Hourly-salaries

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Robert Nisanian punches the timeclock before 6 each morning at Cygnet Stamping & Fabricating Inc. in Glendale, where he is a supervisor.

For the next 11 or so hours, he gives workers their job assignments, programs the shop’s metal-stamping and folding machines and fixes the equipment when it breaks down.

At 5:30 p.m., Nisanian punches the time clock again and drives back to his apartment a mile away.

For all the talk about the 21st century workplace with its contract workers, telecommuting and minimal job loyalties L.A. is still home to thousands of employees like Nisanian who work strictly by the clock. They represent the backbone of the economy, whether it’s the service or manufacturing sectors.

“I like to work here,” said Nisanian, 43, who came to the U.S. from Armenia nearly 11 years ago. “I’m really enjoying what I’m doing. I check in on the weekends. If something goes wrong with the machine, I come in without pay. That’s fine. I don’t mind that.”

He makes $17 an hour plus overtime, which typically works out to between $1,000 and $1,100 a week. He arrives early enough to check in on the shop’s overnight workers and stays late enough to help those employees who work from the evening into the night get started.

“I want to do more for the company whatever I can because they’ve been very nice to me,” he said.

To be sure, not all hourly employees have the same commitment as Nisanian.

Marko Swan, president of Cygnet, which fabricates metal parts for computer equipment, telephone systems and other uses, sees a wide range of attitudes toward work. Sometimes it is based on how an employee’s pay is calculated, sometimes not.

“It really depends on the individual,” said Swan, who co-owns Cygnet with his two brothers. “I have seen guys, when you put them on the clock, they work 60 hours (a week), whether they need to or not.”

Those employees, Swan said, are working the extra hours purely for the extra money. They’ll slow down their productivity during the normal workday so that they can put in for overtime.

“But when you put them on salary,” Swan said, “they work 34 hours” a week.

On the other hand, there are workers who avoid overtime so they can go home after the standard eight-hour shift. Somehow, they manage to complete all their assignments without the extra time.

“I’ve got a guy who is on the clock, and he makes a very good wage. When he works overtime, he makes a lot of money. But he hates working overtime. He loves his time off,” Swan said.

Ron Ernst, Cygnet’s general manager, said that an employee’s commitment may be tied to the level of responsibility he is given.

When a worker is given supervisory duties, “there’s a responsibility involved,” Ernst said. “Instead of just doing a single facet of work, you have to look at how it affects the company. You’re involved in the day-to-day projects, but you’re also looking at how the company runs, how to make it profitable, not just the hours on the clock.”

That’s certainly the case with Nisanian. When he arrives in the morning, the first thing he does is check in with the crew that ends its shift at 6:30 a.m.

From 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., he meets with the heads of other departments to learn about new parts orders and decide what projects will be completed that day.

When he gets back to the shop, Nisanian programs each of the metal-stamping and folding machines for the jobs to be done throughout the day. Most of the programming is done at once, but he often makes adjustments during the day.

The rest of Nisanian’s shift, save for a couple of 10-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch break, is devoted to overseeing machinists’ work whether it’s answering questions or fixing machines when they break down. Those machines run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so the latest heat wave has caused them to break down more often.

Before he leaves each day to have dinner with his family and help his 11-year-old son with his homework, Nisanian checks in with the evening shift to make sure they know their tasks and their machines are programmed correctly. Occasionally, he returns later in the evening to fix a computer that has broken down.

He then arrives before 6 the next morning to do it all again.

Nisanian came to the United States in 1987 with his wife, two sons, two suitcases and $100. His first job was as a jewelry polisher in downtown L.A.’s Jewelry District. He later was hired at a metal shop in Valencia, where he learned how to read blueprints for metal parts and how to program metal-stamping machines to make parts.

Six years ago, he took a job at Cygnet, which was closer to his home in Glendale. He started out making $14 an hour as an operator of a metal-folding machine, and then received a $1-an-hour raise, then a $1.50-an-hour raise.

“Bob does an above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty type of job,” Swan said. Even so, Swan said he does not envision making Nisanian a salaried worker in his current position.

With hourly employees, Swan said, it is easier to track the amount of time they take to do a certain project, and therefore is easier to determine how much to charge customers for jobs.

“It’s tougher to track a salaried employee than an hourly employee,” he said.

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