*
When I’m roofing,as early as possible to beat the heat, and quit at 2 or 3. Sun stroke dosen’t pay the bills.
When I’m running my sawmill. it’s the 7 to 4 show, with an hour off for lunch, get gas, sharpen blade etc
When were logging, 6 to 4 , two 15 minute breaks, quit 15 minutes early to clean up, and b.s.
Replies
*
When I lived in Tucson and was pouring prestresed concreat we started at 02:00 a.m. to beat the heat in the summer.I moved to New Hampshire and I am in the United Brotherhood of Charpenters and Joiners (whats a joiner?) and am expected to go 7:00 to 3:30 with one and a hours of travel both ways (three total) on my own time.
*
As long as my employees worked hard for me, I never nickeled and dimed them to death. Generally, if I round off, I round up, not down. I have always paid from the time they arrived for work and either punched in or out, or were out of their car, truck, and ready to work. Many times I buy lunch, and a six pack at the end of the week. They have not made me rich, but I made always made a profit and I made more with them than without them.
*
It surprises me to hear that some of the employers out there are expecting a 30-90 minute commute to the job site for nothing. It seems to me that if you are going to bid a job that far away from where you and your guys normally work, this travel time should be part of the bid. Since an employee has no say in how far away the job site is going to be, it is the boss's responsibility to know where the company's employees live, and what is "far" for them. As an employee, I would be totally riffed if I was not getting paid for this time (an attitude like "if you wanted to make money on this, you make the drive"). Why line your employer's pocket by letting him get away with a cheaper bid than his competitor (or maybe not!), because the other bidder was fair to his employees?!?
*Cool Site:I can't agree with you Bill, though I haven't worked by the hour in awhile as well. I bill a straight $40 per hour for subcontract work(repairs)..Sometimes less for good quality folks that I have a good relationship with. My clock starts when I hit the job..typically 8AM for retail folks or 7:30 for construction sites. The clock stops when I start the truck and leave the job. Rarely do I have problems in gettin paid, except for the jerks that don't wanna pay that rate. They never see me againLOL...but they try after paying the bill.That's My Case..probably diff than yours. I've always been in favor of throwing an extra fifty in for on time reliability and the like, depending on the time involved.
*I'm a contractor in N.C. During the summer we start at 5:30 and quit at 2:30 to beat the heat. Even though its early my guys like leaving early in the afternoon and they are more productive.We take at least 2 breaks 10 min or so on my time and 45 min break to eat that i only deduct 30 min. Unless we are in a bind i let them go at 12:00 on Fri. I don't expect them to touch a tool untill 5:30 and we quit early enough to clean up by quiting time. If a job is over a 30 min comute i pay the extra time.I pay them well and give them bonus as often as possible.Good help is hard to find and i want to keep them. During the winter we work 8:00 til 5:00 and try to quit early on Fri. if possible.
*
I do trim contracting in NC and during daylight savings time, we get on the job at 7 and leave at 5:30. Four 10 hour days with either Friday or Monday off, depending upon events. Everybody loves those long weekends. Unloading, loading, and cleanups are all on my time. No pay for lunch. If a job is really far away, every body rides with me, and that is so much fun and so exciting no one's ever even asked to get paid for drive time.
Winter time is 8 to 4:30 for 5. Bummer.
BB
*
We start at 7:00 and quit at 3:30 Monday thru Friday. A short break in the morning, 30 minutes for lunch, a short break in the afternoon. The summer in Texas can be brutal. If a man needs more time for a break because the work is unusally hard or hot, he's got it. All our carpenters roll out on my time and roll up on my time. Those are job related duties. Any one working more than 40 gets time and a half. That seems to discourage my customers from asking us to work late. If it were up to most customers, we would'nt even get Christmas off. You've got to look after yourself and enjoy the time off that you do get.
*
We show up when we get there. As for long rides to the job, guys know to expect a bit of travel every now and then. I make it a point not to hire guys that live 45 minutes west of me because I can't see them driving to a job 30 minutes east of me. Besides, I think we spend enough casual time bullshitting around during the day that no one should be complaining about the drive. Some drives are 10 minutes from home & some are 45 minutes but it all comes out in the wash.
Pete Draganic
*We start at 7:00 am, 10 minute break at 9:30(more or less),30 min lunch,10 min break at 2:30, roll up and out by 4:30.We have worked 4 nines and a four for years and it has worked well for us. Is anyone else doing this?We get out at 11:00 on Friday, almost like a three day weekend.Live in a rural area and do not pay travel time,time over 40 at time +1/2.
*
Just curious how you guys handle when your guys are expected to show up in then morning, and when they go home. How much of their time is "on the clock" ?
The guy I currently work for does it like this: The guys are expected to show up at the shop, find out where they're going, load the tools they'll need on company trucks, and get to the jobsite
b by
7am. They leave the jobsite at 3:30, go back to the shop, clean any trash or scrap out of the truck, unload any tools they won't need the next day, and then go home. They are paid for 8 hours only. (7 to 3:30, with a half hour lunch)
Is this normal, or unusual ? How do you do things with your guys ?
