Stop whining about making less money you fools

[occupied]

Before the crash my help was paid more than most in my business. I've had the same lead carpenter for 14 years now. He left a few months before the crash saying he was burned out. 5 months later he returned hat in hand and I gladly took him back.

In short yes, pay scales are determined by the amount of work available. And bonuses are abundant during good times.

Great but do you see the point I was making? Small business owners tend to always share the pain and prosperity with their workers, as it should be, but when you start talking about big outfits the sense of shared destinies is not there, sacrifice is often demanded but hardly ever rewarded and all too often prosperity is distributed among the board and stockholders but never really seems to trickle down. You are not like Walmart or some other megacorp who has an impersonal and often dictatorial relationship with it's employees, in that kind of situation it is proper to complain about wage concessions.

It's not demanded. It's offered and if they don't like it, they can walk and someone else moves into that position.

You may see downward pressure on wages during bad times with no upward tendency of wages during good times to be alright but overall it has not been a good thing for America. Some days you people make so sad that you have traded concern for the working man for this silly act and talk like a billionaire and maybe become a billionaire act.

 

[koshergrl]

Great but do you see the point I was making? Small business owners tend to always share the pain and prosperity with their workers, as it should be, but when you start talking about big outfits the sense of shared destinies is not there, sacrifice is often demanded but hardly ever rewarded and all too often prosperity is distributed among the board and stockholders but never really seems to trickle down. You are not like Walmart or some other megacorp who has an impersonal and often dictatorial relationship with it's employees, in that kind of situation it is proper to complain about wage concessions.

It's not demanded. It's offered and if they don't like it, they can walk and someone else moves into that position.

A choice of a job or not having a job is no choice. Workers will take what they get.

Meanwhile, the dipshit who started this thread, who seems is in some kind of contractor type enterprise, is what every other business in town hates: they're fucking up the market, by going cheap, and lowering the perceived value for all. And any moron can lower prices, and sell more. The trick is to get business using you head, and preserving the value of what you offer.

Low-ballers. A virus in the market, we need less of and not more of.

Bullshit, they have a choice. I see people every day who choose not to work because they don't think they can earn what they're "worth".

Of course, they're "worth" exactly zip, but hey. It's the choice they make.

 

[Cammmpbell]

I have lowered our labor rates substantially in order to keep help on and maintain a constant work flow. I have also asked my help to take less pay on certain jobs where deeper discounts were given in order to secure future work.

That as opposed to the liberal mentaliry that I "deserve" my wage thus insuring if work is slow I will have none at all.

This entire country is going through a severe crunch and to simply expect the wealthy to bare the burden is obsurd. My help is not whining. They are thankful that they are able to stay off the ue line and know that when things turn around they can once again prosper. Your calls for shared sacrifice are a joke when the only ones sharing are the job creators.

Well....you're at the right place. I figure based upon what I've been reading here for more than a year that the whole goddam shebang is a Republican tool. The wealthiest people in this country have quadrupled their wealth while the lower 80% suck wind. After adjustment for cost of living and taxes the poorest half of this country which used to be able to make an honest living and educate their families have seen the upper 10% gain over 100% and gain lower tax rates. How much do they want......All Of It??

 

[Oldguy]

I'm fair to the best of my ability but that's really not the point. The "I want what I'm owed" mentality is killing us.

Yes, it does sound as though you try to be fair. Good for you.

As for that last comment? Don't you "want to be paid what I'm owed," or do you just let your customers pay you whatever they feel like paying for your services?

It's the same principle. Your work has value and you have a right to receive what you consider just compensation for it. Conversely, your employees work has value too. Why should they not receive the compensation they consider just?

 

[Sallow]

The American definition of poverty is not poverty.

Sure it is.

 

[Sallow]

Grampa..you ain't Exxon, General Dynamics or Goldman Sachs.

I ran a small business too and I know where you are coming from..but it's a bad example to use.

 

[Cammmpbell]

Grampa..you ain't Exxon, General Dynamics or Goldman Sachs.

I ran a small business too and I know where you are coming from..but it's a bad example to use.

Yep....I didn't run any kind of business but I witnessed first hand what the unions did for the working man. In 1953 I hired in on what was at that time considered a good job...$1.71 an hour. Six months later the union negotiated for an increase for the classification I had hired in for and they made it retroactive. I was paid a lump sum of $0.10 per hour for every hour I had worked during that six months. When I hired in the company had a "shared" pension plan. Each pay period a deduction was taken from my check to pay my part. Two years later the union successfully negotiated for and was granted a company funded pension plan. It was also retroactive....I received a lump sum check covering every penny I had paid to that point.

