> He should start buying some cheap tools of his own (to start with) and do weekend/night jobs for himself. If he's working on 1.5m homes I guarantee you there are a ton of homeowners who need electrical jobs done. Get on Yelp, ask his customers to leave good reviews, and build a business. > There are a ton of niches and other opportunities. For example being available during late hours. In anything like a large or m…
How would they even know? Assuming they keep quiet about it
Yeah, once the employer finds out, they've got enough business to quit.
> He should start buying some cheap tools of his own (to start with) and do weekend/night jobs for himself. If he's working on 1.5m homes I guarantee you there are a ton of homeowners who need electrical jobs done. Get on Yelp, ask his customers to leave good reviews, and build a business. > There are a ton of niches and other opportunities. For example being available during late hours. In anything like a large or m…
How would they even know? Assuming they keep quiet about it
Depending on the size of the town / city, it could be trivial. There's ~6 companies doing electrical work in my town. Not only are they commented on / recommended on local social media, they see each other's quotes all the time when people compare prices. If someone started a new business, I suspect they'd all know within days/weeks.
From other specialist non-trade business I'm familiar with, people are normally aware of new employees coming to town before they even start working. People talk to each other.
I was working for an aerospace manufacturer for a while. We were getting 40/50 year old apprentices for the trades, guys coming off the production floor. Electricians, millwrights, CNC machinists... we couldn't find enough of them. I get it. Nobody wants to stand in front of a machine (or 5-6 machines) for 10 hours a day. Nobody wants to be in a 90 degree factory all day. Nobody wants to work 2nd or 3rd shifts. The p…
> You get overtime. I think this comment represents a fundamental disconnect in cultures. The days of people "wanting" overtime are kind of gone. If I saw "overtime pay" on a job description all I am seeing is "work long hours, never see your kids, no time for hobbies, etc". Maybe that translates to me "not wanting to work", but that's the situation.
In software, overtime pay usually means we aren't going to work you 60 hours a week.
But we're still full of idiots who think sacrificing your twenties to never see the sun is going to make the rest of their life easy, instead of full of health concerns. And divorce.
Is the argument here that unions are needed to guarantee minimum pay and benefits for these highly specialized jobs so that they feel safe enough to specialize? Wouldn't that depress effective wages for these techs and make the jobs as appealing as less skilled labor?
I am unable to follow your logic from the first sentence to the second please elaborate.
The way you guarantee job stability would probably be to pay union members a salary even when they're temporarily not needed right? Then you pay this salary out using union dues. Union dues end up garnishing take-home wages which removes the incentive to specialize.
^ That was how I was imagining it. Am I wrong in thinking this way? Or is the argument that the urge to specialize is independent of wage?
It’s not a good analogy. If I stress my bone hard, it strengthens. This is why someone that runs has heavier / stronger leg bones compares to a coucher. On the car side, every time you bend a piece of metal it gets weaker. It cannot repair itself. It cannot get stronger from use.
No. Cumulative load wrecks you in the long run. Consider how many weightlifters end up with multiple back surgeries. They got stronger for awhile, then they couldn’t walk.
There are multiple things being lumped together. The body constantly heals itself, but doing blue collar work the issue is that the cumulative load regularly exceeds your recovery ability. Athletes can stay under the limit if they are careful.
Irrespective of job or sports people can randomly develop degenerative diseases as they age that can be exacerbated by work.
The company sending you a high bill doesn't automatically mean the guy who fixed your house gets paid well though, does it?
They were one man shops. 20 years ago, the going rate for installing a socket in an existing wired and ready to go junction box was $50. It's about a 5 minute job. I know it's about 5 minutes because I've done a lot of them myself. I'm sure prices have gone up a lot in the last couple decades.
Then do it yourself. I change my own oil and filters. They're able to charge that much because plenty of people can't do it themselves.
But the reality is they've also got the businesses expenses of maintaining their work vehicle, their insurance, their healthcare, etc. That $50 probably only translates to $20 into usable income.
Is the argument here that unions are needed to guarantee minimum pay and benefits for these highly specialized jobs so that they feel safe enough to specialize? Wouldn't that depress effective wages for these techs and make the jobs as appealing as less skilled labor?
Some stuff still needs to be done, by code (which should be enforced) or by that people want basic services like electricity to actually exist.
I'm not saying the trades should be unregulated. I think OSHA is an almost unparalleled good. I've just generally thought of the benefits of unionization for skilled trades to lie in the educational and reputational benefits of the union rather than the security aspect of one. Unions for unskilled labor would work differently. My thought, at least.
> First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. Something strange is happening here that I can't quite understand. Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that are way older than me and I first started college in 1999. Yes, I heard a persistent low rumbling of "go to college," but the idea that "any degree would do" is alien to me. Of course I knew that some maj…
Same. Early '90s. Nobody was telling us "any degree will do". They were saying "You should go to college, and if you do , major in computer science, engineering, pre-med, biotech, (sometimes) business, and so on." I remember that as a pretty consistent message during high school career guidance talks and through freshman and sophomore years in college.
When I went to school for my Associates, I knew the graduation / hire rate of every program near my major. If you asked any professor in my building, they'd say "Go Biomed, every one of them is hired". Students should be smart enough to know the chances they get a job before they go. Ask around, everyone knows your chances to get a job based on your major, and stack that up a little bit.. I always tell kids "ask what the chances are you get hired".
There's a similar disconnect in expectations of outcomes. The same days when people "wanted" overtime were the days where people expected to get ahead by busting their asses; sure, you could work short hours, play with your kids, have time to develop a hobby, but then you wouldn't become wealthy. That option is still there today, to work only enough to sustain oneself at a lowered standard. But it seems that there is…
It's the other way around. Younger generations have discovered that the busting of the ass in and of itself does not lead to financial comfort or stability. At least going to college and working an office job kind of still holds that promise. Why stand 10 hours a day at a machine, when I can work 7 at my desk for better pay and better long-term prospects?
Exactly this. Even in a white collar environment, busting ass does not really provide good returns.
States in the south have laws that neuter unions, and some that make unionizing for certain fields/roles illegal. Unions might exist, but they might not have the same teeth they'd have in states with friendlier organizing laws.
Right to Work laws allow employees to make an individual choice whether to join a union in a unionized shop.
No one is forced to take a union job if they don't want to, those same laws break private contracts between unions and employers and force unions to represent non-dues paying employees.