That’s true around here. I’ve been a contractor and now as a manager I hire contractors. Most of the time I’m hiring a consultant is for short term projects that need a body now. But when the project ends we let them go. Most contract jobs are 3-6 months. Sometimes there’s another project the consultant can move to. More then once I was hired on a 3 month contract and stayed on for over 3 years. I know one guy who’s been on a 3 month contract for almost 12 years.
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I am amazed that employers still don’t understand that you have to pay your employee a certain amount of money, and treat them with a certain level of respect in order to keep them honest and get quality work out of them. I have worked at places where the company shorted employees on their hours, or otherwise ripped us off, and guess what? Employee theft became a major problem, and customer service turned to sh**.
Agreed on how you treat employees.
My former employer was a very large corporation. The company had taken a direction of acquiring various companies that had a tangential connection to our main business at best. Better yet, upper management had not articulated a clear strategy for what it was going to do with these acquisitions. Meanwhile, the company sent mixed, almost cryptic messages about work locations, work expectations, and even when layoffs would occur (they had become regular annually). Folks were both confused and stressed by the uncertainty, and morale was plummeting. I ended up leaving the company for my own health.
It’s critical that companies have a clear plan and keep the employees happy. Because it’s the employees that face the customers.
As bad as the dealer mechanics have it I have to say I feel more sympathy for the car sales people. They’re treated worse than scum by management.
At the last dealer where I worked they fired me for insubordination after a blowup over an alleged comeback.
A gentleman who lived out in the country put a 100k miles on his Subaru; beating it to death on red dirt roads. He brought the car in for a front end noise. Both inner CV joints were gone along with both tie rods and both lower ball joints.
He only wanted the noisiest fault fixed whlch was the CV joints. I advised the ball joints as they can be lethal if one fails. He refused repairs on the ball joints and tie rods.
Two months later I’m told I have a comeback. When I see the car I think Oh God, not this POS.
I asked if they pulled the file before blaming me. No. Fine I’ll pull it myself. On the previous repair orderf I had written “Customer refused repairs ball joints and tied rods” Triple exclamation points and triple underlines.
They still back this guy and assured me I would get paid for the ball joints and tie rods. I did not as they started claiming comeback again. All hxxx broke loose and I got canned. No big deal as I was 24 hours away from quitting anyway due to lack of work and driving 150 miles a day round trip for nothing. Work had vanished and for a flat rate mechanic with no guarantees that’s a death sentence.
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So what did you end up doing about this, if anything? Complaint to your state’s labor board? Small claims lawsuit? Helped yourself to some company property on the way out?
Nope. I did nothing except vow to never work for another car dealer as long as I drew a breath.
My wife asked me what I was going to do and I said I have no idea but I’ll think of something.
After 4 or 5 days of mulling things over with a number of beers I decided to work for myself and to hxxx with everybody else. That way I’m accountable to no one but myself.
I sold one of my Harleys (not my antiques) for a decent amount of cash, rented a building, and started the grind. The first 6 months was tough. Very, very tough. I printed up some bright green business cards and carried some in my pocket all of the time. Whenever I’d see an import brand car I’d stick a card under the windshield wiper.
One thing led to another and word of mouth had me busy after a year. It was busy enough that at 5 I would close the shop, drive 25 miles home, eat dinner/play with the kids until their bedtime, and then drive 25 miles back to the shop to work until 11 or 12 o’clock. Next day, same thing. It worked out fine.
Twice I had dealers promise me things and they failed to deliver. At one time Subaru required every dealer to have a Subaru Master Mechanic on staff. To get that certification one had to attend a school in a certain area, wait a month, and take a test administered by the factory rep. The boss promised me 50% commision if I attained that status. Two and a half years later I did and then was told I was making enough money.
Not enough to keep me after a brazen lie.I lined up another job on my vacation, came back and loaded my stuff up while giving them 10 seconds notice.
This garbage goes on all of the time with mechanics but I’ve seen car salesmen get trampled on worse than that. They’re cannon fodder is all.
I can’t speak to the dealer/inde-contractor mechanic relationship, no experience. But here in Silicon Valley the inde-high-tech-contractor is of course well aware that they’ll have to pay their own medical insurance and 100% of the payroll taxes (vs 50% for an employee) , so they adjust their billing rate to compensate. The hiring company has no issues with paying extra b/c they save the same amount or more by using a contractor for the job. The downside of using a contractor from the company’s point of view is they have less control of the contractor’s work habits. The contractor can decide to work from 7 pm to 3 am if they want, and the company has no recourse to force them to work from 8 am to 5 pm, even if they want them to. This is more a theoretical issue than an actual one, b/c the contractor wants to keep on the good side of the company in order to get more contracts, so isn’t going to introduce unforced issues into the relationship. The contractors though due tend to refuse to attend staff meetings and other employee-related events, which can sometimes annoy the managers. But the contractors are pretty much forced by IRS regulations to avoid even the appearance of being an employee.
I can think of all kinds of issues regarding an indy contractor scenario. For one, I wonder how warranty would be handled?
Warranty not only pays less per hour but also way less when it comes to the allowed labor time. That is set by the car manufacturer. This would gouge the indy contractor deeply plus also open up the administrative can of worms with warranty claims unless the dealer assumed that part of it.
Even then, no way as an indy would I even touch a warranty job.