Pre Press vs. Press salaries

[Jecclr2003]

In our shop of 6 press operators and 3 prepress staff, the prepress people make $26.36 to $32.17 and press operators make 26.81 to $30.96. The mostly highly paid prepress person is a working supervisor and the most highly paid press operator is not. Our prepress people have to cover the entire range from desktop publishing to file checking to producing plates, and finding people skilled and willing to keep current across that range of activities is never easy.

That's kind of the set up we have here.
There's 2 of us in prepress (not making that kind of money, although I wish I could!) and 5 pressmen (2 on 40" 5 color, 2 on 26" 5 color and a 2 color operator that bounces around where needed.

I tend to touch the lion's share of the work with my partner who's been here 25 years handles the huge/really complicated projects that I'm not familiar with yet.
We both bring different things to the table and are both able to learn something from the other.

We cover the whole gamut.... publishing, file checking, plating, digital press setup, etc. It's a tough job and you need a thick skin as the finger always points back at you a LOT.

 

[swcook6]

Education is great (been there, done that), however most every newbie to prepress these days has only had "graphic design" training, and although many are proficient in the bells and whistles of the latest shiny G5 and can make pretty pictures in Illustrator, they have very little if any real printing knowledge. I am a bit biased, but the best prepress guys have had some press experience as well as 4/C stripping experience and were able to adapt to the digital age.

 

[PatrickMcd]

I am employed for a large "in house" shop as the "go to" prep guy. We have 6 presses ranging from 1-6color. I just found out I am making the same salary as the 1/color evelope guy. I was a stripper for 20 years and moved over to the digital side about 8 yrs ago. I have forgotten more about printing than some of these guys ever knew. I have been asking management for an increase with no response other than "prove that you are not getting what trade people are getting". Are the top pre-press operators getting the same as the low end press guys now? Can anyone help me plead my case?

 

[oxburger]

Are the top pre-press operators getting the same as the low end press guys now? Can anyone help me plead my case?

It would be sad if they were. Let's see the pressmen come in and troublshoot a pdf or the platemaker when there is a problem THEN ask the boss if you're worth what they make. LOL

 

[PatrickMcd]

Oh Yeah, I forgot to mention the Associate degree in Lithography from a Technical college I needed to qualify for the position. Which I got back in '85.
Thanks Dewey

 

[Luc St-Pierre]

I work in prepress, specialized in flexography, and we are not printers. We supply printers with designs, artworks, color management, printing plates or riped files for their digital platemaking units. We work from Montréal but we serve printers all over the continent from South Virginia to Northern Canada. In this business, finding the right people in prepress is the key, skilled and flexo-oriented people are as hard to find as some pope crap. In flexo, prepress is not as standardized as in offset, it is often a job by job analysis to find the perfect way to achieved a project. But still, pressmen get mor than prepress.