Technical Publication Department Needs Major Improvements - Technical Writer II Altec Industries Employee Review

I cannot speak to the company at large, but the Technical Publications Department is a very toxic workplace that is currently practicing unethical and (possibly) illegal publishing tactics. I started a year and a half ago on a team with five writers. Currently, only one of the original writers remains. Three of the writers have left in the past five months alone. This points to deeply engrained problems within the department and the company. The department updates the cover date on Spanish manuals and leaves the text two, three, and even seven years out of date. I have come across manuals that have received forty or more English updates but not one of these updates has been applied to the foreign language equivalent. Although the front of the manual claims it is from 2022, the contents are missing critical updates, major text and art replacements, and up-to-date safety information. Yet, the department knowingly sells these outdated manuals to operators and maintenance technicians. Someone could easily be injured or killed, and this is nothing more than a lawsuit waiting to happen. Similarly, my supervisors directed me to spend a week changing a brand-new Spanish translation back to the old, error-filled version. The current Spanish translations are out-of-date and, in some cases, just plain wrong. I tried to explain that the new translation was cleaner, more accurate, and would be more understandable to the readers. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was to go back and purposefully make our foreign language manuals worse. Technical writers do very little technical writing. The job is a glorified copy-and-pasting job. The editor-in-chief of the department has no writing or editing experience. She has her position based on her 30-year tenure with the company but has no knowledge of either writing or engineering. Instead, the focus is on the "look" of the manuals rather than the contents. Hours are spent adjusting tiny boxes in charts and tables so that the lines are not misaligned when zoomed in to 400%. No maintenance technician cares about a line a fraction of a centimeter off, but they do need the engineering to be correct and the writing to be clear and understandable. Favorite departmental sayings include "consistency is king" and "that's the way it's always been." The department, SOPs, and manuals have not changed in roughly 30 years and there is no desire to strive for anything better or different. When I tried to advocate for change, I was subjected to micro-aggressions and the verbal abuse of a department supervisor who was not even my supervisor. When I tried to bring it up to my own supervisor, he chose passivity rather than support. I was told to work things out on my own with the very person who was belittling me. Sick time is at the whim of your supervisor. It is unofficial and can be taken away at a moment's notice. I was verbally promised approximately five days of sick leave a year. I had not missed a single day of work when I caught COVID in July. I called in sick and was told that my pay would be docked for the three days that I could not come to the office. Overall, the company has grown at a rapid pace over the past years. Departments are siloed allowing mismanagement and mistreatment of employees. There is no accountability for management.