operator trainee

millwright

electrician

production technician

entry level operator

West Fraser

As an electrician at west Fraser, you will live at that mill and visit home sometimes. There’s just not enough talent out there, it’s short staffed for electricians.. there was only 2 of us electricians for almost a year, having to split the 3 shifts.. yep 12+ hours a day everyday.

. They will work you into the ground, 70 hours in 5 days , then expect you to come in and work a weekend shift! And will penalize you if you take that weekend off because heaven forbid you’re bones are aching, heaven forbid you try and have a day to bond with your family that miss you all week long. 

And the money/raises, the so called “grow from within” yea, I got lucky and was able to get a raise to level 2 after demonstrating my ability to keep the mill running on my own. But Then they changed up the rules, so that now you have to progress through their “West Fraser qualified classes” which each level (1-4) takes 4-5 sessions to become eligible for the next level and pay bump. Too bad that The classes are all the way in Alabama, even Arkansas! You have to spend a week there each session, just one problem though, YOU ONLY GOT 2 ‘LECTRICIANS IN THE ENTIRE MILL SO THERE AINT NOBODY  TO COVER YOU! Which means you ain’t attending them classes, which also means that YOU AINT GETTIN NO LEVEL ADVANCEMENT OR PAY BUMP.  

Turnover rate is laughable, it was so bad they had to bring corporate to interview the employees and find out why the turnover rate is 75%!! GET A CLUE. 

Ok with all of that said and done (if you’re still here) there is some good to gain from this company, their benefits are generous and the healthcare is very good. If you’re an electrician wanting to move on from the construction site and get into industrial controls, PLC, VFD etc. then there’s no better place to get your feet wet than the sawmill. They got all the good ol PLC 5 ,500,5000 and plenty of limit switches, photoeyes, and VFD drives Motor control centers, all the devices responsible for sawmill operations are at your disposal. I absorbed as much knowledge and technique as I could and moved on to a very good company that pays 12 dollars more an hour than west Fraser and treats you right. So my advice is just that. Get in, suffer it, know that you’re setting the foundation for your future in this industry. 

The work is very engaging and at times challenging, the pressure is on when a machine or process hits the breaks and the whole mill turns to you to figure it out . It’s a peanut gallery. Your all alone, hopefully you got aptitude and can adapt, be creative and use spatial reasoning or you will fall flat on your face and grow 10 ft long donkey ears while everyone lets you know you can’t do your job. 

They need to pay electricians a whole lot more for the amount of responsibility and pressure they endure daily. 

Good luck!

I like working here the first few years after I started employment because there was a great atmosphere and camaraderie amongst coworkers.  You spend more time with them than your family so you’re a tight knit group but like anywhere you have bad apples.  Most of those bad ones are in upper management.  They’ve always been a little unorganized but since West Fraser bought out Norbord and had a change in management, there has been a steady decline in the work atmosphere.  The new plant manager has been replacing former West Fraser employees with current Norbord employees.  They’re switching back and forth between two plant sites so good luck if you need to talk to HR.  There is a major lack of communication from management to the whole plant and too many new changes which is doing more hurt than good and they overload some employees while others make the same pay or more to be here fewer hours and call the shots.  
Don’t get me started on the secrets within the company either.  We waited from January to April to find out about our COLA wage increase only to never be told anything.  We received a 3% increase which was supposed to be retro dated for back pay.  They did less than 10 hours of back pay and now will expect more work out of us because they think they did us a favor.  
Multiple people are leaving and not just from retirement.  We are all increasingly unhappy with the way they’re running the plant and a lot of people are moving on and finding new career choices.  The only ones who don’t mind are the ones who come in on the weekends for overtime for 12+ hours per day without leaving the break room.  A whole shift of people will clock in early in the morning, take a 4 hour nap, eat and then nap some more.  
Apply for this plant site at your own risk.  You will either be expected to do everyone else’s job on top of your own or you will skate by doing nothing for easy money.

You are just a number here. The only think they care about it keeping the mill running 24/7. Only a matter of time before someone gets killed out there. There are supervisors who actively put you in a dangerous situation (lockout/tag out violation) just so they can write you up to look good. Management cares nothing for its employees, they only want to keep the mill going. They care nothing about the safety of its employees. They care nothing about your breaks and lunches. You are expected to work through your breaks and lunches to ensure the mill keeps running. If the mill does go down, you are expected to stay and get it running asap.
Management will lie to you about your pay rate and your schedule. Schedules consistently change. You are expected to work 7 days a weeks, no breaks, no lunches, no vacations. There is no work life balance. Only work life. If they weren't so cheap, they would probably have beds on-site so you couldn't leave. 
They have a safety program that they say you are in, but don't follow through with it, I'm guessing because it interferes with production. There are literally no safe working procedures for anything. They only wrote a few after I almost lost a finger in one machine. After I wound up in the hospital with stitches, I got called daily asking when I would completely return to work, after I gave them the paperwork from the doctor and hospital. 
All in all it is a terrible place to work!!!!! Not worth it!!!!

