Thread by @JonahFurman

Long thread, but important: John Deere workers have reached out to me frustrated about media repeating company talking points that workers make 60-70k a year. One who's been there over a decade showed me what they made in 2020: Under $40k. So let’s talk about wages at John Deere.

First of all, the pandemic caused layoffs, for which workers were not paid by Deere. Layoffs even in normal times are not uncommon. Deere’s “$60k/year” figure is based on working 2200 hours; that’s over 42 hours per week for 52 weeks in a year.

But most Deere plants have layoffs that can run up to 3 months of the year, so many workers don’t get those hours. In 2015, the last contract passed by under 200 votes, because many workers were laid off, wanted the ratification bonus, & didn’t know when they’d be working again.

The top base pay for most workers at Deere is about $20. When we talk about a “$1 raise,” people are referring to the 5% increase in the first year that Deere offered.

But when Deere puts out wage figures about “Making the Best Pay BETTER,” in the fine print they said it’s an estimate based on “CIPP 120%.” That refers to the Continuous Improvement Pay Plan. Let’s talk about CIPP.

CIPP is a “team-based incentive pay,” which means you get paid extra according to how much your department produces, based on quotas set by the company. Every 6 months, the company ups the quota by 2%. Even if pay doesn’t go up, or there are no more cuts to “inefficiency” to make

If you hit 115% or more of your CIPP quota, money goes into a reserve fund that pays out quarterly. But if your plan is “failing” (under 115% of the quota), money comes out of the reserve fund. Many workers see pennies or nothing at all from their CIPP payments.

But some workers see a good amount from CIPP pay! Which means that the workforce is divided. You can be working in a plant and look across from you and your coworker is making twice as much as you, because they’re in a different “department” with a different CIPP quota.

The kicker is that many workers don’t know how much they’re making specifically, as the company no longer provides pay stubs unless workers go in and print them out themselves.

At least one local picketed over this in 2016, but Deere didn’t budge. One local leader speculates there’s a ton of wage theft at Deere, with people working out of title, making lower pay than they’re contractually owed. But nobody knows! Because many people never see a pay stub.

Don't miss the forest for the trees. These workers make about $20 an hour for a CEO that makes $7,000 an hour, building machines that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, for a company that's profiting close to $6 billion *this year*. Deere can afford it, & workers need it.

Oh and one more thing about CIPP!

During the pandemic, due to supply chain issues, departments were obviously unable to reach 115% of their "quotas." In many cases the company said "oh well, you don't get your incentive pay!"

This is insane!

But an arbitrator ruled in favor of the company to the tune of millions of dollars, because of weak contract language, which the new agreement did nothing to address.