This company called “INGEIN”. It is located in Alcázar de San Juan. It is a private company. My father works there. The company has between 50 and 250 workers, it´s a medium enterprise. It was founded in 1994. It was founded by two partners and it started with 5 employees. The company has grown until today. At the moment there are 20 workers in the local office of Alcázar de San Juan. Now it has an only owner and it is a strong and stable company, partly due to the public subsidies they receive for their work. Workers are qualified for the calibration and verification of weighing instruments (gas stations, pressure gauges, thermometers, etc…). They are in a union. They are fighting for the rights of workers. They are members of UGT. All the workers are permanent workers. There aren’t temporary workers or apprentices. All the workers are employees as well. There are different categories of workers, such as industrial engineers, computer technicians, laboratory technicians, business risks technicians, quality manager, office technician, van and truck drivers, etc. Their salary depends on their professional category: - If the workers have a professional category, they will earn more money. - If the workers don’t have a professional category, they will earn less money than the other workers. The working schedule is from 8.30 to 1.30 and in the evenings from 4.00 to 7.00. They have 30 days for holidays. Workers have to wear protective clothing, such as gloves, helmet, boots, etc. In this company they have to take both internal and external safety courses. They have a collective agreement. The
collective agreements are for the office technicians and the laboratory technicians. The work the company performs is the calibration of instruments and measures. Companies need a verification of weighing instruments to provide a good service to clients. For example at the gas station the calibration or the verification of the equipment is periodic, to avoid mistakes/errors, because these services are provided to users and the machines they calibrate have to be in good use. They make different types of works. Some workers work with high tonnage scales and even the smallest actions are performed in the laboratory. The steps that they follow to check the machines are the following: First they weight with weights that they use to calibrate and if they don’t give the correct weighing, they have to repair the scales until they verify they are right. The machines that they use to calibrate and verify are: accurate weights and scales, to measure from microns to tons. The prices of the services are confidential. Precision scales are calibrated in the laboratory and for the large tonnage scales the technicians have to go to the companies that hire them. My father's job is to transport large tonnage weights to calibrate and to verify the companies that request the provision of services. Apart from driving the truck, when he arrives to the place, the technician is in charge of checking the scales. The company's clients are very different: from small businesses who need these services to large companies, such as Repsol, RENFE, etc‌ They get their clients through some employees, who are sales agents. Now, they can’t know how many clients they have because they are distributed by all the country. The companies they work for are all in Spain. In the delegation of Alcazar de San Juan they have 3 trucks and 4 vans.
At the moment the crisis is evident, as in all jobs. The company has benefits, because other companies depend on this company to get the verification of their equipment to continue with their activity. They don’t have deficit or surplus. The only problem is that, instead of verifying the equipment in a short period of time, now the scales are checked later to save money. Therefore there is less work and they have reduced the number of workers who were in the company. The local office of Alcázar de San Juan for example has fired some sales agents and some technicians.
PHOTOS.
This is the company.
This is the van.
This is my father’s truck.
This is the forklift wheelbarrow.
PHOTOS OF THE WEIGHTS.
These are weights of 20 kilos.
These are weights of 1000 kilos.
These are fuel gauges.
These are fuel gauges too.
This is my father.
By: Mari Luz Ortiz Sรกnchez- Manjavacas. (3ยบA)