Pros
Good pay Nice technical challenges Great place to learn Lots of systems to play with Nice region Locals are nice people
Kontras
With the new Smelter in Kitimat BC all local English managers have been demoted and replaced by Quebecers. In some cases, Quebecers who reported to English managers in the past are now Managers and the former English managers now report to the Quebecers who used to report to them. Promotion and advancement within the company extremely difficult unless you are a Quebecer and you come from Saguenay. Very toxic, ruthless and disgusting work environment where Quebecers don't hesitate to walk on others' head in other to get higher in the hierarchy. Rio Tinto demotes people without advance notice and can relocate you anywhere in the plant and you don't have a word to say about it. Poor employment recognition. Management doesn't listen to employees. High employee turn over. HR doesn't care about people leaving and don't feel the importance to understand the reasons why. They do schedule exit interviews before you leave but they don't care. It is just part of the process. Very experienced English engineers and managers who had been with Rio Tinto for several years have now started to leave the company because of bad work conditions. For the Kitimat site, current English engineering employees are mostly EIT's in non-management positions. Performance reviews are just for the show and everybody gets the same bonus percentage no matter how much effort you put in. I have seen many cases where people (Quebecers) behave in a way and make calls for their own personnel benefit which is damaging to the company financially. Some managers (Quebecers from Saguenay) enjoy using their position and the power authority they are given to negatively criticize, degrade, denigrate, and discredit employees. The Kitimat Smelter was an awesome place to work in the past but now that it is managed by Quebecers, it has become a disgusting place where to work. Trades are also very frustrated (with reason) and the next negociation for the renewal of the collective agreement at Summer 2017 is expected to be extremely difficult.