Good pay and benefits.
Busy about 11 hours a day, on call 24/ 7. could not leave town on weekends .Have deal with old worn out equipment without  a maintenance man assigned to your dept,  have to fix a lot of it yourself . The production capacity of the drying dept is a little less than other departments. so needed maintenance gets you behind. Usually have to hire people from the outside, people that know the job in the plant usually don't apply. Few people in the dept have been there more than 4 years. inexperience leads to accidents , kiln fires and poor quality lumber.
Higher ups don't listen to your suggestions . Just because you delt with issues in the dept everyday for years does not mean you know anything it there eyes. Anything you told him  was a lie.  Never got to take all my vacation , Gave back 1 or 2 weeks every year. You usually came back to a  mess if  you took off too long.
Had to carry 7 gallons in a 5 gallon bucket every day.

West Fraser is a great company with great opportunity for personal growth and advancement. They have the capability to teach you a skill or trade and give you life long knowledge! There are a lot of things here that I would consider very counter productive and time consuming. The amount of manual reporting we have to do on a regular basis when we have a robust system is very egregious. We also get micro managed through this reporting at times and top tier leaders are pretty bad with holding people accountable. They get far too deep into the weeds of things instead of managing from the top. This leads to the whole group often getting tasked with additional work because of a select few that weren't able to get their own work complete. Overall I would recommend West Fraser as a company to work for as long as you can live with the behaviors explained above. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
i will say, the best part of working at west Fraser is that the pay starts high compare with other companies around. but quickly you will notice that the pay is not even close to be enough for all the things they ask you to do and the condition you're working.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
There is a tremendous disinterest from management about hourly employees. Also, there is a very poor communication from management to hourly employees.
Corporation does not really care of what happened in the different mill locations.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The Culture is "do what i say, without asking any question and without complaining"

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Very stressful, dealing with many problems every day.

Fast paced productive sawmill with lots of work assigned by work  orders and pm's along with emergency breakdowns. Worked with many employees in maintenance and production with the goals of keeping the mill running without sacrificing safety. Management was very helpful with backing you with what you needed to succeed and training programs to further advance your knowledge in the maintenance and repairs needed to continue to have a productive mill. The maintenance employees I supervised were a mixture of experience from seasoned to new hires. All worked well as a team. Overall at the end of the day, having the mill meet production due to very little down time was gradifing knowing your maintenance team had a part in the success of the mill.

Not an easy place to work. Dirty, hot, spiders everywhere, fairly dangerous environment with the way lumber is handled and the rotating equipment(don't expect to see guardmaster switches or relays here). But if you're like me and you enjoy a little excitement and adventure, it's a fun job sometimes, let's you grow a bit mechanically because there's always work to be done. Expect to he working a lot, every mill in Florida has an electrician shortage. Great opportunities for overtime if that's your thing. The only reason I left was the pay scale, what they want to start you out at for the work you're doing is laughable. Regular maintenance duties, on top of running conduit and wire for projects, on top of needing to have a working knowledge of plcs and vfds. Somethings gotta give. If they paid more, it would be a great job that I wouldn't mind working for 10 plus years. 

The management when being moved to another part of the mill degraded me as if I was worth nothing got sick and in a wreck at 1 point wrote me up saying I could be fired over something I couldn’t even control and always threatened I’ll lose my job. Took the mill almost 2 months to get me forklift trained yet not allowed to receive a certificate of completion.  Was never told until the end of the shift if we had to come in for a extra days of work or not. Management definitely has favorites and lets the favorites do least work as possible doesn’t allow much Versatility for people to learn different equipment and no home life most horrible place I’ve ever worked and I’m glad I left after being mistreated horribly will never recommend to anyone. 

My superintendent was the absolute worst.  He shoved me and one other worker into the basement of the sawmill and our job was to clean it.  Except my coworker would rather take naps than put fourth the required effort.  Superintendent calls us to his office to threaten to fire us if he didn't start seeing 2 men worth of progress and that's when I spoke up for the first time.  A few weeks later, after approaching my supervisor with this issue 3 more times (after shift or during break, never on their time) I got fired for bothering them....  My coworker got fired the next week after the idiots in management realised I was correct, and was the only person putting any effort in.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Operator trainee 2 salaries reported	$19.03 per hour
Millwright 2 salaries reported	$25.13 per hour
Electrician 3 salaries reported	$29.65 per hour
Production technician 8 salaries reported	$29.63 per hour
Entry level operator 1 salary reported	$18.60 per hour

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