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Hi all, Since quite a few of you guys seem to be GC’s I thought you might give me your opinion on what happened to me last year.
I am a painter that works for one large building company exclusively. Last year the AC comes to me and says Steve , sales are up and we are going to need another crew of painters , can you handle it?I I say sure, so I give away the other GC I worked for to give this guy my complete attention.
Then my foreman hands in his notice. Guess who he is going to be working for. I arrange a meeting with the GC about this, as you can imagine I am really annoyed. The GC says that my foreman approached him while still in my employ saying he heard he needed another crew and he was available. The GC said, don’t you work for Steve and he said yes but he has given notice.
The AC told him he would not discuss the matter while he was employed by me but to come and see him when he has actually left the job. The GC tells me he took this guy on because he had left me, that I would not be able too keep up with the work without him and his brother and that this guy is the perfect one to take on because he had worked for me on his jobs of 2 years and knows all the other trades and the system.
So here I am , given a good GC’s work away to concentrate on this GC, lost my best employee (and his brother) and now I share the work with this former employee.
After reading some of the other threads on this board I was wondering if I have any sort of legal claim here with either the employee or the GC as it probably involves about 200 K worth of work that I have missed out on.
Any thoughts
Steve.
Replies
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no.. you have no legal claims that i can see..
what you do have is two guys you should part company with..
one is your former employee.. and the other is the GC
the GC made a committment to you (non-binding.. but a moral committment)..
if you've stated the case correctly, he knew you were clearing your decks to committ to his needs..
all he had to do was tell your former employee that he would not be hiring him because he intended to continue working with you...that would have been the end of that...
at the same time.. you should have been minding your p's & q's , if the employee was that big a part of your success you should have had a game plan for keeping him or replacing him...
now you are in a bad situation...they'll raid you again.. you're setting yourself up...
you choose who you are going to work with...or for...
b but hey, whadda i no ?
*I don't think that you have any legal claim on either your former employee or the GC. One of the risks of being an employer who does a good job of training your workers is that they will become your competition. We have had a few employees set out on their own and I have tried to encourage others to do so. Most find that they make less money and have a lot more hassles than they did as employees. These guys never seem to understand the business side and are destined to be employees. A few succeed and become competitors and those guys we could not have kept no matter what we would have done. As for the GC, what's the guy to do? He knows what your outfit's capacity for work is. Could you do it all without your foreman? He did say that he wouldn't discuss any business with the foreman while he was working for you.I see it as a touchy area but if you have had a good relationship with the GC in the past, I think you should suck it up, do your best work and outperform your new competitor. If you feel that the GC has betrayed you, take the hit and don't work for him anymore. A lot of times we take these bumps in the road personally when they are just part of the business landscape. As Mike says, mind your p's and q's and make sure that you control the basics of your business and are not completely at the mercy of others. Other people rightly have their own interests ahead of yours.
*Happens all the time in one way or another, forget about it. I wouldn't stick with the GC though, he's probably the kind a guy you have to chase down the street for your money also. Maybe not at first, but a bad character always shows up sooner or later, after he's two or three jobs behind in his payments, he suddenly dissappears.
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Hi all, Since quite a few of you guys seem to be GC's I thought you might give me your opinion on what happened to me last year.
I am a painter that works for one large building company exclusively. Last year the AC comes to me and says Steve , sales are up and we are going to need another crew of painters , can you handle it?I I say sure, so I give away the other GC I worked for to give this guy my complete attention.
Then my foreman hands in his notice. Guess who he is going to be working for. I arrange a meeting with the GC about this, as you can imagine I am really annoyed. The GC says that my foreman approached him while still in my employ saying he heard he needed another crew and he was available. The GC said, don't you work for Steve and he said yes but he has given notice.
The AC told him he would not discuss the matter while he was employed by me but to come and see him when he has actually left the job. The GC tells me he took this guy on because he had left me, that I would not be able too keep up with the work without him and his brother and that this guy is the perfect one to take on because he had worked for me on his jobs of 2 years and knows all the other trades and the system.
So here I am , given a good GC's work away to concentrate on this GC, lost my best employee (and his brother) and now I share the work with this former employee.
After reading some of the other threads on this board I was wondering if I have any sort of legal claim here with either the employee or the GC as it probably involves about 200 K worth of work that I have missed out on.
Any thoughts
Steve.