Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Need some job related advice

It's alot easier to find a new job if your currently employeed vs. searching around with no job.

Start looking while your still employ'd

tell them you wont do what they want. its not right, you know it, they know it. if they lay you off after losing all your benefits, you will be guaranteed unemployment for a while, and you can look for a decent job in the mean time...

As an Estimator / Project Manager for a construction company, I can assure you the company is not making any money.
There are a lot of companies out there who have a debt load and are bidding projects for less than cost, in order to turn cash and keep the doors open, as well as keep their best employees at least partially employed. The jobs they do get, are in effect, high interest loans.
Even if your company is not among the irresponsible, they still can't compete with those willing to bid below cost.
I have a hunch that they are losing money keeping you working, so they probably will hate to see you go, but financially, you'll be just 1 less mouth to feed.

Yep, contrary to what some may say, you have paid into the unemployment system your entire life. The unemployment ins cost to employers represent a part of the benefits you pay for out of your compensation you would have made if they didn't have to pay it. Cost percentage of all benefits, taxes, WC and UE insur added to pay is how employee cost is calculated. Usually pay + 25%.

Kent

Plaina and simple.....While I empathize, if things are so [bleep], go find another job. In the meantime, I'd keep my mouth shut as I firmly believe that being employed is certainly better than being unemployed, especially in this market. Also, while unemployed, you also lose most of the leverage you might have in negotiating a better package at your next job. Unemployment = no leverage!

Being employed in these tough times is a good thing, but taking money out of my pocket to stay employed isnt going to cut it for me

Tough call. I'd say working for a living is still better than not. Plenty of people out there fighting the same fight....lower pay, reduced benefits, increases that don't cover cost of living increases, etc. It's gonna get worse before it gets better. They are cutting all of those costs trying to stay afloat. Even you said that things had slowed to a "snails pace." What's better, going out of business or scraping to stay afloat? Stay employed but look for something better. When you find it, THAN LEAVE.

My 2 cents.

There's no leverage in the construction biz, zip. There's no jobs either. I wish I could tell you there is hope, I can't.

Since the construction industry was our last true manufacturing spur in the economy, our country is in huge trouble. Imagine all the support industries that are now failing because of this. There is a correlation with GM failing, GMAC financing and all the repos and canceled orders for huge equipment and fleet vehicles in production from construction companies as only one example.

No production means no base money. Down to the lowest denominator, an illegal getting his cash for digging ditchs and spending 30 bucks at best buy on some cheap gaget times 12 million. There is no base money. Trickling down money from the top of the pyramid with stimulus money, it never reachs the base. Should have just given each taxpayer 30,000 and let the top at the pyramid compete for the dollars, we have to pay it back anyway, might as well have gotten some personal use and stimulated the economy.

It doesn't relate to 338... yet it does

Kent

It sounds to me like you've made a decision already, it's just a matter of when. I'm sorry to hear it, your's is a situation that is the norm in the construction industry right now. I have watched companies struggle in the concrete industry for a couple years now. If I could harness the cumulative experience of people who have been forced to quit - for lack of work - I'd have one mighty fine organization.

I told them this morning I wouldnt be using my truck for thier use. we are going to have a company meeting Monday morning

I'm one of those concrete guys, started at the bottom and worked up to having a small business with my son. We were doing 50 foundations a year just us two, weren't getting rich, making a good living and I payed all my debts off including my 100,000 home I bought in '95. That's all that has saved my family, no debt. Man I wanted to buy the toys like everyone else, thank God I didn't, I'd be out in the street.

We did 1 house last year and glad to have it. Backyard jobs and day help with others like ourselves when they actually have bigger jobs, we do the same with them, about 7 days a month working. Even in the 80s these times lasted just a couple months, it's been a couple years and no end in sight.

Kent

How'd you like to be one of the companies who went out and spent a fortune on aluminum forms, or a half-million dollar pumper or tele-belt, perhaps a redi-mix producer who built a multi-millon dollar plant?

The industry is on it's collective rear-end, and as always is the indicator of construction activity.

