Just getting online on the home system (the last post was made from work).

Sunshine: It's just as Shard92 says, I work for a small, family-owned business that's not bound by the same wage laws as a large, publicly-owned company. Also no union in the shop to negotiate cost-of-living increases. No 401k, just profit sharing (which has been doing badly for the last 3-4 years making it more of a loss sharing plan).
As far as no raise being fishy, you don't know the half of it! The "people up front" are doing okay....new/nice vehicles, big houses, vacation trips out of state/country, etc. The "people up front" consist of : the owner (semi-retired and living in Florida), the company president (the owner's older son), the vice-president/purchaser (the owner's younger son) and one of the salesman (not related, but the owner inexplicably loves the guy). All the rest of us are non-family and get crap pay and p!$$-poor treatment.
I could go on loud and long about bonehead moves made by management, certain salesmen getting ridiculous commision checks in spite of the fact that their orders cost the company instead of making profit and on and on and on.....suffice it to say that it's a frickin' miracle that the company is still in business.

This is the three-ring circus I work for: www.scccontrols.com