Construction labour crunch leaves Canada in need of boosting ranks of home builders - eviltoast
  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Great summary of the industry. My family ran a small time contracting business, nothing major and our budgets was in the thousands rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands.

    I learned a little bit of every trade and over the years we got connected with bigger companies and we could see just how terrible it was to work for them. They workers there always bragged about the money they made … but if you spent time with them, you quickly figured out that their high paying job was temporary and they would go into long periods of low pay or no pay at all.

    A saying I learned from one of the old timers is …

    ‘They hire us from the neck down’ … they don’t want thinking workers or anyone to talk back, just put your head down, don’t disagree and do the work. If you don’t, they’ll make your life miserable … if you complain some more, they’ll you let go, taken off, no longer needed or just fired.

    I decided never to join any of these companies. I just did small time work for myself, small projects and made money only for myself. Keeping a low profile for almost 30 years and now I own multiple small properties and I have no debt. I’m not wealthy but I own everything I have.

    • n2burns@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      If you own multiple properties, I’m pretty sure 95% of people would say you’re wealthy. Good for you and all, but that just doesn’t click with, “I’m not wealthy.”