EM – The community of elevator technicians is being stirred up by the “confidan” of a technician. These are concerns about the remuneration mechanism for the force directly performing heavy and dangerous jobs, the tension between attachment to the organization and the worry of food and money, confusion and think of changing jobs to have a much higher income than increasing wages for seniority, etc.
TM, 26 years old, has 4 years of experience as an elevator technician and experienced… 5 companies in this field. He worked from electrical operation, to maintenance and then doing troubleshooting.
Because of that variety, he has a solid knowledge of the principles of various elevator control systems. The job also gives him the opportunity to experience traveling to most of the S-shaped land. Those are the things that inspire and make him fall in love with the job since pursuing this field. Passion and experience in the profession have helped TM become a skilled technician that many elevator companies want to recruit.
But then, the worry of making ends meet pulled him back to reality. He kept jumping jobs.
The starting salary milestones that he received through the workplace were at 5 million, 6 million, 8 million, 9 million and then up to 12 million. Each job change will result in a significantly higher level of compensation than at the previous workplace.
We all want to have a better income, even a lot higher according to seniority and ability to develop in the profession. That is completely justifiable.
TM is quite honest when listing the services he needs to pay for his living: Food: 3 million dong; house rent: 3 million dong; electricity and water: 1 million dong; gasoline: 3 million dong; parking: 700 thousand dong; alcohol: 2 million dong. Briefly, those amounts are 12 million 700 thousand dong. With such income, his account “never had a positive balance”.
Income is not everything. Working environment, learning opportunities, skill improvement, promotion opportunities… are also factors to retain skilled workers. But unfortunately, TM has not found a stable job for a long time. Simply because in the unit he worked for, the periodic salary increase was very small. And he was also not allowed to participate in skill improvement courses because of too much work. Meanwhile, new recruits may have a higher income than those who has been working for long time in the company. These things explain why he moved to 5 companies in just 4 years. He did not dare to stick with an organization for a long time because he wanted to have a “positive account” to settle daily bills and have accumulation for the future.
Technicians like him sometimes have to shortlist a few items that need to be paid with the company to get more unofficial income. But “all these things were taught by the boss while we were all drunk.”
TM also shared, there is a company he used to work for, specializing in importing elevator components and equipment from China and Taiwan, but when he signed to sell elevators to customers, it reported imported goods from Korea, Thailand, and Japan. … When the technical regulations related to safety are not guaranteed, such as the brake does not work, the rescue does not work, the overload warning is unstable, etc., then you and your colleagues must “ cheat with the inspector” to be passed.
The scene of the cabin crash that killed 2 technicians at Kim Ma – Hanoi on May 25, 2022 shows: Elevator profession is a dangerous profession
Then, when the customer’s elevator had a simple problem, but the company asked him to say such as Encoder failure, inverter failure, etc. All complicated things that customers could not understand.
These things made him and his colleagues gradually lose their integrity without realizing it. That also made him always feel guilty about what he went through
He also witnessed the scene of technicians competing with each other to go to the province, even to the point of scuffles, just to get higher remunerations (double the working day) to compensate for the “small” salary they receive every month. It is a working environment full of delusions, lacking the healthiness for both organizations and people to develop and stick together for a long time
Researching the market, he also knows that the average salary for elevator technicians that many businesses are paying is only 7-10 million dong/month. And he asked the question: “In this time, I feel so sad, maybe this elevator job is too easy to do. Why is the salary so low?”
That’s only part of what TM shares. But this story raises many interesting problems.
From a business perspective, employers need to pay more attention to the compensation policy for elevator technicians because they directly perform dangerous and arduous tasks. The working environment also needs to become healthier so that in addition to finding decent remuneration, employees also find ideals and ambitions for their career development path.
From the employee’s perspective, what will elevator technicians have to improve their ability to negotiate remuneration for their work? Experience isn’t enough; seniority, not yet. They need to be properly trained, tested and granted a national practice certificate to be able to serve any business. At that time, elevator technicians have a lot of advantages to find a compensation that is worthy of expectations.
But when will the elevator industry get the National Occupational Skills Standards so that we have a basis for standardizing training and human resources for the elevator industry?
Then qualified technicians will be completely confident when negotiating income levels because: I am good, I can do whatever I want!
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