When negotiations were ongoing for a new benefit for the hourly employees the salaried personnel of course were not included because they were not members of the union so every time we got a benefit the company gave the same thing to the salaried....sometimes no more than a couple of weeks before we got it.

Companies will not give or pay anyone a goddamned cent more than they have to and if I told you about the toxic and radioactive materials we worked in until OSHA and some regulations were in place you wouldn't believe it. It was 1974 when the company first issued individual film badges to measure what each employee was subjected to and then because of what they saw being recorded, for the first time they began to improve working conditions in the uranium plant where I was working. Before that the men working in the feed plant where the uranium was flourinated and heated would shovel the stuff with 18" spades and were not even issued shoe covers or simple masks. Those of us in the process cascade worked with our street clothes on and tracked that light green powder(uo2f2) away from the plant and into our homes. Sometimes when the atmosphere was heavy the flourine in the air was so dense that it would irritate one's nostrils.

In January 1953 about 100 of us were divided into four shifts and worked 24/7 until mid April cleaning up the biggest uraninum spill in the plant's history. There were five large individual plants at the site, K-33 at that time contained the third most construction steel of any in the world...falling behind the Eifel Tower and the Empire State Building. The effected plant(K-27) was about a quarter mile long, 100 yards wide and had three floors. An operator was heating up a 10 ton cylinder of feed material and the copper pigtail between the cylinder and the 5" feed line into the cell ruptured and all ten tons of material escaped into the plant. All the way from one end of the plant to the other and on all three floors icycles of the material condensed on the six inch contruction steel beams. The powder on the floors was half an inch deep in most places. We ran so many vacuum cleaners that one operator was assigned to the circuit breaker panel to reset them when they tripped from overload. The bags in the machines were all filled and guess what the labels we placed on each one said..."Class D Household Filth" You can bet your ass the company buried it in a land fill. To this day some of the highly radioactive materials are still being dealt with.

Beginning in the mid 1980's the company fought law suits but so many were sick and dying the DOL finally set up a fund, $140,000 per sick employee which was usually claimed by the survivors. Thank goodness in the early 60's I was caught in a broad reduction in force and managed to get another job in the computing center.

Anybody who thinks a company is their friend or that the company will do one inconvenient thing or give one extra penny to ordinary workers has their head so far up their ass that they will never see daylight again. Unions made the middle class of America and folks who can't see it just don't want to.

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

Did you lower your own pay by the same percentage?

My profit margin has shrunk quite a bit yes. In order to maintain the same profits I would have to lay off most of my help.

How in the fuck do you profit from the labors of workers you no longer have? Explain that pseudo-economic dynamic. I'm all fucking ears.

By doing all the work myself with one or two helpers.

Not to bright eh?

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

Great but do you see the point I was making? Small business owners tend to always share the pain and prosperity with their workers, as it should be, but when you start talking about big outfits the sense of shared destinies is not there, sacrifice is often demanded but hardly ever rewarded and all too often prosperity is distributed among the board and stockholders but never really seems to trickle down. You are not like Walmart or some other megacorp who has an impersonal and often dictatorial relationship with it's employees, in that kind of situation it is proper to complain about wage concessions.

It's not demanded. It's offered and if they don't like it, they can walk and someone else moves into that position.

A choice of a job or not having a job is no choice. Workers will take what they get.

Meanwhile, the dipshit who started this thread, who seems is in some kind of contractor type enterprise, is what every other business in town hates: they're fucking up the market, by going cheap, and lowering the perceived value for all. And any moron can lower prices, and sell more. The trick is to get business using you head, and preserving the value of what you offer.

Low-ballers. A virus in the market, we need less of and not more of.

You have no idea what you're talking about and it shows.

Not every prospective client has deep pockets. I will work with those that are close as any smart business person would.

Now continue your treading of water, it's amusing

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

Grampa..you ain't Exxon, General Dynamics or Goldman Sachs.

I ran a small business too and I know where you are coming from..but it's a bad example to use.

If those companies don't pay what you think is fair don't work there. Your place of employment is a choice not a mandate.

We have the freedom to do whatever we want for employment. Don't blame the shitty choices of others on their prospective employers. Its your life to better but you must do it yourself.

 

[uscitizen]

We'd all be a lot better off if we made a lot less.

We could compete better in the world marketplace.

 

[WillowTree]

Have you seen a more impoverish city than Detroit?

 

[jillian]

I have lowered our labor rates substantially in order to keep help on and maintain a constant work flow. I have also asked my help to take less pay on certain jobs where deeper discounts were given in order to secure future work.

