Word: contractor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...induce a contractor even to come to the house is difficult; if the job involves less than $500, it may be impossible. A Northbrook, Ill., woman who wanted to have the trim and eaves of her brick ranch house painted, called more than a dozen contractors but failed to get so much as an estimate from any of them. A Houston homeowner who accepted a repairman's offer to re-roof his house says: "He showed up two weeks late and immediately demanded an additional $200 for materials. He abandoned us three times, and I had to call...
...Their Mercy. Complaining consumers are the victims of a classic economy of scarcity, which enables contractors and repairmen to charge what they please and get away with it. The need for their services is enormous because few homeowners can perform any complex repair jobs themselves. Construction unions make sure that wages stay high by keeping the supply of craftsmen inadequate to meet the demand In the Oakland, Calif , area, the number of union plumbers, currently 900, is actually shrinking because the union is training only ten apprentices this year. Anachronistic spread-the-work rules prevent the most efficient...
...Chicago, a homeowner may pay the main contractor on a remodeling job $15 an hour for a carpenter whose wages are $6 05 an hour. The difference is made up by fringe benefits, payments to subcontractors-and a 50% to 60% markup that covers the contractor's overhead and profits. In addition, contractors usually buy pipe, lumber and other materials at discounts, but charge the homeowner the standard price plus "delivery costs." The markup over the contractor's price ranges from at least 10% in Chicago to 30% in Miami...
...resents paying the high price of home repairs has few alternatives. Some save by acting as their own contractors, buying materials at the contractor's discount and employing moonlighting carpenters and electricians. The moonlighters generally charge only their actual wage rate, plus perhaps a dollar an hour. But few homeowners are able to estimate the quantity, sizes and types of materials that a job may require; even fewer know enough to supervise and coordinate the work of the craftsmen. It would take an expert to tell the good workmen from the many others who produce most of the grumbling...
...they tend not to get involved," explains Psychiatrist Podnos. About 14% of Brevard County residents have been there less than a year, and only 4.5% expect to stay for more than five years. The Cape is a society of "ten-percenters"-men who move from one space contractor to another seeking a 10% pay increase. Their insecurities are heightened by shifts in space policy. With the Apollo program drawing to its end, the space center has announced that 5,000 employees will be dropped from its payroll by next summer...