Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last? • Hacker News Board

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#351

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #338

lostlogin wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the drug testing bs. How is that relevant? If the worker is present, is sober, and not hungover what business is it of the employers what the employee does on their own time? The drugs that are readily detectable are mostly the ones that don’t matter too, while the ones that are more concerning (to me anyway) are either not tested for or are not detectable fairly fast. And alcohol is ok to abuse. Why? It would…

stealth intelligence test. For a variety of interesting historical reasons, the government hates intelligence tests as a hiring criteria and this is the blue collar stealth/workaround IQ test. Its the blue collar equivalent of fizzbuzz or a gitlab repo. Look, you got one task, one task only, it's not even hard to figure out, do not, repeat, do not, get high the week or two before your pee test. That simple. There are…

[deleted]

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#352

Post by crankylinuxuser » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #331

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I have something to share precisely about that. Was in 2001 prior to 9/11 in south Indiana. I applied to a factory. And another one. And another one. Nothing. No bites. I then found work at a gas station Subway across the first factory. Our primary business were the factories. 9/11 happened. Within days, the factories shut down. We at subway were like "WTF happened?" Cause we were staffed like normal for rush. T…

I thought blue collar often referred to e.g. welding, plumbing, electrician, etc. Would an undocumented illegal really be hired as a TIG welder? Or are those jobs just a small part of "blue collar".

What you're talking of is skilled and state certified blue collar. Many in this area have legal government protections to do this work.

There's a whole class of blue collar under that. Line workers, food prep, factory pickers, non-medical health aide, framers, concrete pourers, roofers...

I know when my parents had their current house built, they had a bunch of hispanic people working on the house. When my parents went to take pictures, they beat feet to get out of any photo. My moms pretty sure they said something about INS. But who knows.

My parent's didn't care too much that likely "illegal to work peoples" were building their house. It was cheaper than the other options.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#353

Post by Symmetry » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #120

pure_ambition wrote: post #41

No it won't last, because as soon as the wages start coming up then the fed will say "inflation is heating up" and raise interest rates, causing businesses to spend more on debt service and less on employees.

Higher rates only affects new issuances of bonds, rolling over of existing debt, or bank loans (which are a small fraction of the total debt market in developed economies). The average maturity of a corporate bond is now 15+ years, and most bonds pay a fixed interest rate that doesn't vary due to current rates [1]. That means that any change to rates will not have much of an immediate impact on the interest expense l…

Not to necessarily agree with the OP's prognosis, but the Fed rate also affects inflation which can affect the viability of every contract written in terms of dollars when it strays from where it's expected to be.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#354

Post by linkregister » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:58 PM UTC

cyberpunk0 wrote: post #238

Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One way to handle it is to be upfront with your employer. This tends not to work. It's a medical condition. Employers need to provide reasonable accommodations if you're able to fulfill the job. Are you able to do the job on a slightly shifted schedule? Chances are it's the case. > It makes scheduling meetings extremely difficult. Morning standups are out. How many of you have weekly standups? Could do afternoon st…

No employers will not make reasonable accommodations. Business is profit over people, you requiring accommodations means more effort for them. Just try to tell your employer you have depression and see how "reasonably accommodating" they will be.. capitalism is disease

When you graduate, at your first tech job you'll have to sit through various mandatory training. One of those describes the employer's requirements under U.S. (or EU) law.

One of those requirements is "reasonable accommodation," which is a term that means that employers face big lawsuits from the government if they don't reasonably accommodate employee disabilities.

This means that if an employee has a condition that allows them to do the work, but needs special stuff, such as software to allow them to write code while blind, or a wheelchair-accessible entrance, then the company has to provide it. Otherwise, the employee can ask the government to sue the company on her or his behalf.

But yeah, dude, capitalism is a disease.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#355

Post by roseburg » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 8:01 PM UTC

It's a labor shortage more than anything else they listed. It's not an energy boom, weak dollar, Trump etc.

The question should be "why is this a surprise?"

Does our culture esteem people that work with their hands? Do parents encourage their children to aspire to learn trade skills? Does our educational system encourage students to learn trade skills and explore the trades as highly viable alternatives to going to college?

We've looked down at the trades and blue-collar work for decades. The evidence is everywhere. Of course there is a shortage, students have been listening to the adults in their lives, their peers, media outside of Mike Rowe etc and have heard the message loud and clear.

Solutions; I see two things that need to happen.

First, we need to reach and communicate to students and adults across the country that trade skills are valuable and a career in the trades is an outstanding option.

Create a more efficient, affordable and accessible resources for people to learn trade skills, no matter their location, age, income, nationality etc. We need to make it 10x easier for people to learn the skills that are in demand.

I’m working on both those solutions at Tradeskills.io   Definitely a lot to figure out!

