Layout:
Home > where are all the workers?

where are all the workers?

April 4th, 2009 at 04:50 pm

My husband took on a remodel job that involves removing part of the roof. It is a 3 man job, with 2 men on the roof and one (the strongest and youngest) on the ground handing up the wood.
He hired 3 men to work.
Not one day this past week did all 3 show up on one day.
Dh is trying to work on the big job, the foreclosure house he is trying to finish inside.
He is over there today trying to work, but today only one man showed up.
There is no work around here, but you still can not get the locals to work full time.
He called me last night to see if we could cancel dinner out which we had planned. He wanted to work until 8 pm.
His plan now, is to go to work at the remodel job every day, work til 4 pm, then go to the foreclosure house and work until at least dark every night.
Poor guy, he has always had this problem. I can remember him leaving for work before dawn and working til after midnight! Many nights!
Guess we will be eating at home for a while the next few months.
Since we stayed home, I am taking the $20 we saved and adding it to the challenge money. Plus I will add $1 for the stock market going up and $2 for winning 2 games of mah jong.
Prev. total $5866.00
today 23.00
new total $5889.00

4 Responses to “where are all the workers?”

  1. Joan.of.the.Arch Says:
    1238866449

    You'd think he's be swamped with people wanting work. Doesn't he have reliable former employees that he can call on? Do other employers also have trouble finding people to work fulltime and reliably? Is he advertising the position accurately so that people really know up front how hard the work is? Is he hiring people who haven't done labor in so long that they need to condition their muscles and build stamina before they can continue the work?

  2. Ima saver Says:
    1238869180

    Actually, he is using one man that has worked for us for over 15 years, but only works when he wants to. He is using a young man that has framed in all our houses the past several years, but he too only works when he wants. The third guy is not as skilled as the first two but is the only one that wants to work full time. However, he needs constant supervision.
    We have NEVER had a worker put in 40 hours a week, which is why my dh has to work 7 days a week. Dh actually prefers doing all the work himself, but sometimes he has to have help on the outside (framing and roofing) part of the house. He does all the inside (trim) work alone.

  3. Joan.of.the.Arch Says:
    1238873754

    That's incredible, Julie. It has been years, but when my three brothers worked construction, they sometimes worked some very long hours. I think they wanted any extra work, too, because they had to save for winter and ~literally~ for any rainy days. There was not always winter work. And it was paid per hour, so if there was a rain day, there was no pay. I guess those were different times.

    Last summer I talked to the chief of the crew that mows & trims the parks in this part of our city. He described a similar problem that your husband is having with workers. The crew was out front of my place two days ago (there's a large parkway) and it appeared to be a full crew of eight people, most I have ever seen. I think the bad economy gave the city a lot more options in hiring hard workers.

  4. Aleta Says:
    1239029819

    My Mom lives in an area of Florida that had seen a tremendous amount of growth and building of homes. When the bottom fell out, the construction workers went elsewhere to work. They're having problems finding people to do necessary work for them as well.

    I keep hearing about the housing industry bringing the economy down and I think it started with the gasoline industry when it was over $4.00 a gallon.

    We have a friend that was mortgaging his property to buy more trucks for his business. First, he lost his trucks because of the gasoline situation and next he lost his homes.

Leave a Reply

(Note: If you were logged in, we could automatically fill in these fields for you.)
*
Will not be published.
   

* Please spell out the number 4.  [ Why? ]

vB Code: You can use these tags: [b] [i] [u] [url] [email]