“contractors that work there don’t use their company vehicles (HVAC, plumbers, etc.) to run errands to the supply stores anymore as they get mobbed by folks looking for even a day’s worth of work.”
21twelve, I have to tell you, your contact speaks the truth. Our guys fill up their trucks on monday morning, our supplier meets us here at the shop and restocks them, but they have to make runs for non-inventory parts during the week, and I bet you, 1 out of 5 runs results in a call to my wife asking “hey, some guy here wants to know if we are hiring, he’s got 20 years in the trade....”
etc, etc.
We get all sorts of calls of guys willing to work for $10 bucks an hour cash, all very qualified folks.
The ONLY reason we are in business right now, is because we are a merit shop, non-union. Despite the efforts of all our surrounding municipalities to require us to be union, our guys work year round, we pay them year round, and we get repeat business based on our reputation.
They may not be doing their chosen field year round, right now our tin guys are doing work on one of our vans, exhaust, brakes, and new tires rims. Sometimes they sit around tearing apart all the old A-coils we stockpiled from old installs to take to the recycler. We painted the floor to our shop (small building, 5,000 square feet) and built wooden shelving a couple weeks ago. But, if we were union, they wouldn’t be allowed to do that, and they would have been laid off.
There is also a downside too, if the crew takes too long on an install, I don’t pay them overtime if it is because they forgot parts, or they had to redo something because of their mistakes. Its straight time. But at the same time, if they get a job done fast, and the job was quoted as say an 8 hour install, I pay them 8 hours, and let them go home early to their kids, or make dinner for their wives, or whatever.
I say this, because many of the folks we encounter who want to do “cash work” are union members who are laid off, and we want nothing to do with them. They are bad apples, who once hired, no matter how desperate now, will likely spread their infectious union rant to other employees, and with the Card Check thing looming, if our guys ever voted to go union (they wouldn’t at this point), we would just close up the doors, and they too would be out at the suppliers begging for work.
Yeah, my wife and I are real jerks some here would say, oppressive types, who think our business should be OUR business, not the unions, but our guys make more hourly than the union slackers, and more yearly. The only difference is we offer Blue Cross Blue Shield (not as good of a health plan as the union), and we offer a 401k as opposed to a pension. Its up to our guys to invest their money.
“They may not be doing their chosen field year round, right now our tin guys are doing work on one of our vans, exhaust, brakes, and new tires rims.”
My old man was a small developer. Back in the Carter years he pretty much just shut down for over a year as homes were not selling. He only had two carpenters working full-time. But, he kept them on the payroll that whole year. (Our house got a new roof and new deck!)
Other homes that he had built also got new decks, misc. repairs - and most just for the cost of the supplies. Just to keep the two guys (Bob and Butch) working and together.
I told my dad how I thought that was nice, and a little bit nuts. He told me “Perhaps, but when things turn around, I’ll still have the two best carpenters in the city.”
They also drove through a few picket lines over the years to get to my dad’s sites. Bob built my dad’s casket out of knotty pine, with a scrap of plywood from their last job together as the headrest. I now know my old man wasn’t nuts!