Cement suppliers who normally - smugly - turn down concrete producers, are begging for sales to anyone, because normally empty silos are full. I even know of mills that are shut down, and that's a first.

how much profit did you share in .will the co survive??

guess you will have more answers on monday morning.
Best to you ,you sound like a keeper......

I guess only time will tell. If you are still unemployed in a year but have a truck with low mileage on it will it be worth it?

Only you can answer that.

If you walk off the job and can't get a job before unemployment runs out then what? Are you sure your company won't fight an unemployment claim...even if there's no basis for it - it can delay payments.

I recently shut down and put 75 guys out of work because my competitors are bidding jobs at 75% or less of actual cost (IE no profit) simply to generate some cash to pay "some" of their bills to kick the can down the road till things turn around and I couldn't/wouldn't compete with that.

We started cutting back hours/overtime back in Nov. 2008. The first day I announced we were going back to 40 hour work weeks I had some guys walk off that day saying they could do better. I don't follow them all but I know one of them is still out of work 15 months later.

Every time I cut back I lost more guys which sucked but it also made us stay open just a tad longer kicking the can down the road.

Just food for thought...and we're in a part of the country that's labelled the best for construction in the US right now and way below US unemployment average.

It's really only starting to hit here. I remember the oil bust of the early 80's when my family knew lifelong chemical engineers who were standing in line to get a job bagging groceries at the Winn Dixie. Guys who were pulling in some serious cash for years working construction in the plants were leaving their families going all over the country in the "hopes" of getting in on some pipeline work or whatever else they could find. My father who had owned his own very profitiable business took a night job at a private school mopping floors for over a year.

I'm just saying have a backup plan. 20 hours a week and paying your own transportation may suck ass now but in a year or 18 months you may look back on them as the "good old days".

I've been in this position with a previous employer. They kept playing those little intimidation games. Lucky for me I found a new job. Bye yih! They were shocked and ask me to stay I opted out. No one needs training in how to kiss corporate butt.

Yep the support industry includes all materials, concrete, steel, wood, paint, whatever. All transport for those materials, accounting, banking, vehicles,some very expensive ones, equipment, electronics, insurance, the list is endless. It reaches into every industry except maybe heath care.

Stores closing everywhere, even national chains, why, no base money. No 10,20,50, dollar impulse buys, that money is for food and shelter.

Construction ran this country, not the auto makers, it supplied jobs in even the smallest communities. State, County and City governments were pulling in so much money on taxes and building permits they became drunk with the excess, now they're laying off teachers, police and fire, billions behind in our state of Az after having surpluses. Billions because they thought it would never end.

We're F'd, and so is everyone else. Instead of stimulus for the banks and auto makers, 30000 for each tax payer with vouchers to buy down your loan, or buy a home, with banks competing for that money, they would get it anyway if they were competitive and we would get value in our property. Since the money was given we should have gotten it since we have to pay it back.

Up to 15000 of that can be used for a new vehicle on a 3 yr term from the Government to the auto maker, then title is given to the owner after the term, no selling the vehicle for 3 yrs. We get value and the auto industry produces vehicles.

Up to 2000 could be used to buy smaller items at stores to produce demand and keep them afloat and spur production.

A combo of all three depending on your needs.

I'm not sure how much each taxpayer would have received with the amount of stimulus that's been appropriated. maybe not 30000, but I know we have to pay it back with no personal or economic benefit.

Kent

338, with all that said, if you will be bringing in more than the 250ish unemployment per week, at 20 hrs and using 20/25 bucks a day on your truck, stay as long as you can, it's survival time.

Kent

I checked on the unemployment. It would be $479 a week.Thats way more than I'm making at 20 hours a week now.Plus no wear and tear or gas money for my truck

Why not take the unemployment, go to school, and reinvent yourself into a new and better job?

our max unimployment in canuck land is 447 minus tax ded. so thats not bad .
mabey on Monday you ask for lay off so someone else can get some of your hours ,,or someone else goes and you get some of theirs,guess it depends who does what work and who is needed the most??????????????????