As we look through the opinions of the readers, as well as the writers, everyone is right. The industry won't change until there is uniformity between the MSO's and the Contractors themselves. Maybe what needs to happen is that a union is formed to protect all involved in this industry.
Being on both sides of the fence as a sub and a contractor, there is really not any protection for anyone in this industry. I have went back to trying to do a regular job and it stinks. There is good money in cable but for some reason it never last. One week you make a grand and the next you are broke. One reason for this is because we are lied to in order to get the job done. If we were told the truth, do you actually think that we would take the job? In some of the cases where the story is true when you arive, it often changes within the first couple days. They think they have you by having you there so you might as well finish the job. In some rare cases where the sub can afford to stick around and wait on a maybe, it may be of some good. In many cases we are forced to find other avenues of work.
There are a lot of shady people out there and I can somewhat understand where the MSO's come to there rationalizations, but in more cases than not, the MSO's are only looking out for there own butts. They don't care about anyone but themselves. This even holds true to the companies that bid the work. Case in point: The guy posting for drop work in Ny is paying 14 dollars to replace drops. How is a guy in Ny supposed to survive on that? It's a low price anywhere you go since the Prime is getting about 35. In Nebraska, the price was the same . Cheaper living could justify some of that but not in NY. The contractor's want to offer services at a cheaper rate but in the end the sub is going to suffer because he is the one who is getting the higher pay cut. Now I see that MSO's are wanting more than twice as much work for even smaller prices. Some of that is due to lower bidding. How about one set price for each state? We are the ones that have hotel expences and insurance to keep working. We are the one's puting 50 thousand miles on our trucks each year. We are the ones that are out there at the crack of dawn just so we can make an honest buck. How often are we rewarded for that?
Companies need higher expectations of the MSO's. If we continue to let them bully us then they will. Like the saying goes, "if you won't do it then they will find someone who will". True. But at what cost ? The lower the prices the lower the quality of work. The sub has to work three times as hard to make half as much money. If he knows that he can get away with it then he will short change the work. Not everyone is like that. I have, myself, been apart of that. I pride myself on being the best at what I do. That goes for whatever job I am on. I have short changed a couple jobs over the past three years. (How many of you are going to admit to that?) I try to do my research in finding jobs that are not that way. Unfortunately, my boss just got cought up in one of those. You learn form your mistakes. He was misled and lied to. He was even promised an entire state if he would just do one little town. That turned out to be several small towns and they were not even allowed to offer something that they could not provide.
Because I like to run my mouth and be honest about how screwed up the MSO's are, I do have a hard time finding work in certain areas. Something I have chosen to live with. I would hope that my work performance and work ethics would somehow prevail me above the shortcomings of this but people just want you to work and keep your mouth shut. I have yet to learn how to do that.
There are a lot of good ideas and suggestions made here about how to change the system. I even thought about starting a data base where MSO's and companies would have to register in order to be sighned on. The MSO could call in and check the reference for a comapny that they wanted to hire. If they had been kicked out of a system them we would have it on file. If they had questions about a company, we could answer them. This would eliminate a lot of the fraud that goes on. One problem with this idea is that the MSO would have to want to use the system in order for it to work. For a fee then subs and companies could do whatever background checks they needed to do on the comapny they wnated to hire or work for. Maybe it could fly.
It seems to me that there is going to have to be some sort of unity between the MSO's and the compamies that work for them if anything is going to chage. From the way it looks though, it will continue to go downhill until someone or something changes that.
Re: Companies...in general
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