A Tradesmans rant

Debt_Free_Chick

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

But how much of those 24 hours have you actully been working and how much time have you spent sitting waiting for fares? (Genuine question.)

Isn't sittiing waiting for fares working? After all, the driver is available and ready to go

All the overheads, especially the vehicle costs, still have to cover time spent waiting for fares.

MrsE_2

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

But how much of those 24 hours have you actully been working and how much time have you spent sitting waiting for fares? (Genuine question.)

Time spent waiting is still "work" time.

My DH works in London, once he goes to work, he's at work till he comes home.
If he spends 1/4 of the day waiting for fares thats still very tiring & he can't pop home or go off & do something.

During that waiting time, he's still paying for his car/radio-rent/mobile/insurance/servicing/road-tax/mots/etc.
Eveything is ticking at full pelt except diesel.

How can you respond like that to a man who has earned less than £50 per day?
I think you have just trivialised his time.
Time is money.

Oldernotwiser

MrsE wrote: »

Time spent waiting is still "work" time.

My DH works in London, once he goes to work, he's at work till he comes home.
If he spends 1/4 of the day waiting for fares thats still very tiring & he can't pop home or go off & do something.

During that waiting time, he's still paying for his car/radio-rent/mobile/insurance/servicing/road-tax/mots/etc.
Eveything is ticking at full pelt except diesel.

How can you respond like that to a man who has earned less than £50 per day?
I think you have just trivialised his time.
Time is money.

Sorry, I have to disagree with you, although I think the situation's unfortunate.

How about a plumber who's waiting by the phone for someone to ring and offer him a job - is he working all that time? The same goes for a temporary secretary or supply teacher. You can't count waiting for work as work, unfortunately.

marleyboy

Although I can see your rational with the argument, the same could just as easily be applied to a receptionist. Do you pay them per phonecall, or per hour?

I think a self employed, waiting for a phonecall for a potential job, could be classed as NOT currently working, but waiting for an order or confirmation during a job, could well be deemed as working,

I would hazard a guess whether or not SE or Employed, both would have a set of hours that is classed as "work shift" as well as a set of hours classed as "Home shift".

It still boils down to customer discretion, regarding how much a job will cost, whether Self Employed or Contractual, it all stems on how much the job at hand will cost the customer, who STILL is not interested in who pays what overheads, who has the flashier van, who gets what for what and why.

All Customers want (any customer) is the cheapest quote at the best possible quality. All else you can sing from the highest mountain, I and Everyone else classed as customers, will not give one hoot, how many kids, taxes, overheads, hours or pay or rate of pay any Professional SE or contractual Employed person gets. Just who is the best deal overall.

Debt_Free_Chick

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

Sorry, I have to disagree with you, although I think the situation's unfortunate.

How about a plumber who's waiting by the phone for someone to ring and offer him a job - is he working all that time? The same goes for a temporary secretary or supply teacher. You can't count waiting for work as work, unfortunately.

Maybe you can't - but then your hourly/daily/weekly rate has to reflect that you have a certain amount of "non-fee-paying time". The same is true of time spent marketing, doing the accounts, chasing bills etc ... it's all part of the business overheads and has to be factored in somewhere. As I said earlier.... the price of a pair of knickers you pay in M&S (or Asda or anywhere else) includes these overheads.

To be honest, very many small businesses actually fail, as they don't factor this in!

BTW - I am employed and have been for 27 of my 30 years working life. But I did spend 3 years self-employed as a consultant. I had the benefit of professional advice to help me set up my business, funded by the employer that sacked me and it was the best advice I ever had. It really opened my eyes.

We should be grateful for tradesmen, small businesses and the self-employed. They provide the competition that keeps the bigger businesses on their toes and enables us, as consumers, to shop around. Imagine if the only supermarket were Tesco - what kind of a deal do you think we would get then?

Many, many - far too many - small businesses fail - or fail to make anything like a profit. They simply don't "do the maths".

At the risk of repeating myself ..... ALL businesses have overheads and ALL overheads are (or should) be reflected in the price the customer pays. Simple economics.

Regards

Debt_Free_Chick

marleyboy wrote: »

All Customers want (any customer) is the cheapest quote at the best possible quality. All else you can sing from the highest mountain, I and Everyone else classed as customers, will not give one hoot, how many kids, taxes, overheads, hours or pay or rate of pay any Professional SE or contractual Employed person gets. Just who is the best deal overall.

The kids shouldn't enter in to it as they are not a business overhead but you have a point.

