Chronically understaffed due to unwillingness to pay their employees commensurate with job duties or stress levels, "on call days" work out to be mandatory overtime due to understaffing, pay is steady, but not even close to other local dispatch jobs and you also get to be responsible for flight following about twice the number of aircraft that it's probably safe to watch. 14+ aircraft to one commspec is unreasonable at best. Unsafe at least. Company has bragged about its profits in one breath, and denied requests for more reasonable pay to commspecs with the next. Chronic shortstaffing means anyone off the street has a good shot at getting hired. Veteran employees consistently abuse trainees, with little to no repercussions, people who are bad at the job are in very little danger of getting fired. People use this job as a way into similar positions that actually pay, or a place to wait out finding a better job. Experienced employees are given no incentive to stay in comm center. Company has repeatedly increased job responsibilities without compensation to employees, doubling or tripling responsibilities, in some cases. Brags about safety compliance, while multiple programs are so short handed, they can't even keep track of their aircraft. Slim opportunity for advancement, yearly raise caps at 3 percent, but CEO and board members take stock disbursements for huge amounts. Corporate headquarters has no idea how comm center operates which is obvious by how they bring in more aircraft, without being staffed for the programs they already have. the truth of safety is that nothing will change until a helicopter crashes, and four or five people die, due to commspecs having too many aircraft to keep track of. Hides shorthandedness from flight programs, who would riot if they knew they're generally getting about half the help they're paying for. Local management has gone out of its way to hide situation in commcenter from corporate, while promising employees they're "working on a raise". Pulling in all available on-calls, calling in people as extra to fill seats when corporate in town created illusion of competence, destroyed a chance to illustrate the problem they're supposedly trying to fix. Middle management terrified of looking less than perfect, likely due to lacking confidence in job security. Some employees holding out for promised/possible raise. If it doesn't pan out, expect a quarter of current work force to leave almost immediately, based on attitudes and comments in comm center, with more to follow after they secure new jobs. Be unsurprised if half current work force walks. Majority of employees extremely unhappy, few employees consider job safe. No bonuses or profit sharing, despite consistently enormous quarterly profits. Ninety percent of technology in comm center years out of date. Dispatch software is old, slow and not built to handle the number of aircraft it deals with. Radios unreliable. Mapping software was new in 2006. Tracking software only works reliably, because it's maintained by outside vendor. Company one step behind itself, and couldn't care less. Employees being pushed to generate more revenue for company, which is ironic since they're consistently getting asked for more, and given nothing in return. Middle management will tell you whatever keeps you coming to work. High promises, low delivery of reward. Reward program laughable. If you save a flight, you get to wear jeans to work one day. Middle management rendered ineffective because their hands are tied by corporate, left plugging holes in sinking ship. Employees expected to train ineffectual individuals who have been hired at a higher rate of pay than their trainer is pulling down. High percentage of desks staffed by incompetents. Customers unhappy with comm center performance. Training system is a joke. No compensation for training new employees. No reason to stay at this job, unless you actually can't find anything else. Cliquey, "in-crowd" attitude, fostered by management playing favorites. No differential for overnights. PTO accrues at slow rate, compared to other employers. Vacation time difficult to get approved, due to shorthandedness.
