I posted a reply eariler to a post from Gordo about unemployement. There were a few follow up responses to my post and they all made valid points.
Jocco made one good point about being self employeed or working for yourself being a choice, that's a given. He also made a good point abut these guys out there that want to get paid "good money" but don't want to work for it. The only thing is that he didn't take into account the ones of us that do work our a$$es off at whatever we do. True the attitude of the guys doing the work is a part of the proble, but the real problem is what gave them that atitude. I see a few ways the attitude is instilled in todays American worker. First is the parents that instill in their kids a sense of entitlement. Maybe they do it with a good intention of wanting the kid to have it easy and have things they didn't but ultimately it backfires. As these kids get older some of them discover the government handouts for those that are either 'born' too lazy to work or simply weren't taught to work and became lazy as a result. This situation then creates further problems. I realize this is kind of a general way of putting things but it covers alot of people I've run across over the years.
Then you get the real workers, or at least the ones that used to be. They went in every day, worked their a$$es off and got paid decent for it. They saw the cost of living increase 10%, their work load increase 5% and their pay increase 2%....and all of this happening as they see the upper management getting huge bonuses for doing nothing. Or consider the same scenerio but add in that this person worked at their job for 20 years only to come in one day and find that they have been replaced by some kid fresh out of colledge for half the pay or that their job just got sent overseas. Whatever the scenario there is simply no sense of stability or job security in todays workplace.
That said, while I don't condone 'goofing off' at work I can certainly understand the lack of enthusiasm or whatever from the employees when the company doesn't care about their employees, wants them to do twice the work for half the pay, etc, etc, etc.
That leads me to the self employeement part. True being self employeed is a choice but it also gives you an insite into the cost of doing business that others don't have. One reason Dad left the CAT dealership and went in for himself was he got tired of watching the customer being cheated. He'd do a job in half the "flat rate" time but the customer still got charged flat rate. Basically he could do twice the work, make the company twice the money, but he never saw any of the beneifit of doing it. What should he have done, sat down, goofed off, and done the work half as fast or just do what he knew and work at his regular pace???? While working for ourselves we've done jobs for the dealerships and seen our labor price doubled when billed to the customer. Now I undersand some markup for office expenses but to double the price of a $2500 job that the dealer had no part of doing beyond a phone call to us and maybe 15 min of paperwork is just wrong!
Now as far as the prices charged for work many people have no idea what it costs to do business. We currently get $85 an hour for our standard labor. The thing is out of that we have to cover the payrole for me an Dad, liability insurance to the tune of around $10,000 plus a year, overhead for power, supplies, etc, etc. If we're doing portable line boring then the rate goes to $100 an hour. The thing people don't realize is that this also covers hours spent sharpening tools bits when the job is over, the high cost of replacing carbide bits that get damaged, the cost of keeping the machine operational, the cost of materials to make special jigs, etc, etc, etc. In other words $85 or $100 an hour may sound like alot but when the end of the year rolls around you might actually make $40,000 give or take. The thing is you've earned every penny of it too because unlike the guys sitting in the air conditioned offices that have no clue and/or don't care who built that office, you've actually spent the summer outside working on equipment hot enough to burn you, the winter spent working on equipment freezing your a$$ off, and doing all of it in hopes that you actually get paid when the job is done.
In the end there aren't but two actual choices for work and nowdays neither is really all that good. Then there is the alternative to be lazy and either live off of the government or starve. Again neither is all that attractive to most of us that actually don't mind working for what we have...the problem is we're paying for the ones that do find being lazy attractive and the government, 'big business'. Basically the government and corprate America as a whole makes it possible because they will choose a lazy, uneducated person over the man with experience and way too many times because they can get the work done for alot less money while they continue to increase the cost of their product in order to line the pockets of the executives......
Again this is all kind of a general look at the way things are but I think you can get the pic. If corprate America would start paying their employees what they were worth (ie good off make min wage, work hard and make them money see some incentive to do it, etc), show that they care about their employees and give them the sense of security they once had, make pay increases at least in line with the cost of living, etc, etc, maybe things would get back to normal. Until then the 15% of us working are going to be stuck covering the other 80% that really don't care in order to line the pockets of the 5% "in charge"......
