That sounds like they suck. Maybe it is typical for some foreign weldors. I know my employer pays weldors in Mexico $4 an hour to do aerospace work. Yes, they weld to MIL specs on your US military and private airline jet parts. The scary thing is, for $4 an hour, the skills are EXTREMELY limited. If they get certs for a higher skillset, they promptly leave the company to get jobs for $10 an hour. We have a constant battle blocking work headed to Mexico due to lack of skills or proper certs. The bean counters keep trying to send it there, and we keep saying NO they can't do it YET.
at first I thought it was a per diem, but that seems terrible, especially for offshore work.
The upper managment speaks in $$ the engineers speak in design and strength and production speaks in how to get it out the door as fast as possible with the least amount of effort. No wonder there's always conflict between the three.
We have work out of china, although frankly their shop is very modern and I'm surprised by the quality that comes back, but the amount of extra support needed engineering wise, in my mind doesn't make it worth it.