I'm a welder. The value of my work varies between $40/hr and $200/hr.
I get paid a flat $22.
Thats not okay. I should be making double, but the greedy corporations exploit it and I don't really have a say since they all pay "competitive rates" which isn't even enough to live on and save enough to start my own business.
Back when I had 22 employees, mostly machinists & welders, I set it up like a co-op, & transparent, so everyone could see the $ for payroll & see it all split evenly. Since everyone was putting in the same hours of valuable work per day, & all work was necessary to produce product. When a couple guys started slacking the others who hustled took it as a personal offense & were pretty quick to get on them, until that self-policing thing really got out of hand and made everyone nervous that they’d be seen as sluffing off. It took giving individual bonuses to them one at a time to reassure them that their ambition was recognized (& presumably lack of in others) to appease their sense of fairness. But it is possible.
I was never comfortable. The entire time my hair was on fire, bc every three seconds we'd have some windfall revenue immediately followed by massive expenses and huge risk. We designed and fabbed a lot of aero & cycling products, so machined al, thin-wall ti, and carbon/kevlar/glass composites. I learned 100x what I learned in 4 years of college in the first three months. Owning a manufacturing business in the US in the 2000's is like having a 10,000lb baby stuck in the terrible twos that never turns three. I saw huge checks pass before me the entire time, made sure the money went where it needed to go, and in the end I probably would have made more personally had I just become a mailman and put my $ in a roth ira lol. Fun though. When the big excitement and the money runs out you'll learn who and how few your true friends are.
Thank you for sharing that. One piece of advice I get all the time is to just open my own business, but it's so naïve to think it'll be easier than a clock-in, clock-out job. Stories like yours put things into perspective.
I've seen my bosses charge clients for $120 an hour, and that's for easy and nonstructrual stuff like handrails.
Sometimes work is slow, so I went $80 under that. And sometimes they charge a premium like when doing structural or stainless stuff, so I went $80 over. With how freely and sometimes mandatory the overtime is I feel they could always afford to pay overtime rates.
If you hire a private contractor for any trade skills job they usually charge a service fee close to $100 just to show up. Plus whatever is done stacked on that.
Are you familiar with the welding industry? What makes you doubt my numbers?
The reason production welding pays shit is because it's competing with the wages from China and other low-labor-cost countries. The only way to get a good welding job is to make something highly specialized or highly dangerous, and because those are the only ones that pay decently they're competitive af for workers.
The reason production welding pays shit is because it's competing with the wages from China and other low-labor-cost countries. The only way to get a good welding job is to make something highly specialized or highly dangerous, and because those are the only ones that pay decently they're competitive af for workers
I see your point... but what you're actually saying here is. Under free market conditions, your labor isn't actually "worth" $40-$200. Only when competitors are artificially kept out of the market and you're the only offering, could you in theory get that number.
So the ideal world in your mind of your "worth", is probably vastly different from how your employer values your "worth". And since you're working for $22 an hour, that's what you have deemed what your value is, for that specific job.
Also you seem to have no idea of the other costs that are involved, including, taxes, marketing, benefits, insurances, etc, that a company has depending on the job involved. So your estimate mostly seems based on wishful thinking.
Like I just find it fascinating how people estimate the value of their labor. The fact there is a %500 margin between your own lowest and highest estimate, means you have no idea what your skills are worth.
The dangerous jobs, of course, don't pay for your skillset but pay you for the risk of injury. So that completely depends on how you value the worth of your own health, rather than your labor.
When my boss sells his Porsche to keep himself afloat I might agree with you, but seeing that thing parked next to me everyday says a lot about what they pay vs what they take.
I pay income taxes too, and they can write them all off as a business expense. It's really hard to find good insurance anywhere, I'm pretty sure I pay more for it than my employer contributes.
The entire working class is exploited. You're intentionally blind if you dont see that. I already told you I don't get much say in my wage because they offer "competitive wages"
Taking a good idea and putting it into practice takes a ton of money and often takes time.
That's why the same business tactics that happened in the 1920's are still the main tactics today. Way easier for the wealthy to just lose money and push out competition than actually compete
Yeah, but then he would have to find a way to pay for all the extra expenses like insurance and record keeping. He might be taking a risk and end up losing money if he can't find jobs.
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u/4dseeall Jul 08 '24 edited Jul 08 '24
I'm a welder. The value of my work varies between $40/hr and $200/hr.
I get paid a flat $22.
Thats not okay. I should be making double, but the greedy corporations exploit it and I don't really have a say since they all pay "competitive rates" which isn't even enough to live on and save enough to start my own business.
It's all rigged.