*That wouldnt work anywhere ive ever worked. You start getting paid when you show up for work ready to go, off the clock for lunch, then stop when everything is cleaned up and you are ready to go. Sounds like everybodys losing about an hour a day. Its been a long time since ive worked by the hour for someone else, but with employees being so hard to find and keep these days i cant believe many guys would go for that. I dont agree with getting paid for sitting around or goofing off, but if you are loading trucks and cleaning up you should be paid for it.
*Ron,I used to work for a guy that wanted us to roll out and roll up his tools on our time: show up at 6:50 and leave at 3:45. (We would be on the same job site for months at a time so there was no "shop"). But we did have to go to his house on Fridays to wait for him to make out the payroll (as soon as the banks closed).The reason was that he was paying three of us to bullsh*t with each other in the morning and to drag our butts in the afternoon while not producing anything. As a worker I thought it sucked. As an employer I still think it sucks. If he was looking for better production,he should have given us posative insentive rather than negative.I had another boss who would have us meet at a bar in the morning for coffee (no booze) and we'd yak about what we were going to do before heading to the job site. Sometimes we'd sit there for an hour while he figured materials. We were on the clock as soon as we got to the job site. I didn't have a problem with that at all (except for walking into a stinky bar at 7:30am...). He paid a real reasonable wage.I pay my guy (one employee -- very unskilled, yet smart) a hundred bucks a day even if it's a short one because that's how I bill him. We just poured a footing for an addition we're going to build. It took a half day to set up the batter boards and strings, mark the excavation and determine elevations. It took a long day to set the forms as we still had a bunch of excavating. The pour was an easy short day. Lot's of reading the paper and waiting for the concrete truck.If I'm causing my guy to go to work and not filling the day for him, I'm a lame boss. I charge a full day to mess with the strings and pour, why not make it worth his while to work with me? The long day was eleven hours. A lot of guys would have been whinning after eight. He kept digging. He had about 22 hours on that little job and I gave him three hundred bucks. Then after the first beer was half way down I reached into my pocket and gave him another fifty. He's never going to quit without notice.If your boss is paying you a substantial hourly wage, you may be able to reconcile the free overtime. If you have an hour commute and a family at home, you may not.Where do you live?Dan
*I suppose every situation is different. Like Dan said, If you get paid well, then don't bitch. But if you are being abused finacially and hourly then find a new job. I once worked for a compnay that insisted we be there at 7 am and head out at 7:30. we only got paid from 7:30 although we would be marked as late if we didn't get there by 7. Anyhow, I was young, and made good money at the time so I didn't complain much. My guys now have 2 options...One, they can meet me at the job at a certain time or two, they can come to my house and help me load up if necessary then drive in my truck with me. Either way I only pay them while they are on the job unless the situation is excessive such as me picking up material in the morning for a job and they ride along and lend a hand. I usually throw them an hour or two. Pete Draganic
*Ron, three questions: What's the prevailing conditions at the competition? What's the prevailing wage in your area?Who's looking for help?Sounds like your employer has worked in either a Union Shop, a Licensed Trade like Plumbing or Electrical. The wheels came off when he became the employer. All shops I know of pay from the time the boss starts giving orders. He bills from the yard/shop to the site, site time, and any incidentals like going to a supply house for a billable extra.Was this a Family Business? Dad gave him a job, a roof over his head and meals too? A clue will be the: "Kid, this was the way it was when I worked for my old-man... quit yer bitchin' or hit the bricks" lecture.
*Good morning folks, We're a rural-based company, so it's not unusual for a job to be 45 minutes or an hour from home. We pay travel one way to the jobsite, expect our guys to start working between 7:00 and 8:00, they don't get paid for lunch, and we don't require anyone to put in more than 40 hours a week on site. I don't believe in working more than 10 hours except in exceptional circumstances, productivity goes down and accidents go up when people are tired. I'm not much into this crack of dawn stuff either, just because someone wears work boots doesn't mean they should be driving nails at 5 a.m. My employees like being treated like real people, little things like paying travel amazes them, they're so used to companies nickle and diming them to death....
*Here we start on the employees time and finish on company time. If the job starts at 7am then you need to have your tools out and started by 7am. We wrap up about 20 minutes before quiting time. This gives time to clean up sweep up and go over what we'll be doing the next day.
*When I'm roofing,as early as possible to beat the heat, and quit at 2 or 3. Sun stroke dosen't pay the bills. When I'm running my sawmill. it's the 7 to 4 show, with an hour off for lunch, get gas, sharpen blade etc When were logging, 6 to 4 , two 15 minute breaks, quit 15 minutes early to clean up, and b.s.
*Why would any contractor expect anyone to set up his tools on his own time? I dont go for that crap....although the framer i work for expects it of me. All the other guys get to the job 15 minutes before..set up and start banging nails at 8am. Me? I roll outta my car at 8am...through my tool belt on and start working. He never really says anything to me, probably because Im one of the most reliable guys hes ever had. Never late...always there and know what Im doing. If Im setting tools up to do your work then your gonna pay me for it. Im just starting to break out on my own.....weekends and evenings and use a PT helper and would never expect him to set up my tools to do my work on his time.