Most problems began around the buyouts. Lansing had been bad already, in my 5 years i saw 7 different plant managers. Only 3 Salary members had been there as long as I had, the longest surviving shop was maintenance. The biggest issues were failure to listen to employees. I was involved in many meetings where line workers were brought in to discuss issues they see every day on the line, and ways they think the issues should be handled or fixed, and after many of the meetings the ideas would literally be thrown out and forgotten, or the plant manager would walk around and tell everyone that people had been assigned to their concerns even though no one had. My personal reasons for leaving were due to lack of growth and failure of leadership. I will forever be grateful for the opportunities the company afforded me, and the education I received. However, they failed to follow through on any incentive for the teachings. After the education I had received they created a position that was designed for that background. After applying for the lateral move into the position, they accepted the newest employee who had started 3 months prior (Something that goes against the Tenneco Team handbook) I was pushed away for bringing this up and was told they were just going to wait 3 more months to make it official. As for the failure of leadership, the last 4 Maintenance techs to leave before me had named the 1st shift Team leader for maintenance as the primary reason for them leaving the company. The entire department as a whole had been begging for the company to do something about him, either demote him or remove him. When they didn't the team leader would just try to push them out and usually it worked. When i was leaving I mentioned to them that they had warned the team leader that he would be done if another person left three times in a row, and they were going to continue to lose their best techs if they didn't fix the problem. As of 2 years after my leaving he is still the 1st shift team leader for maintenance.