Jocco made one good point about being self employeed or working for yourself being a choice, that's a given. He also made a good point abut these guys out there that want to get paid "good money" but don't want to work for it. The only thing is that he didn't take into account the ones of us that do work our a$$es off at whatever we do. True the attitude of the guys doing the work is a part of the proble, but the real problem is what gave them that atitude. I see a few ways the attitude is instilled in todays American worker. First is the parents that instill in their kids a sense of entitlement. Maybe they do it with a good intention of wanting the kid to have it easy and have things they didn't but ultimately it backfires. As these kids get older some of them discover the government handouts for those that are either 'born' too lazy to work or simply weren't taught to work and became lazy as a result. This situation then creates further problems. I realize this is kind of a general way of putting things but it covers alot of people I've run across over the years.
Then you get the real workers, or at least the ones that used to be. They went in every day, worked their a$$es off and got paid decent for it. They saw the cost of living increase 10%, their work load increase 5% and their pay increase 2%....and all of this happening as they see the upper management getting huge bonuses for doing nothing. Or consider the same scenerio but add in that this person worked at their job for 20 years only to come in one day and find that they have been replaced by some kid fresh out of colledge for half the pay or that their job just got sent overseas. Whatever the scenario there is simply no sense of stability or job security in todays workplace.
That said, while I don't condone 'goofing off' at work I can certainly understand the lack of enthusiasm or whatever from the employees when the company doesn't care about their employees, wants them to do twice the work for half the pay, etc, etc, etc.
That leads me to the self employeement part. True being self employeed is a choice but it also gives you an insite into the cost of doing business that others don't have. One reason Dad left the CAT dealership and went in for himself was he got tired of watching the customer being cheated. He'd do a job in half the "flat rate" time but the customer still got charged flat rate. Basically he could do twice the work, make the company twice the money, but he never saw any of the beneifit of doing it. What should he have done, sat down, goofed off, and done the work half as fast or just do what he knew and work at his regular pace???? While working for ourselves we've done jobs for the dealerships and seen our labor price doubled when billed to the customer. Now I undersand some markup for office expenses but to double the price of a $2500 job that the dealer had no part of doing beyond a phone call to us and maybe 15 min of paperwork is just wrong!
Now as far as the prices charged for work many people have no idea what it costs to do business. We currently get $85 an hour for our standard labor. The thing is out of that we have to cover the payrole for me an Dad, liability insurance to the tune of around $10,000 plus a year, overhead for power, supplies, etc, etc. If we're doing portable line boring then the rate goes to $100 an hour. The thing people don't realize is that this also covers hours spent sharpening tools bits when the job is over, the high cost of replacing carbide bits that get damaged, the cost of keeping the machine operational, the cost of materials to make special jigs, etc, etc, etc. In other words $85 or $100 an hour may sound like alot but when the end of the year rolls around you might actually make $40,000 give or take. The thing is you've earned every penny of it too because unlike the guys sitting in the air conditioned offices that have no clue and/or don't care who built that office, you've actually spent the summer outside working on equipment hot enough to burn you, the winter spent working on equipment freezing your a$$ off, and doing all of it in hopes that you actually get paid when the job is done.
In the end there aren't but two actual choices for work and nowdays neither is really all that good. Then there is the alternative to be lazy and either live off of the government or starve. Again neither is all that attractive to most of us that actually don't mind working for what we have...the problem is we're paying for the ones that do find being lazy attractive and the government, 'big business'. Basically the government and corprate America as a whole makes it possible because they will choose a lazy, uneducated person over the man with experience and way too many times because they can get the work done for alot less money while they continue to increase the cost of their product in order to line the pockets of the executives......
Again this is all kind of a general look at the way things are but I think you can get the pic. If corprate America would start paying their employees what they were worth (ie good off make min wage, work hard and make them money see some incentive to do it, etc), show that they care about their employees and give them the sense of security they once had, make pay increases at least in line with the cost of living, etc, etc, maybe things would get back to normal. Until then the 15% of us working are going to be stuck covering the other 80% that really don't care in order to line the pockets of the 5% "in charge"......
