Thread regarding Marathon Petroleum layoffs

Thank God! I have worked at the Marathon plant in Cattlesburg KY for almost 15 years as a welding contractor and to say that middle management and nepotism is a huge failure is such an understatement that can't be put into the pages of a book!!!!!

Oh man. Work in Catlettsburg and know EXACTLY who is being referenced as the a$$hole supervisor who ruins good engineers. If it’s any consolation, people all throughout the company are fully aware of how unprofessional and unproductive this individual is, and all the politics that have protected him over the years. I can also tell you that among the many people that are aware of his behavior, he has all but lost credibility. It is sad that I can read a post, that could have been written by anyone at any site, and immediately know who it describes. Hang in there.

MPC is done. Dead and bloated. Chop it up for chum. D-E-A-D. Good riddance the stench was getting to me.

I have faith Mike Hennigan can turn the company around. I choose to be optimistic, but I may feel differently a year from now.

I also share the disappointment many feel over how the layoffs were handled. All supervisors were shut out of the process, and only managers were the decision makers, which is fine if you have a great manager who doesn’t play political games, and awful if you have a weak manager. There were young engineers who were labeled “low performers” by the political in-crowd at my site and they were unfair casualties. The extremely poor leadership these engineers floundered under? Those individuals got to keep their jobs. One supervisor is one of the most obscene, crass, rude and unprofessional individuals I’ve ever met in my life. He is a terrible leader. The engineers he decided not to like suffered, but he himself? He skates by as he always has. It’s terribly sad and unfair. But that’s refining, and that’s MPC- politics first and sound business second. I’ve seen so many bullies, lazy, inept bullies, add zero value and yet keep their jobs due to site politics. When there’s heavy fraternizing that routinely occurs with supervisors and managers (golf, trap shoots and swim parties anyone???) what else should be expected? Of course it’s not fair.

I’m told politics are everywhere- Valero, P66, BP- but I’m also told they are particularly awful at MPC. Until Mr. Hennigan roots out the leaders in the company who operate on a good ol boy system, and until local sites start getting rid of the dead weight in leadership roles that hold us back, getting ahead of our competitors will be very hard.

Exactly. They got rid of 1,200-1,300 folks but not the management that put us in this position. I hear rumors of a second round of 'cuts' the week of Oct 19th where we get rid of middle management (AKA - the reorganization). But you are correct - they need to bring a sense of risk-taking, empowerment and improvement occur at the local level to reduce costs. Using expesive and useless consultants is just paying off all these 'anal-ysts' of Wall Street. And no one believed all this BS 'Synergy Savings'. Any suggestions pushed from my level or below were basically ignored - we just have a bunch of 'leaders' waiting to be told what to do, what to say and how to say it. And to top it of, during the merger, MPC got rid of the Continuous Improvement group!

Hennigan did get rid of some MPLX leadership within the past few months. One could have been a retirement.

As noted below, there’s way too many employees related to senior leadership.

Hearing rumors of a big shakeup for marketing and finance orgs, both of which have very weak personnel at director and above.

How many leadership level roles were eliminated in the past week? How many relatives of leadership were severed? Someone in my division is related to a senior leader, despite not even being remotely qualified for the role, this person delivers zero work, yet came out unscathed in this process. The people who did get severed were actually critical to the division, now we’re scrambling to figure out how to keep things afloat.

This company hasn’t changed, it’s still rotten to the core. Anyone under 40 needs to consider placing your future in this organization