Actually, the independent contractor was good for both sides. The indie got paid by the hour and probably at a higher hourly rate than before he quit. The employer was happy because he no longer had to pay benefits, unemployment insurance, or taxes for the new contractors; the contractor was responsible for all that. The employer just cuts the indie a check every couple of weeks. This stopped when the IRS discovered that permanent employees and employers were scamming the system. Independent contractors could no longer be employed as if they were permanent employees. They had to set up a contracting company with a minimum number of employees to continue the relationship, and many did that. That was in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
During the popular years of high tech independent contracting here in Silicon Valley, the contractor and corporation had to abide by certain rules in order to be compliant w/the IRS
- the corporation could not tell the contractor what days of the week or hours of the day to do the work.
- or what tools the contractor could or should use to use to get the job done.
- they could only be told the project’s objectives.
- the contractor was not permitted to attend any corporate wide or group staff meetings, and could only attend meetings related to their own project about technical, scheduling, and budgeting issues.
As you might expect, not every employee was able to make the transition to a successful contractor.
Truck drivers are exempt under a Supreme Court decision that a railroad wage act also applied to them as transportation workers. Armored car guards are also exempt even if they don’t drive.
The court’s decision argued they were more like mechanics.
Because I believe that there are far more people than you think that will skate by doing less than others and still receiving the same pay. Either by design or by incompetence, there are people out there who will produce less and ask for more.
That’s exactly what the flat-rate or commission system does. You produce, you get paid. Now don’t get me wrong, there are numerous abuses rampant in this industry. But in its truest and simplest form, there is a certain elegance to a worker being paid based on how much he produces.
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Case closed. Most mechanics are paid on a commission basis or “piece work”, no overtime.
For the last 30 years I have been working 50 to 65 hours a week without being paid any overtime pay, that is normal for commission paid workers. Some guys put their tools away at 4:30 and wait around until 5 o’clock to go home. Some guys continue to work until their jobs are complete, go home at 7 PM. If a person wants to make a living in this business they have got to work.
Then fire them.
And exactly isn’t what’s enriches most of the people who have been getting wealthier for years - a group that includes me.
I wasn’t making a case but correcting @jtsanders’s misimpression.
Lots of people - I included - have been making a living by not-working.
Over the last 40 years the share of total income of the top 5% has increased, the share of the next 5% has stayed flat, the share of the ‘bottom’ 90% has decreased. I most want people who labor productively to make an increasing share of the nation’s income, even though that would leave me with less. Are there sluggards and whiners? Sure: kick them out. These people are working for a living; others working for a living should work with them to raise all of their incomes.
I actually believe mechanics should be paid an hourly salary. Why? Because they have to be there whether there’s work to do or not. If you expect me to be somewhere for you, then you should compensate me for my time.
But I also believe that people should check into the career they want to get into and not get into it if there’s an aspect of it they find intolerable.
I used to be a journalist. One area you can go as a journalist is writing articles for magazines. That would be fun, but I looked into it, and a lot of magazine writers get paid per article, not per hour or salary. And the best part of that is that they only get paid when the article is actually published, which can be 6+ months from when you turn it in. And sometimes it never runs (gets bumped for more pressing stories and then is too outdated to run) and you never get paid, despite having done the work.
Screw that! I tend to follow Harlan Ellison’s advice. He’s a screenwriter for a number of famous vehicles, including Star Trek. He’s got a great video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE) in which he rants about people wanting people to work for free, which I used to have all my interns watch because media interns tend to get duped by a lot of “hey, work for us for nothing, it’s a resume builder!” solicitations.
So, long story short, I wouldn’t be a mechanic because not getting paid for your time is BS, but I don’t have much sympathy for mechanics who go into the career completely blind and then wonder why they aren’t getting paid for their time.
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I’ve spent almost my entire adult life exempt. Frankly, I’d much rather be paid a salary and judged on my achievements than to punch a time clock. In the case of a mechanic, I believe they should have a set work schedule and be paid on a salary for their expertise… and judged on how much they accomplish, recognizing that the definition of “accomplish” includes solving tough problems as well as fixing cars. The most fair category IMHO is probably “salaried, non-exempt”, which means they don’t punch a clock, but also must be paid time-and-a-half for over 40 hours. With set work schedules that should work well.
I’d even be fine, conceptually, with salaried/exempt as long as the pay was good enough.
What I don’t like is the idea that a slow day at the shop = belt tightening with the family budget. That’s time the mechanic could have been using to do something instead of sitting around drinking coffee and waiting for closing time.
I think workers would be better off if they considered wages to be what they actually are - compensation for giving up a portion of your very limited lifespan in service of goals that are not yours.
