In my case, there was a flat rate paid of $8 per hole. That is, a three gang box consisting of three switches was three holes. $8 per range, dryer, furnace, recessed can, everything.
Payout was 60% Rough, 40% Trim. The service and lateral were not paid, it was considered lumped in with the overall house. Temp power was considered rough, or just absorbed by the office, I'm not sure.
To make it worthwhile to get a license, each employee still had an hourly rate. So if a journeyman made $20/hr, and his apprentice earned $10/hr, then the j-man received 66% of the proceeds and the apprentice got 33%.
But what if one guy worked longer than the next? So, we still had to fill out timecards and indicate on them what was hourly and piecework. So, if the j-man worked 20 hours on the house and the apprentice worked 10 hours, then that would be reflected on the paychecks. I just tried to recreate the math and failed. I have no idea how they figured that out.
On top of that, the office removed $75 from the rough-in money to insure against screw-ups discovered at trim. If the trim crew reported no serious mistakes, then the rough crew would get the $75 months later when the house was finaled.
But how do you keep the hardworking apprentice from discovering his boss makes twice as much per hour as he does? This could be a big problem with a two-year apprentice and a two-year R.W. If the pair worked equal hours, then it would be easy to deduce the earnings of the other if the overall payout was known. The solution to that was to call the piecework earnings from a house " 1 Hour @ $457.12 " or whatever the payment wound up being. Of course, the office didn't feel obliged to tell you what house that money came from.
One of the selling features of piecework was that you could work "at your own pace, on your own schedule." Well, that's a great slogan, but obviously the GC would have a problem drafting a schedule around the numerous European trips you'd be taking with the massive earnings you were pulling in, so that was not really a credible notion.
Speaking of GCs, have you ever seen GCs call for a house to be roughed before it's ready? Should the employee pay out for being called out too early to start the job?
What dollar value can you assign to knowing that your check is going to be the same this Friday as it was last Friday, with easily verifiable numbers to be sure you were paid right? For me, it was worth $6/hr compared to a good piecework week. The Rube Goldberg contraption detailed above was probably started on a very simple principle, which became wildly complicated when they tried to apply a touch of fairness to the process.
emahler said:
but like i said, every single electrical contractor who gives a fixed price for a project works on piecework...why can't it work for employees?
My experience is very specific - in that case, the difference between the EC and the JW is that the EC operates in a much bigger pond than the JW. If one job performs 1% worse than expected in a month, there are likely three jobs that performed 3% better than bid.
The one guy who got stiffed with a crummy GC who scheduled all his trades in the same broom closet on the same day normally performed well and got stuck in an unproductive environment. Why shouldn't the EC partake in the loss when the other three jobs are lifting the company up?
With piecework, the man in the field is a frontiersman with no net. That guy usually has a lot fewer perks than the guy in the office.
IMO, it's simply a crutch for lousy managers. Properly supervised, tracked and informed employees are more productive and produce better work, IMO. With piecework, you can get a spreadsheet all worked out, and the computer manages your employees with the most sensitive prod, the paycheck. Those same computers can be put to better use tracking and providing instant feedback on production for coaching.