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#356

Post by VLM » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 8:01 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #263

SamReidHughes wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. If your great doctor had to pass a drug test, he would be perfectly capable of abstaining long enough to pass it.

So if there was a test that could tell if you've eaten chocolate in the last 30 days, then you required applicants to not eat chocolate ever, passing that would be an indicator of a good employee? Seems really arbitrary and pointless when you take out all the drug war baggage out of it.

I think it odd that the strongest opposition to testing is from people who clearly don't smoke.

Its a test of self introspection and awareness and intelligence, not solely discipline.

Its not a simple binary "have you been within 10 meters of the devils weed in the past month T/F" question.

To fail a test after 30 days of normal peeing takes something like weeks of Cheech and Chong 2.0 behavior to build up the level of metabolites in the body. There's a whole spectrum of use vs time required to test clean. A buzz a couple days ago will not fail a test. Wake and bake the morning of the test is a fail. The kind of person dumb enough to wake and bake the morning of a pee test is not the kind of person I'd want on a jobsite.

There's also the question of motivation. There are supplements which basically make you pee alot to pee out the THC and there are test kits at walgreens for $10 that are fairly accurate to determine if you pass. To fail a pee test you have to be unmotivated enough to not even try.

Responsible intelligent users will not have trouble passing a test. Irresponsible or unintelligent users are doomed, but those are the kind of people that cause workplace fatalities anyway, so no real loss.

This is all aside from unemployment fraud type stuff.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#357

Post by milofeynman » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 8:02 PM UTC

jetrink wrote: post #135

ransom1538 wrote: post #108

>> "Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of showing up on time (or at all)" Don't kid yourself. Those new hires are at other jobs making more money. I am booked for a roofer in feb 2018 (fingers crossed - friend of a friend). Blue skills are in extremely high demand. And those guys are working extremely hard making really high incomes (400k+). These guys are highly paid and are not…

This reminds me of the observation[1] that most applicants for programming positions can't implement FizzBuzz. This has led some to conclude that the majority of programmers would be stumped by the task, but it is more likely that such programmers are overrepresented in the applicant pool. 1. http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest

I can't even get companies to send me FizzBuzz or any coding test when applying to remote jobs. I'm not sure they even see my application with the flood of applicants they get.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#358

Post by Retric » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 8:03 PM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #349

Retric wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a DoD Clarence without a drug test. Mass testing is often not about Drugs as much as a proxy for other things.

Which Clarence can you get without a drug test?

I know you can get a Secret and I have heard you can get a Top Secret depending on the agency. Though some agencies give random drug tests to people with Top Secret clearances and many contractors also have their own testing policy.

They do however ask about drug usage both on the application and when doing their investigation.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#359

Post by sporkenfang » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 8:04 PM UTC

southphillyman wrote: post #189

ransom1538 wrote: post #108

>> "Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of showing up on time (or at all)" Don't kid yourself. Those new hires are at other jobs making more money. I am booked for a roofer in feb 2018 (fingers crossed - friend of a friend). Blue skills are in extremely high demand. And those guys are working extremely hard making really high incomes (400k+). These guys are highly paid and are not…

Where can one go to learn these "blue collar" skills? As a recent home owner I'm learning first hand how valuable these skills are by way of my wallet. Seems like most people I meet who do these kinds of jobs were "born into it", and learned by helping a family member who was already in the industry. Are there IIT type schools which teach these kinds of things on a part time basis?

If you want to go the low-commitment route, a lot of makerspaces have plenty of equipment for building / making activities and offer classes in subjects as diverse as TIG welding and sewing.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#360

Post by Clubber » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 8:12 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #356

Clubber wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if there was a test that could tell if you've eaten chocolate in the last 30 days, then you required applicants to not eat chocolate ever, passing that would be an indicator of a good employee? Seems really arbitrary and pointless when you take out all the drug war baggage out of it.

I think it odd that the strongest opposition to testing is from people who clearly don't smoke. Its a test of self introspection and awareness and intelligence, not solely discipline. Its not a simple binary "have you been within 10 meters of the devils weed in the past month T/F" question. To fail a test after 30 days of normal peeing takes something like weeks of Cheech and Chong 2.0 behavior to build up the level…

>A buzz a couple days ago will not fail a test.

I don't think that's true.

  Your first use will usually stay in your system for 5-8 days
  If you use cannabis 2-4 times per week and then stop, you’ll test positive for 11-18 days
  If you smoke 5-6 times per week, it’ll stay in your urine for 33-48 days
  For Medical cannabis patients and people in the #smokeweedeveryday club, 
  THC-COOH will stay in your urine for 49-63 days

https://herb.co/2017/02/09/heres-long-weed-stays-urine/

Even if it was true, the fact that it is so easily passible doesn't help the argument that it's not pointless and arbitrary.