We’re all gonna die, and not many of us are going to lie there on our deathbeds wishing we’d spent more time at work. If you want me to use up a significant portion of my lifetime in service to you, you should compensate me fairly for that.
Rules are written to take care of a particular problem, then as usual the bureaucracy continues to expand and writes more rules. Some good some bad. I remember when we were hit with the feds determining we weren’t doing things correctly. After that people were forbidden to eat their lunches at their desks or during break since that would not be considered a break. Whether they wanted to or not.
Edit: Sorry, double negative. Corrected
Someone always ruins it for someone else. I guarantee that while you guys were happy to eat at your desk when necessary or just because you preferred it (so do I), some jerk manager at some other company was requiring his employees to eat at their desk and keep working while off the clock.
There’s nothing wrong I can see with being paid piecemeal. Doctors and lawyers are paid piecemeal for the most part, and they do ok income-wise. In fact being paid piecemeal might well be a better deal for many workers who now get a salary.
Here is where being paid piecemeal doesn’t work. I was assigned a summer school class to teach. The minimum enrollment had to be 10 students or we would be paid on a per student arrangement. Ten students had enrolled in the class, but one student had not paid his tuition–I think he was waiting for some check to come through. At any rate, I was told I would be paid on a per student basis which amounted to about 20% of what I would be paid if the tenth student had paid his fees. I refused to to teach the class. It would take as much preparation to teach 9 students as 10 students or even 20 students (although there would be more tests and assignments to grade).
On the other hand, I had colleagues who were teaching on-line classes and being paid on a per student basis. Some had class sizes of over 200 and doing quite well. The university got upset with how much these colleagues were being paid. I got stuck on a committee to study the issue. I maintained the institution couldn’t have it both ways and suggested that on-line classes be considered as a regular class with a maximum class size. The administrator didn’t like my suggestion and said the university wouldn’t make as much money. At that point, I walked out of the meeting. I was offered the opportunity to teach on-line classes and turned it down. I prefer working in a live classroom.
The problem with the “produce more, earn more” situation is that it may work fine in an independent shop.
Not so much with a new car dealer franchise where the dreaded word “warranty” is an everyday curse.
This is especially true of the Asian models. Some of them pay zero diagnostic time. If a guy spends 6 hours tracking down an electrical gremlin they will only pay something like .2 hours (12 minutes…) for the actual repair of the problem.
Many times I’ve gotten involved in a repair not mentioned in the warranty manual. In cases like that we were asked to get a pre-approval before proceeding with the work.
The approval was given an ok and the repair completed. Then the manufacturer ALWAYS denied all or most of the approved time allotted for the mechanic. Subaru was the worst of the lot… I’ve been through this a number of times as both a mechanic and shop foreman. Even as the foreman I would be told one thing and the end result was far different.
In college I worked for a summer on the assembly line putting together heating and cooling units. We were paid an hourly factory wage like everywhere. But each particular job had a piece rate, so if our line did 120% of the rate, we were all paid 120% of our base hourly wage. Yeah we had to work fast and cooperate with each other but usually made anywhere from 115-125% every week. Not bad I thought. Some of the jobs were rated easier and the folks with seniority got those where they could generally hit 200% each week. So that’s a piece rate that worked and all were satisfied with it.
I don’t take a side in piece-rate v. hourly v. salary: most workers of all categories are being paid a shrinking share of the value they produce. I’m for all of them making more.
Since I posted my last comment, I read that April 1st the DOT is requiring electronic logs for all drivers. It is expected to raise the cost of shipping greatly because companies and drivers will no longer be able to lie about hours driven. I knew drivers that regularly logged 2 hours of off duty time for meal breaks every day for breaks they never took and that was for a union company. The problem was that the company would try to force driver who did not want to violate the hours of service regs (like me) to make the runs these guts were. My answer was always the same, if you try to force me to do it, I will have to go to the DOT and stop them. As long as you let me run legal, I don’t care what they do.
Non union drivers used to carry 3 log books with them. usually with each one separated by 8 hours. Depending on where and when they were asked for their log book they had one that was close to right.
I have a lot of sympathy for professional mechanics and always thought they should be paid more than drivers because I know from experience, it’s a lot easier to break 'em than to fix 'em.
In order to pay technicians an hourly rate to sit in chairs when they should be working the hourly labor rate will need to be increased. How much are customers willing to pay for auto repair? $200 per hour?
Employers need to put employees to work, schedule employees to match their demand, fire employees who don’t work. Employers have responsibilities too.
Just because there’s too-high a rate doesn’t mean current pay returns to employees their share of value produced. Some employers smuggle in aliens, keep them locked up, pay them nothing - they can argue that minimum wage is too high.