DECEMBER 23, 2023
VOLUME 52
EMPLOYEES VS. EMPLOYERS
Having been on both sides of the fence, union and non-union, I feel I have a license to comment on this matter. I am amused reading comments on social media about how employees think they have been mistreated, and abused by their employers, after having experienced working for some of the biggest assholes to ever walk, and endured it so I could make my house payments.
Firstly, I have to admit, I’m from another time, a time when people were one hell of a lot tougher and were able to stand up under the stress of being told what to do in a less than congenial manner. I remember when I was working my first job in a very large steel fabrication shop in Oklahoma that employed around 200 men in a building that covered eight acres. It had a huge whistle located in the center of the building that signaled start and stop times. One day I was getting particularly hungry just before lunch time, and asked my foreman what time it was. His reply was perfect, he said “they’ll blow the whistle when it’s time to quit”. In other word you don’t need to know what time it is, go back to work.
They didn’t care if you were tired, or hungry or having some sort of personal crisis, all they wanted was for you to perform the duties they were paying you to perform. Period. If you were having a bad day, stay home. But if you made that a habit, you would be out a job quickly. We had to “clock in” when we walked through the door in the morning, if you were a minute late, you were “docked” fifteen minutes, and so on every 15 minute interval. You were given the written rules when you hired in, if you found them too burdensome, you could opt out of working there. Simple. I wouldn’t say they were “slave drivers” they actually treated us well, they just expected you to work for your wages. That was a union shop by the way.
The toughest shops I worked in were union shops. They paid top wages, had great benefits, which resulted in a higher cost burden for the owners. This made it harder for them to compete with the non-union shops. To offset that, we had to be more productive. If you stopped to talk to your coworkers, you better keep it short, or the foreman would be breathing down your neck. Those shops were pressure cookers. But I was able to provide a better standard of living for my family with great health benefits, and paid vacations. Not a bad tradeoff for a little extra effort on my part. We took great pride in being union Ironworkers. The pros, the best in the business.
That inevitable time in my life came in my late forties when I decided to jump in and become a shop owner. The first time was not so good, as I was in a partnership with three other guys. My good friend I worked for years earlier, warned me about partnerships. He said they were marriages without sex. Truer words were never spoken. That lasted a couple of years before going down in flames. Five years later I did it again, only this time as a sole proprietor. It was a ten-year run of blood, sweat and tears. We did some great projects around Seattle, which you can still see today.
I was proud of our accomplishments, but the daily battle to deal with employees took the fun out of it. They brought their problems to work with them and they became my problems. Such as not paying child support, being arrested for soliciting prostitutes, being strung out on drugs, and just plain being lazy or crazy. My wife asked me one time, “where do you find these people”? I told her they find me. I sent one of my welders out to do a job and my truck was impounded by the Washington State Patrol. He was carrying a driver’s license that had been revoked months earlier. I checked it and put it in his file, having no idea it was invalid. Fortunately for me, I had a friend that was a state patrol office and was able to retrieve our welding truck before it was stripped of all of the tools in the impound yard. The list of employee problems was never ending, I could write a book about them. When I decided to throw in the towel and liquidate my shop, it was a happy day, it was like being liberated. I have learned two very important lessons in life, both from experience. Never be an employer, or a landlord.
Being an employer today is horrible. Our illustrious government has greatly contributed to this. It’s like being in a circular firing squad. The government spends our nation into oblivion causing record high inflation, then starts passing laws raising the minimum wage, which causes more inflation, which causes companies to cut back services and quality just to try and stay afloat. The employees that are now receiving these greatly inflated wages still can’t afford to live any better than they did before, because this whole exercise just raised the water level even higher. This whole dog and pony show doesn’t change anything, doesn’t change anyone’s economic status, it just makes the money less valuable. Just because you have more dollars, you’re not any richer. Companies have to resort to cutting staff, which means less jobs, plus raising the cost of the goods and services they provide, means their sales start to suffer. This causes an accelerated downward spiral, and everyone suffers. Try running a business under these conditions.
Today’s employees are so spoiled and entitled, they don’t stop and assess their roles in making this situation better. The more productive and efficient they are, the more prosperous their employers are, which results in greater rewards for their efforts. Employees that put forth a better performance, usually benefit by being promoted and receiving an improved rate of pay. Somehow, in later years people have inverted this whole idea, thinking they should be paid top wages from the beginning. Sorry, unless you are highly experienced and bring something special to the table, it’s not likely to happen. This is a misconception concerning college degrees. Even if you have a college degree, and you have no work experience, you’re in essence and entry level employee. You are going to be trained like everyone else, because every company has a different way of conducting business.
I’m going to change directions a little bit, but it’s part of this larger problem of lackluster productivity. Having an arthritic knee, I sometimes opt out going in a big box stores shopping with my wife. The pain in my knee and my wallet at the same time can be overwhelming. Anyway, last Saturday night I was waiting in the parking lot enjoying some tunes on Sirius FM, and watching a young man probably about 17 years old gathering up shopping carts. Not an unusual activity, but he was doing it with one hand. He had a cell phone in this other hand, which was his actual focus, not gathering shopping carts. So, instead of putting 20 carts together and pushing them back to the store, he was putting three or four together, and the small ones to boot. He spent over an hour wandering around looking at his phone while pretending he was working. Around nine ‘o’ clock he disappeared. About 15 minutes later an older guy came out and had the rest of the carts gathered up in less than 20 minutes. Not bad, this kid is making $15.00 an hour wandering around the parking lot gazing at his cell phone, contributing to the high prices I’m paying for the crap in his employer’s store. Interestingly, a few days later I’m having lunch with the owner of the company I work for. The owner is complaining about how his shop employees seem to lack reasonable efforts in their work. He cited their constant cell phone checks. I told him about my experience a few days ago in the parking lot, and said if I owned a business today, I would buy a set of lockers with small compartments and make the employees lock their phones up during working hours. A major portion of the work force in this country only has one useful arm. It’s like having a team of one-armed paper hangers.
We are in a unique situation where everyone is complaining about the way things are, but nobody wants to get off their asses and do something about it. If all employers banned cell phones during work hours, it would end overnight. They fire people for having drugs in their systems because the danger it imposes to themselves and others. In my opinion, cell phones pose the same dangers due to the distraction they cause. This seems like something OSHA should be enforcing.
Well good people, that’s the way I see things through my narrow scope of vision. I have to admit, I don’t think in color, I think in black and white, and right and wrong. No shades of gray in my color spectrum. Do it right or don’t do it at all.
VERITAS VINCIT ~ LIVE FREE OR DIE
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