Horrible nightmare job
Pros
You can work in extreme heat if you're into that thing. No Air conditioning in trucks despite it being over 100 degree PLUS the heat from jet blast in summer. And then in winter you can work in the cold on slippery Ice, if you like that sort of thing. Trucks have no heat and they do not use anykind of salt or sand or liquid to melt the ice on the ground. I've aready seen a number of people slip and be seriuosly injured due to icy/slippery condition. Free yearly shoes, of course though they are the cheapest shoes you will ever find. And the shoes will not last a few months before you'll want to buy new shoes. You dont need a CDL to drive a truck. Despite it being a comercial motor vehicle being driven, and despite that you are driving said vehicle near expensive aircraft you do not need a CDL. Free Lunches, if you are fortunate enough to be in the building when lunch is served. I am a driver and rarely get to be in the building when they serve lunch though. They do offer bread, white and wheat, non sweetened cereals, ripe beaten apples and banannas, coffee, and tea. If you want you can call that a lunch but you can only eat bread, or a ripe apple/bananna for so many days before you realize that isnt a lunch. And even if you are in the building when lunch is served you wont care for it much. The food they serve the employees is disgusting. No nutritional facts about they serve, none of it looks like what it's supposed to be, and it's usually something that looks like left overs. On the SCARCE occasions they serve something halfway decent they always run out of food before everyone gets a chance to eat. Two half chicken wings = one whole chicken wing = That's barely a snack not a lunch.
Cons
No raises. A driver starting in 1994 made 12 dollars an hour to start, fast foward to 2013 and the drivers make the exact same amount of money to start. 1994 drivers had a higher salary cap compared to a 2013 driver though, and the 2013 driver has less benefits. You better be there on time, but dont count on going home on time. They mandatory you to stay overtime almost daily. Saftey is a joke. They push saftey reminder papers in your face everyday but when you fill out a pretrip nothing is done to repair defects in trucks. If they really cared about safety wouldnt they have truck drivers with CDLs? In Chicago we have a union. We pay Union dues, we pay towards a strike fund, oh but we cant ever go on strike. Every year near your birthday expect to take a day out of your time to go renew your ID which allows you to work at Gate Gourmet. That's a day of your time, you will not be paid for it. Every day when you go to work expect your car to be searched. You will be finger printed a number of times through out the day, they really make you feel like a criminal. Management looks down on hourly employees. When one manager comes down on you just bare it, going to another manager for help will only make things worse. Count on NEVER having a holiday off, unless you're been there 30 years. No Weekends off, and only sick days off per year. Cause every knows when you're working in extreme cold you'll only get sick twice or less. You will not qualify for any kind of benefit until you've been at the company for a year. So no holiday pay, no sick days, no medical, no uniform given to you, nothing until after a year. And then they wonder why new employees call off on holidays. Medical insurance is an absolute joke. Insurance for yourself plus wife will cost around 150 dollars per week. More if you have kids. So if you work interior that's more than half your weekly paycheck going towards insurance. Recently Union Dues went up despite the union not getting anykind of raise for employees. I dont understand how the union feels they deserve a raise when they can not get a raise for the employees they represent.