Hello all, I'm a maintenance supervisor for elevators and escalators in a metropolitan transit system on the east coast. It's a civil service position and while it does not pay as much as the outside unions, it does have benefits such as amazing time off / vacation and medical, and steady work. The pay has come up in recent years though.

I'm on the job 15 years, I've done a few different types of jobs, and I have seen many changes for the worse, I want to know if any of you see the same thing. I was under the assumption that as elevator/escalator mechanics we don't get paid for what we do, we get paid for what we know. But the management I've experienced of late has a different mindset. They don't want anyone to have an "easy day" they want you to sweat and bleed from the time you punch in until you punch out.

It is a dangerous craft we are in, we aren't digging ditches we are maintaining and troubleshooting, running ropes, or step chain, and pulling steps, riding on top of cars, adjusting doors, going into elevator pits with HIV needles, just to name a few, not to mention working in a dangerous city where the local clientele abuses the machines. The management I have now, with some of the questions I get on a daily basis about my team's performance, you could do nothing but assume they've never done the job as a mechanic.

I know there's a lot of bosses out there that never did the jobs they are managing, but we can't afford to have that in this craft.