It seems in order to rationalize sidework, a private issue between 2 parties having no relationship to the naysayers, as being hands-down wrong, a litany of excuses and senerios (which are all either incorrect or inapplicable) have been presented.
Rewire said:
The main difference is the other conthat tractor is not on my payrole, I don't pay other contractors when they don't have work of their own.
I'm paid by my employer to work. After work I am not paid by my employer and therefore, what I do (sidework, hunt, fish, rake leaves, etc) is none of his business or concern.
Any allegience to my employer, real or imagined, ENDS the moment I'm not on the clock.
Why don't you tell the other contractor you're competing with that he is not to do contracting work because that negatively affects your business? Because he'd tell you to pound sand. Do you think a different contractor could tell me what to do and what not to do even though I'v never been in his employ??? Heck no.
So while I'm off the clock, the two of you are in the same boat. Neither of you is my employer when neither of you are paying me. The fact that earlier in the day one of you did pay me is irrelevant - our implied contract (I work for you for these hours and you pay me X amount) is suspended. Nowhere in our contract, printed or implied, does it say what I can and cannot do outside of the paid hours. If it did, I wouldn't work for you.
You trade on the good name of your employer people ask you to do side jobs because they know you work for an electrical contractor and they know you will be cheaper because you are not burdened with the cost of operatining a business and making a weekly payrole for a guy who is competing for the very work you do.
I explained in an earlier post that this is not the case. I trade on my own good name and my sidework comes from customers referring my name. The type of work I'm employed to do is not the kind one does on the side. Anyone calling me already knows what the deal is. I have no business cards or advertizing. And I'm sure as heck not going to name drop my employer as a reference.
As for being on your own time and what you do on it is not an employers concern well if it affects my business then yes it is my concern and low balling work that I do and by the way pays your weekly check is my concern.
Were it the case that I was doing the same work on the side that I did in my employ, your statement still proves false. Just because an issue affects your business negatively does not automatically give you the right to get involved in that issue, or control it, and it certianly doesn't empower you to do something about it. When gas prices rise you don't fire the employee for filling up. Nor the gas station clerk.
What pays my weekly check is my labor and talent sold for a price greater than it's worth, enough to support a company's overhead and profits. In short, no matter how you slice it, I am the only one who pays me. Follow the money. When a customer contracts for work to be done, they're not interested in the costs of warehousing, transportation, advertizing, overhead, telephones etc. They're paying for the electrical work. So any money that comes out of a company's pocket for payroll, only got into that pocket in the first place by trading MY labor for it.
Just because you were intimately involved in brokering the entire transaction doesn't mean that you (or your overhead) is really a necessary component to get from needing electrical work to making electrical work happen.