That as opposed to the liberal mentaliry that I "deserve" my wage thus insuring if work is slow I will have none at all.

This entire country is going through a severe crunch and to simply expect the wealthy to bare the burden is obsurd. My help is not whining. They are thankful that they are able to stay off the ue line and know that when things turn around they can once again prosper. Your calls for shared sacrifice are a joke when the only ones sharing are the job creators.

the average CEO makes at least 26 times what his workers make.

it used to be six times.

and perhaps the whole 'shared sacrifice' thing shouldn't only fall on workers?

 

[LoneLaugher]

My profit margin has shrunk quite a bit yes. In order to maintain the same profits I would have to lay off most of my help.

How in the fuck do you profit from the labors of workers you no longer have? Explain that pseudo-economic dynamic. I'm all fucking ears.

By doing all the work myself with one or two helpers.

Not to bright eh?

OK.

I'm not going to explain it to you....as you are an experienced businessman and job creator. But can you see why other experienced businessmen might find this response to be less than sensible?

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

I have lowered our labor rates substantially in order to keep help on and maintain a constant work flow. I have also asked my help to take less pay on certain jobs where deeper discounts were given in order to secure future work.

That as opposed to the liberal mentaliry that I "deserve" my wage thus insuring if work is slow I will have none at all.

This entire country is going through a severe crunch and to simply expect the wealthy to bare the burden is obsurd. My help is not whining. They are thankful that they are able to stay off the ue line and know that when things turn around they can once again prosper. Your calls for shared sacrifice are a joke when the only ones sharing are the job creators.

the average CEO makes at least 26 times what his workers make.

it used to be six times.

and perhaps the whole 'shared sacrifice' thing shouldn't only fall on workers?

The ceo earned his way up the corporate ladder. Stop being envious and work harder.

 

[Oldguy]

I'm fair to the best of my ability but that's really not the point. The "I want what I'm owed" mentality is killing us.

Yes, it does sound as though you try to be fair. Good for you.

As for that last comment? Don't you "want to be paid what I'm owed," or do you just let your customers pay you whatever they feel like paying for your services?

It's the same principle. Your work has value and you have a right to receive what you consider just compensation for it. Conversely, your employees work has value too. Why should they not receive the compensation they consider just?

What? No answer to this?

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

How in the fuck do you profit from the labors of workers you no longer have? Explain that pseudo-economic dynamic. I'm all fucking ears.

By doing all the work myself with one or two helpers.

Not to bright eh?

OK.

I'm not going to explain it to you....as you are an experienced businessman and job creator. But can you see why other experienced businessmen might find this response to be less than sensible?

You should ask that of all the business owners that have gone under during this mess. If you're too proud to get your hands dirty and you go out of business blame your own pride.

I will do whatever I can to sustain my work and employees. Anything short of that and why bother to begin with.

 

[LoneLaugher]

By doing all the work myself with one or two helpers.

Not to bright eh?

OK.

I'm not going to explain it to you....as you are an experienced businessman and job creator. But can you see why other experienced businessmen might find this response to be less than sensible?

You should ask that of all the business owners that have gone under during this mess. If you're too proud to get your hands dirty and you go out of business blame your own pride.

I will do whatever I can to sustain my work and employees. Anything short of that and why bother to begin with.

That's it? That is as deep as you are going, isn't it?

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

I'm fair to the best of my ability but that's really not the point. The "I want what I'm owed" mentality is killing us.

Yes, it does sound as though you try to be fair. Good for you.

As for that last comment? Don't you "want to be paid what I'm owed," or do you just let your customers pay you whatever they feel like paying for your services?

It's the same principle. Your work has value and you have a right to receive what you consider just compensation for it. Conversely, your employees work has value too. Why should they not receive the compensation they consider just?

What? No answer to this?

I already answered it. If my client is say a first time home owner or young couple with a limited budget I will work with them. You shouldn't have to be rich to have nice things.

Then there are customers like my current one who I've made a fortune off of because he has more money than self control. We just installed a fucking hand hammered copper tub in his master suite.

And there are jobs I turn down because their value isn't worth the amount of work involved.

 

[Remodeling Maidiac]

OK.

I'm not going to explain it to you....as you are an experienced businessman and job creator. But can you see why other experienced businessmen might find this response to be less than sensible?

You should ask that of all the business owners that have gone under during this mess. If you're too proud to get your hands dirty and you go out of business blame your own pride.

I will do whatever I can to sustain my work and employees. Anything short of that and why bother to begin with.

That's it? That is as deep as you are going, isn't it?

Its the internet dude. Would you like a blood sample or will my ss# suffice?