Tepid pay increases

The 7th MRO Today maintenance salary survey, conducted by Compdata Surveys, shows hourly workers got a larger pay bump than their department supervisors

by Paul V. Arnold

Budgetary caution kept pay increases to hourly plant maintenance employees at a less-than-glamorous level in 2004. However, for the second year in a row, hourly workers fared better than most of their department supervisors. Those storylines stood out in the results of the seventh MRO Today maintenance salary survey, conducted by Compdata Surveys.

Compdata Surveys’ findings came from polling 2,348 manufacturing companies from April to June of this year. These firms collectively employ 941,079 people, including 23,445 maintenance workers (managers and non-managers). The study for MRO Today encompasses nine maintenance organization titles: plant engineering manager, maintenance manager, senior maintenance supervisor, maintenance supervisor, senior maintenance mechanic, maintenance mechanic, senior maintenance electrician, maintenance electrician and HVAC mechanic.

These nine titles saw across-the-board pay increases, ranging from 4.27 percent for senior maintenance electricians to 1.48 percent for maintenance managers. The average increase for the five hourly titles was 3.47 percent. The average increase for the four supervisory positions was 2.86 percent. Last year, pay to the hourly titles rose an average of 3.31 percent, while pay to their supervisors increased 2.4 percent.

“Pay increase budgets continue to be low — this is indicative of many jobs across many sectors, not just for industrial maintenance — as employers remain cautious about the recovering economy,” says Theresa Worman, director of business development for Compdata Surveys. “This has been true for the last several years. However, we anticipate increases by the end of the year. The recovering economy and inflation will both be contributing factors for this predicted growth.”

While larger increases are likely, Worman says “the days of 4.5 percent and greater increases are over for now.”

Other interesting numbers from the report include:

• maintenance employees working in plants with more than 1,000 employees earn, on average, 1.82 percent more pay than those working in plants with 501 to 1,000 employees, 4.23 percent more than those in plants with 201 to 500 employees, 3.99 percent more than those in plants with 101 to 200 employees and 6.86 percent more than those in plants with 100 or fewer employees.

• maintenance employees working in the West Region earn, on average, 0.36 percent more pay than those working in the East, 3.60 percent more than in the Central and 6.26 percent more than in the South.

Click here to view all of the 2004 results, dissected by job title, plant size and region of the country.

This article appeared in the October/November 2004 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright, 2004.

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