is your only goal, you may like it there. You will get plenty of overtime - like it or not - and you can make a lot of money in a short period of time. But you will have to give up on having much of a life outside the company. If you do decide to take a job there take it with your eyes wide open. Hope for the best but start putting in applications elsewhere. After a few months you will probably be glad you did.

I worked at the South Plant in Lafayette for several years.  The hours are awful because you have to work 12 hours (holidays included) and you work for 3 days on and then 3 days off, BUT you swing from 3 shifts on nights to 3 shifts on days.  That means everyone is tired, unsafe and irritable.  There is a class system where the old people think they are royalty and the new people are treated poorly...unless you are a hillbilly/farmer/hunter.  It is racist and homophobic and unprofessional work environment.  Managers just care about climbing the corporate ladder and employees just "outlast" them until they move on.  The job was easy although it could be hot and sometimes messy.  Talk to the employees and you would think they are building a rocketship to Mars in a sweatshop.  They make 60-80k (including overtime) and the hard work keeps getting reduced and farmed out to Mexicans.  Most employees sit in the control room as if they are on a lazy version of Star Trek (with no exploring, hard work or human values).  You are paid well, but management knows it and will continuously work to reduce benefits and opportunity.  It was not a union plant and so they are going to be putting the employee's feet to the fire.   Funniest part is that the employees think they are "self managing".  They are no more self managing than a 2 year old who think going potty by themselves is "living independently".  Most overpaid and underworked place I have ever been at.

The work is pretty easy and mostly just watching a video screen for 12 hours. The pay isn’t bad at all. Overtime is easy to get and often mandatory. 
The atmosphere is depressing and the plant is old and nasty. Newly added lights just make all the black build up and mold stand out! With the rotating shift and the long hours it gets you down quick. They only clean the place when the big shots from Coke or Pepsi are coming through.
Had to take training not long after starting cause someone had used the N-word during hiring. First time I knew we had an HR department. Not sure as to why we needed it as there aren’t any blacks working here and the women are few and far between in the plant. Pretty racist and sexist from what I was used to. Management keeps to themselves in meetings and such and you rarely see them. They kinda have thug enforcers though. Not sure what one guys job is as he just sits in the control room, laughs and tells off color jokes. He does cook breakfast and bring in donuts occasionally. I think he just mainly runs back and tells management if somebody else fixes something!
Safety is kinda funny! You fill out a lot of forms and sometimes have people sign them that can’t even speak english. Have had a few people get hurt but they weren’t very smart people and could have avoided it if they were!
Lots of divorces and drinking going on. Going to make enough to find something else and move the wife and kids on!

Management only cares about their selfs, they say if you have a problem, come talk. Then literally do nothing, but make you feel like you’re stupid to protect their own.. Then instead of training properly. They just throw you out there, then fire you if you make a mistake… they complain they have nobody with years of experience like they want, but as soon as something goes wrong, they hang you out to dry instead of training and learning from it, and they wonder why… maintenance manager is a complete rude, selfish, very childish person. The other people that work there are pretty cool. Maintenance manager gets mad if you get along with anyone else, then talks about you behind your back and lies about everything. Then the open door policy.. it’s open, but they go right back and do nothing and then let maintenance manager treat terribly, and act like they don’t see it. They are really good acting like they care… if you love being treated terribly , the maintenance job is for you. If you’re in process they treat you decent.. still don’t really train you. Just expect you to just get in there and do it.. the only decent thing about this place is the pay… I would advise to steer clear from this place. The hardest part of job is, coming in..
Most enjoyable part is, leaving…

It was not always bad. I enjoyed my job and stuck it out for as long as I could. 

 There is bullying with department manager. Upper Management showing favoritism towards certain coworkers. Human resources sweeps everything under the rug. Lack of training, thus calls for more mistakes which makes everything  your fault, even though you may have never been trained on it. Management was very out of touch of what goes on during a day to day basis. When everything is "important" nothing is important. Lack of empathy and zero work life balance.  Customers can be horrible to you and nothing is done by the sales team to help customer service. Usually customer service is the one that is blamed. The culture is lacking and its become a toxic environment. Work loads are not spread out evenly. Some people are drowning while others are frolicking around. The ones that are drowing are being punished for not answering emails, entering complaints on time, answering the phone, and entering orders. The ones who are drowning could work all day and still not be done, and expected to work overtime if your job is not done. Losing dedicated workers due to being overworked, bullied by management and under staffed.

