Installers are walking out....

[Khandurian]

Welp, it was bound to happen... sadly it took 5 years for it to happen... but its finally coming to blows...

Over the last 5 years, I've watched TWC/BHN screw their sub-contractors... I watched as a new technician starting in the buisness 5 years ago, make 70 grand a year. Yes, it was hard work, but the pay justified that work..... slowly, over the years, that 70 grand has sadly trickled down to a piss poor 30 grand....

Each year, the contract gets renewed, something is taken away completly while all the rest is litterly cut in pay for each item done... I've now watched this one contractor, hang up his loyalty belt. The last contract was so horribly, horribly bad, that it cut his pay 12 grand!!!!! The ONLY way for him to make up this extra money, would be for him to litterly replace every single line in every single house he works on.

In our area, we have about 5 differnt companies that do the installs and such for TWC/BHN. 1 company had 7 techs walk out the next day after the contract was signed... all the other companies, are loosing about 4 techs a week!!! Watching the blitzcrieg of advertising for installers in our area is amazing... Sadly, they come in, see what the pay is, and then leave.

I forcast that in the next 2 months, there wont be but maybe a handfull of installers, and a backlog of months to get your services turned on. It is truly sad that a major company has to SCREW its contractors just to put extra cash in their bonus's....

Im interested in hearing from other TWC/BHN contractors and the differnt areas to find out exactly what their pay is for their area. We can do this in private, exchange emails, whatever. I would like to see it posted in here as more fuel for the fire. As I know that the head cheese's in my area actually do read this website, it may just wake them up and realize that they are gonna be in trouble, very soon.

Khandurian....

 

[korsjs]

alot of providers are paying very little for installs even the dbs companies don't pay well.

i don't know how many brighthouse contractors are on this site, but hopefully you will get the info you seek.

 

[LonghornXP]

I talk to a few people I know that work as an IC for the St. Pete Times newspaper (both of them have over 20 years each working for the Times) and it seems that things are falling apart these last several months. It just kills me because companies can't expect people to live off of the money they are paying. I look at it this way these companies are getting a free car/truck, free gas, no paying out of benefits among many other things.

Both of my friends have told me many things about what is going on and I'll just say a few things.

Firstly most routes are around 300-350 papers. They pretty much pay about 7 cents per paper daily and 10 cents per paper sunday. This job is 365 days a year. So with that pay people show up at around 2am on average and don't get done until about 5:30am on average. So they have to provide a car, pay when things break on the car, pay for gas and to top that off they have to pay taxes as well.

Now from what I'm hearing is that they heavily load most peoples pay into bonuses and incentives. So it seems that every quarter most people must not have anything more than 2.0 which means they can't have more than 2 complaints per one thousand papers delivered. This means that most people never get this bonus. Now onto incentives the main one that they have is called a dry incentive which from my understand the manager for the district must call for it. If its called and a person gets a perfect day (they require a perfect day with no misses not just no wetpapers which means a person could say get a stolen paper but no web papers and they wouldn't get the dry incentive bonus of an extra 10cents per paper). Now from what I've been told is that they haven't called a dry incentive day in almost a year even during those three hurricanes that came threw to soak this area.

Now on top of all this they charge the IC on average about 2-3 dollars per missed paper. They are also charging people between 3-4 bucks per wet paper. From what I've been told (from one person who was the main person from the union movement in the 80s) they are more of an employee now than they were four years ago when they were actual employees. He says they take more orders, have more requirements and so on and so forth now.

Also what is funny is that their contract went from about 5 pages when they first got their first contract to the current contract having about 15 papes. My question is what are those extra 10 pages for. It seems that a true independent contract should only need at most 3 pages if that so I know a valid contract just can't step its way towards 15 pages.

I know I went on and on again about the Times but I'm just again pointing out that this is going on all over the place and until people standup together and just walk nothing will ever get better. The fact is they can't outsource these jobs and they don't have enough people to bring in outside of this area for the money they want to pay. The problem is that people have to be willing to lose their job to get things better. It amazes me how most people working for the Times IMO lose money everyweek they work so IMO they have nothing to lose by walking out but they on the other hand have everything in the world to gain.

 

[hbk409]

Cablevision I know is has commission policy for its sales reps that right now is so ass backwards its not funny.
ex, if two people on on the same shift, person #1 brings in 200 new videos subs, 150 online and 100 voice and brings in 20k in revenue on 2,000 calls they would get paid anywhere from $400-900. person #2 on the other hand has 100 new video subs, 75 online, 50 voice, and brought in lets say 10k in revenue, but took 900 calls, would get a commission check anywere from $1500-2800. They have it based on the number of calls you take vs the number of sales you make. Almost every rep has complained as it is an unjustice system and they just say well this is the only system that works it brings in the most sales and we know we are always going to be on budget, because what they do is they will say we have a budget of 30k to be paid to everyone on this shift, so as the number of sales goes up the payout per sale drops. I told the supervisor and manger what if everyone takes 5 calls for the month then the payouts for each item would be of $500 a piece and we would be taken home the same if not more, but the company would get soo screwed. They looked at me and laugh and said that would never happen.

The need to bring back the old policy were the more you sell the more you get paid, thats what sales should be about

 

[Van]

Well Im in dbs, I work for dish network now for over 5 years as a company employee not a sub or IC. Since its inception dish has used subs, IC's, retailers, and dealers to sell and install systems and relied on word of mouth until 2001 for its sales. When I started in 2000 I kept coming across customers on service calls that would tell me how they had pay'd upwards of $1,500 or more for a 3700 and an install. Needless to say they people were becoming upset when they would find out what the price was actually far far less and many got even more ticked when the free equipment and installs came along. All of the people I had talked to that payed so much were sold and installed by non dish personel, this was the start of the down fall for those people.

I know that if my company coud they would probably drop %80 of all the non direct employee'd people, through our management area those responsible for sending out jobs to the subs ect ect ect send them the peanut jobs and keep the big paying jobs inhouse. There are reasons for this, one is that we end up fixing alot of theyr work, it would be one thing if it was one or two but its all of them, it hasnt done any good to charge back to the installer or company thats done the bad install and yes they are given the option to respond to picking up the service call themselves. Im not sure how your subs are paid but dish subs are in most instances paid by the job and many in our area will do 7 - 8 jobs a day and these numbers come from them.

I havent as yet seen any help wanted adds for brighthouse up here in the metro detroit area, frankly Im surprised to a point as bright house had bought out timewarner and took over a rather old and beat up cable network.

 

[Khandurian]

Thought I would post an update on whats going on with the local installers around the area im in. Since my last post, i've watched some of the best techs hang up their tools, and move on to other careers. Most of these techs, that have moved on, were techs that should not have been let go astray.

Watching a tech of 6 years exp. and a 97% QC pass say they have had enough is truly disturbing. Oh well.

Khandurian....