Salary Range differences Pressroom & Prep

[swcook6]

If you work in the pressroom or prepress and you still have any pay at all you should be thankful. That being said, with all the automation there are still technical challenges that are easily overlooked and many times under appreciated by managers. This may be because it "looks" easy (just a person sitting at the desk in front of the computer). A skilled prepress operator can often fix things very quickly that without that skill, the job would be held up, (maybe sent back to the client for fixes) or sent through and the errors caught later or maybe not caught until the piece is printed. Worse yet not caught until the client sees it. Sometimes I sit and wonder how many thousands of dollars a skilled operator actually saves their company in reduced errors and efficiency annually that no one even realizes.

[SlaveToTheMan]

If you work in the pressroom or prepress and you still have any pay at all you should be thankful.

I think that's exactly how the Employers see it, and their justification for the continued cuts in salary, benefits, hours, etc. "Hey, be glad you even have a paycheck!" I have a suspicion that this is just the "new way" of doing business & employers believe they have the upper hand in an economy where jobs are so few & far between. It really doesn't engender any loyalty or even motivation in the employees to go that extra mile (or inch) and I think once/if the economy bounces back, that there will be a large egress of skilled people who feel shafted by the companies they stood by during the down times.

Or not, who really knows.

[swcook6]

I think you are absolutely correct in your analogy.

[ondemandbindery]

As much as it burns me up at times, I still say the pressman earns the maximum wage based on one thing. Everything that revolves around the press can get farmed out and done. But the press is what makes a Printing company. And I am a Bindery guy. All aspects of the business are important but no press no profit. On the Printing side of the business anyway.