[OAC_Sparky]

If you couldn't afford me at Ford, you wouldn't be able to outside of Ford either.

A licensed electrician (outside if Ford) makes the same an hour or more. I know, because I do work outside of Ford, too. My hourly rate is about $40 an hour. If you're an asshat (which is apparent) and it's a weekend I can charge double that. Easy. A six hour panel change will cost you $500 and up labour (straight time, not on a weekend). And that's cheap. A guy that does it as his business full time will charge about $200 more than that.

And not only am I a licensed electrician (Interprovincial). I'm a licensed general machinist as well. I specialize in PLC programming, robotics and weld equipment. Not something you can just go down to the street corner to find.

Meford paints. Although I haven't visited him on the job, I have worked in the paint plant so I am well familiar with what he does. I would venture to say that during a shift (at full production) he would ALONE paint the equivalent of 10-12 whole cars in a day. Go down and ask a body shop what the labour charge on painting 10 cars is. I'll wager one of my huge paycheques that they charge way more than what Meford makes. But then of course, a body shop painter can't paint 10 whole cars in a day, because he's not actually holding a spray gun for 6+ hours straight. He spends a good portion of his day doing peripheral tasks instead of actually painting.

Plenty of people get overtime on weekends (really, it's not just because it's the weekend, it's anything over of 40 hours, which is what the weekend IS for us).

Just because you're not one of them, instead of getting out the crying towel, ask yourself "Why not?"

Isn't your personal time, and time with your family worth something?

By the time you work more than 40 hours, on a week to week basis straight time, your actual hourly rate actually GOES DOWN, thanks to a tax system that isn't flat rate based. The more you make, the less you take home per hour.

So if you want me in on the weekend so that your plant can run on Monday, you're going to have to cough up the coin. Because paying me to come in on the weekend is cheaper than hiring someone else with all of their benefits and vacation and safety equipment and training and insurance and and and....you get the picture.