Arvato Sonopress, Betelsmann Hellish place to work (American Sweatshop) Weaverville, North Carolina

ARVATO formerly SONOPRESS owned by the German group Bertelsmann is always hiring in Weaverly NC

As far as I now they have 3 kind of jobs:

They hire trough 2 employment agencies: ISS and SIS

You can get hired by ISS to work at their so called "KITTING DEPARTMENT" which means you  will be all day (8 hours) standing on your feet at the same spot putting the DVD/CDs in individual small boxes or sometimes just putting small labels in the individual boxes. You better be fairly fast and don't make mistakes even if nobody quite explain to you what and how to do the job or you risk to be sent home for the day or simply fired. No mp3 player or headphones of any kind are allowed nor drinks(no water bottle while you work for example).

You work in shifts of 3 or 4 consecutive days then you are off for 2/3 days.The healthcare is good at that particular position thou you got to make enough money to afford it which is unlikely since hours vary and you have to beg to be allowed to make 40 hours a weeks that is $240 take home paycheck a week. They pay every Friday.

If you are hired by SIS you can work for the shipping department driving a stand up forklift all day long and get paid $10/hour Monday thru Friday 8 hours a day. Healthcare is terrible/nonexistent unless you get hired as a permanent worker by Arvato itself to make $12/hour in which case healthcare is very good but there are people working there for a year and a half and still waiting for Arvato to hire them as Permanent.

Also you could work for SIS during the night shift at the replication dept. which means babysitting 2 or 3 or even 5 DVD/CDs replicating machines all night long 12 hours standing/walking around the machines you take the breaks/lunch when you have a chance, there will be training maybe 4 nights, 6 if you are lucky. After that you are on your own. The philosophy behind it is they want to make you under fire. The DVD making machines are fine but the cd makers machines break/stop constantly. Most coworkers are OK but under pressure everybody turns mean. You will be paid $8 dollars an hour no healthcare some people are waiting 3 years to be permanent if you accept direct deposit you don't get a pay stub so you don't know how many hours or at which rate you were paid (you can request a pay stub printout at the office every Friday but I suspect they would get annoyed quite rapidly).

You work 3 or 4 12 hours nights on a row though lately the Plant is closed on Sundays but after training expect to work a lot of overtime which is mandatory since they are always shorthanded because nobody stays.

This review is posted here because it was removed from glasdoor.com and Craigslist, I guess the Betelsmann group has the power the power to get that done.