OT: Working Conditions

[Jeff Thies]

I've been hiring assorted workers around the house and I treat them very well. I make sure they aren't hungry or thirsty. In return they do very good fast work. They do their best work. They like working here.

A week ago I sent the guys who did my roof across the street to work for a neighbor. He paid them better than I did, but the work progressed (for them) very slowly. It turns out that he hadn't even brought them water and one of them had to go home to make lunch.

The difference between working here, and there was astonishing.

It was with this in mind that I've been reading about the ongoing work, and accidents at Fukushima.

Lately there has been a number of reports on living conditions there:

"The workers were all sleeping together in the plant's meeting room, in the hallway and in front of the toilet," he says. "We were only given one blanket and just two meals a day. We'd have emergency biscuits for breakfast and a small bag of rice for dinner. There was the odd can of food too," he says.

No wonder, this isn't going well.

Note that the plant is well away (125 miles) from the epicenter and the worst of the destruction and they are bringing in other supplies as needed.

I find this interesting.

Jeff

[notbob]

I find you to be a lying bag of crap.

nb

[K. Lance]

You sure are one nosey SOB. What did ya do, ask em how much they were getting paid, or did you ask your neighbor how much they were paying? When you're done peering from behind the curtains at all your neighbors, please respond.

[willshak]

Jeff Thies wrote the following:

People who work at my house are treated very well. The last group installed a 20' by 20' Four Seasons sunroom. They were here about a week. We had donuts and coffee ready for them when they arrived. For lunch, my wife made them various foods, including things like sausage and peppers, hamburgers grilled on the barbeque grill, Pizza, etc. There were 4 of them at the start, which grew to 6 before the work was done. I asked the guy using the back hoe for the the stone walkway if he would move a very large tree stump for me, and he did at no charge. The wife of one of the workers got arrested for some white collar crime at her job and I went to the county jail and got her released in my custody. Some time after the job was finished, the boss called us and invited us to a barbeque at his house. I see one or two of them every once in a while and they say they had the best time at my house.

[Higgs Boson]

It's not only interesting, it's very basic. Workers are human beings. They want to be treated with respect and dignity. In some ethnic populations, those two elements are MORE important that just money. You get out pretty much what you put in. IOW: Don't treat others as you wouldn't want to be treated.

Re: The conditions of Japanese workers -- HEROES who may die from radiation!! -- they aren't much different, judging by your report, than the displaced civilians are being treated. There is NO excuse for people --- families, children, old people -- being left to freeze and dehydrate and starve because the bumbling, confused Japanese gov, can't find ways to rush the necessities to them. If you look at the horrors now coming out about how ignorant and dysfunctional the planning of those reactors was -- with a nudge from the criminals at GE -- you will understand that the Japanese govt is just taking advantage of the long-suffering patience of the people. Maybe when they realized how they have been ****ed, their temperament -- at least that of the younger generation -- will change.

HB

[Jeff Thies]

I find some of these responses astonishing.

Here is the way I look at it. Roofing is a nasty job, so is digging up sewer lines. So is working in a flooded turbine room. Anything that can be done to make that not completely miserable, and some kind of a human break at the end of the day, will yield a better result. These guys are stressed 24/7, tired and have a bag of rice and a can of something, maybe at the end of the work day. Then sleep on the floor or against a bathroom. This is over two weeks out and things are getting sloppier.

I am saying that this is not how to get a good result.

As far as being nosey, I don't know that neighbor and he was the one who came over asking about getting his roof done. I put them together and they worked out the job then and there. Of course I knew all the details. I found out about what the day was like after they returned some tools I had lent. That was a light bulb moment of why it took so much longer.

Perhaps they will do a bit about the unnecessarily sorry working conditions on FOX and you'll think better about what you wrote. Or do you think crackers is good enough?

Jeff

[Jeff Thies]

I'm not quite done with you. In fact, I have no curtains to peer out from behind. For you to say such a thing makes me think what kind of a person that you are that this is what pops into your head. Presumptuous and pompous is what I think. Mr " [e-mail]" who has never posted in this group under that nymn. Why are you hiding behind such a nymn to hurl insults and demand responses?

I also take note of "notbob", who calls me a "lying bag of crap" without saying just what lie that I may have told. In fact trimming everything.

There is so much "shoot the messenger" going on without ever stopping to take note of just what is the message. This lack of civility is disturbing.

Not that I'm terribly refined, but I'll lay it out there and tell you exactly where I disagree and about what. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, and I am not always right, but relying on insults is never right and is the path of those who are righteous without the need of ever proving that they are right. For this, I have no respect.

Jeff