You will wear many hats and get experience across the board as an entry level engineer, but you will also not get much in the way of honest and useful assessment as to how you're doing and what you need to do. The company reinvents its assessment system almost every year, and inconsistently applies mentorship and career assistance programs. Currently, they are in a transition away from filling their engineering needs via college recruiting and promotion from within and toward hiring engineers at mid-level and higher in from outside, and it shows in retention. Junior engineer staff retention is atrocious. Part of this is a failure to advance a competitive entry-level salary so that it remains on-par with the industry, and part is a culture that rewards insiders and ostracizes people that management expects to leave.

Great place to get 3 to 5 years experience, but after that you'll likely get a 20% raise and more job satisfaction by going somewhere else.

A typical shift at work could vary, depending on job assignment that day.  Different job assignments were operation of a production packer, warehouse duties including fork lift driving and loading trucks, or running the manufacturing process via computer controls. 
I learned a lot about large machine maintenance and the processing of raw material (corn) into finished product (sugar or maltodextrin).  Management was very hands-off, as one is left on their own to learn new processes.  Co-workers were nice people, but often stressed due to the work schedule.  The hardest part of the job was the work schedule.  A typical schedule would be 3 straight 12 hour days, followed by 3 days off, then 3 straight 12 hour nights.  Also, coming off the 3 day shifts you were on call, often getting called in for at least 1 or 2 shifts.  Coming off of nights, you were required to come in at least one day to work on attaining skills for new processes.  The most enjoyable part of the job was the fast pace, even though that tended to wear on you due to forced overtime.

12 hour days in a 3 on 3 off rotating shift for 5 weeks of days and 5 weeks of nights. Seldom does an operator get 3 days off in succession.There is an extremely high turnover rate mostly due to the rotating shifts and, in some areas, headhunters and backstabbers. The area in which i currently work the Day Shift Coordinator is constantly looking for ways to get people fired and has fired close to 70 people in my time there. There are a few operators that do their jobs diligently while others are merely trying to fly under the radar while doing as little as possible. The working operators (go-getters) are at a higher risk of making errors and are not cut any slack by management. Management will over-work these folks and expect less of those that do less. Completely backwards type management. The company is also built on an upside down pyramid. Opportunity for advancement is based on how much or who's boots are licked and not on the merits of work ethics and knowledge. The pay is truly the only upside of being an operator in the plant.

T & L is a non-caring employee company.  You will be worked and worked hard with no recognition and with mediocre benefits.  Work to life balance is nonexistent.  You flip flop every 3 days, from days to nights.  It’s a 24/7 365 day operation with 60% of the operation being exposed to outside elements that you work in.  Inside is extremely hot environment with hardly any ventilation or air movement.  You burn up during the summer and freeze during the winter.  Management cares about management.   I can say when I first started nearly 20 years ago it was a great company to work for with great benefits.  Now it’s a job with decent hourly pay and poor to at best mediocre benefits.  The amount of stress, political paper work, and monthly propaganda that one has to do makes it not worth the pay or the wear and tear both physically and mentally.   I can positively say a day care system operates smoother than the 
Van Buren AR plant.

Upper senior managment are bullies, disrespectful & arrogant !!
12hr shifts, rotating days every week, then rotating from days to nights every month is the worst schedule you could expect from someone. I've seen many marriages end because of this. While co workers & front line management are mostly good,  the senior leadership & work schedule destroy any positive you try to make from it.
Pay & health benefits are good, 401k is sub par & vacation/PTO are off the charts low from industry standards with 0 sick time off which means everyone will become sick during flu/cold season as everyone drags their sick butts to work, except management of course. There will be FORCED OT you must work every week due to NEVER being fully staffed. A decent resume builder at best, definitely not a career retirement employer !!

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Process technician 4 salaries reported	$26.87 per hour
Industrial mechanic 1 salary reported	$31.16 per hour
Maintenance technician 5 salaries reported	$27.69 per hour
Health & safety manager 1 salary reported	$61,804 per year
Plant manager 1 salary reported	$73,300 per year

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