[norwaypinesavage]

Everything I needed to know about labor relations I learned in fourth grade. My dad managed a small (about to be made obsolete) creamery. He hired my fifth grade sister and I to package butter into one pound boxes. It came to the creamery in cases of the 1/4 pound sticks. He paid us a quarter an hour to do this. My sister would lollygag along for an hour or more packaging the butter. After a few weeks of this, he told us he would simply pay us each a quarter to do the job.

We quickly figured out a way to work together, holding the boxes and stuffing the sticks, to easily finish the job in 15 minutes, or less. Everyone was happy. My dad had the butter boxed, and my sister and I each had our quarter.

I'm sure Lowes has learned the same. I'll bet the Lowes contractors are able to finish the outsourced jobs for a fraction of the time and cost of the in-store workers.

[Enlightened1]

What year was that?

[kearnyirish2]

The sad truth is that full-time employees are a huge expense for companies, and they are always looking for ways to eliminate them. Work still has to be done, but some third party can do it for less with either contractors or an army of part-timers/per diem workers. We were warned that ObamaCare would aggravate this situation, and it definitely did.

For what it’s worth, any time someone points to a roaring stock market as a sign of a good economy, remember that the best way for a company to shoot up its stock price is to shed American workers. The shareholders may benefit and sing the praises of the economy, but the average Joe is left with nothing.

[LoveMyFreedom]

Businesses are for making profit. With the minimum wage increase and cost of benefits, it is sorry to say cheaper for Lowes to use contractors.

[HotHunt]

When I was a kid, I lived in Spain when my dad was stationed there in the Air Force.

We rented a nice home in a small town because there was no base housing. My parents wanted to put in a fireplace in one of the living rooms.

So my dad hired some local laborers who knew how to build a fireplace and paid them so much an hour.

Well, it was taking forever for the fireplace to get made. The job dragged on and on and on.

When my dad asked our landlord, who was Spanish and lived next door to us, what to do, he said you shouldn't have paid them by the hour. That way they'll drag the job out as long as possible to get more hours in.

So my dad went back to the boss of the workers and said he was going to cap the job at so much and that was it. A price to finish the job or they were gone.

The fireplace was finished within the week.