However, the price you pay MUST include the overheads. If it doesn't, then you are paying a failing tradesman. Now ... that may not matter to you if your job is completed before they go t!ts up, but if they do before they finish your job then ....... ????

MrsE_2

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

Sorry, I have to disagree with you, although I think the situation's unfortunate.

How about a plumber who's waiting by the phone for someone to ring and offer him a job - is he working all that time? The same goes for a temporary secretary or supply teacher. You can't count waiting for work as work, unfortunately.

Ah, but he's not sitting at home doing his own thing.
He's parked up in London, sitting in his car (hour - hour & a half from home), his name on a waiting list at the cab office. Ready to go at a seconds notice.

You can disagree all you want, but you're not right.

Oldernotwiser

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

The kids shouldn't enter in to it as they are not a business overhead but you have a point.

However, the price you pay MUST include the overheads. If it doesn't, then you are paying a failing tradesman. Now ... that may not matter to you if your job is completed before they go t!ts up, but if they do before they finish your job then ....... ????

I do understand most of what you're saying but I can't see how it applies to many tradespeople. If I think of the people I've employed over the last five years (an electrician, a carpenter and a general builder) I'm stumped as to understanding what "overheads" they had.

They all advertised (very cheaply) in our local free paper, the electrician worked from an estate car which was his only vehicle and the carpenter had a small van with his wife running a car. We had a general builder, believe it or not, who didn't drive (or else he'd lost his licence) who could only do jobs within walking distance! None of them had any tools that my more DIY minded friends don't have.

Now I can see that 2 of them would've needed to have vehicle insurance for business use and I hope that they all had some kind of liability insurance but I really can't see what other "overheads" any of these had and this would be very much the same for all the other people we've used over the years. I can't really see why they'd have to factor in doing admin in their own time; I'm sure that you, like many of us, have to do this unpaid as an employee.

Debt_Free_Chick

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I can't really see why they'd have to factor in doing admin in their own time

Well, M&S do that when they set the price of the knickers you buy.

And doing admin reduces the time available to do "paid work". So it follows that your rate for doing paid work must include the time you spend doing admin.

And I'm talking about the admin for running the business - not "personal" admin.

And - as I posted earlier - they can't work when on holiday, so their rate has to include the paid holiday that the rest of us get. Yes, of course, any self-employed person can choose not to take any holiday and get paid instead, but that should not be "the norm" that is considered to be acceptable. It's not realistic to expect any human being to work for 52 weeks a year with no time off at all (although, I know that a number of self-employed do just this).

On average, the self employed have 220 days in which to earn a years salary. So a tradesman charging £180 a day has turnover of only £40k. Deduct their overheads and I doubt they earn much more than the national average - hardly "a fortune".

A self-employed tradesman is two people - a "private business" and a "one-man M&S" and as an "M&S" they have to meet all the costs of running their business from the daily rate they charge.

I rather feel I've exhausted my views on this topic, so if I don't post again, please don't be offended. I simply feel that I can't really contribute anything that hasn't already been posted.

Regards

Oldernotwiser

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

Well, M&S do that when they set the price of the knickers you buy.

And doing admin reduces the time available to do "paid work". So it follows that your rate for doing paid work must include the time you spend doing admin.

And I'm talking about the admin for running the business - not "personal" admin.

And - as I posted earlier - they can't work when on holiday, so their rate has to include the paid holiday that the rest of us get. Yes, of course, any self-employed person can choose not to take any holiday and get paid instead, but that should not be "the norm" that is considered to be acceptable. It's not realistic to expect any human being to work for 52 weeks a year with no time off at all (although, I know that a number of self-employed do just this).

On average, the self employed have 220 days in which to earn a years salary. So a tradesman charging £180 a day has turnover of only £40k. Deduct their overheads and I doubt they earn much more than the national average - hardly "a fortune".

A self-employed tradesman is two people - a "private business" and a "one-man M&S" and as an "M&S" they have to meet all the costs of running their business from the daily rate they charge.

I rather feel I've exhausted my views on this topic, so if I don't post again, please don't be offended. I simply feel that I can't really contribute anything that hasn't already been posted.

Regards

I appreciate that you won't post again but just want to make a final point that I think that the anaolgy with M&S is just daft. I can appreciate your point about needing to make extra to cover holidays and, obviously, some kind of insurance cover for ill heath would be sensible.

However, the people I employed turned up and did their job and went home again, with their money in their pocket. Apart from spreading it more evenly to cover holidays, I just cannot agree that they had any more overheads than someone who's employed.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this, except I should add that all three of them are still in business, they all seem to be doing quite well and I paid them all rather less than £180 per day!