Talk:Job Satisfaction in Construction
Short of Occasional "Grunt Work" i have done i have barely scratched the surface in the industry, but have been around quite a few people who've worked the trades for their whole lives so can sort of paraphrase their stories/thoughts into here, but i just though having that achkknowledged is important.
ANYHOW:
I think the main downsides that people face are mainly:
- Poor Pay (Again depends on the jobsite, but some think that the people doing the " dirty work" don't deserve proper pay, if not even more pay than some other jobs considered more dignified)
- Poor Working Conditions
- (Socially) Toxic Work Environment
- Number 1 can be fixed by just *paying people enough*, so looking up Cost of Living and determining a good wage from that
- Bit of a sidenote, but determining the cost of someone to live a Middle Class / Upper-Middle Class (Or rather lower-upper-middle, if you REALLY want to get pedantic lol), and having a calculator for that may be of use
- Only challenge is if Small Business don't have the funding to do so, and Large Corporations can do some Anti-Competitive Business Practices due to them being able to "bleed money" for longer
- Granted to what degree this is done i'd need to read up more on, hell of a lot easier to raise the price of a product after selling it at a loss than to cut wages etc...
- Number 2 can be fixed by a mixture of Ergonomics and Mechanization to an extent, although getting up early, and (depending on the trade) working Rain or Shine / In Dirty Conditions is unavoidable to an extent
- However Limiting Work Hours to sane amounts (Re 8 Hour Work Day ) (almost akin to Exposure Limits ) helps with that
- Also " Engineering Controls such as installation of Odor Control Systems or Heavily Cleaning the whatever pre-working on it can help
- With my "Introduction to Water Resources" class at FSCJ, we toured a Wastewater Treatment Plant (I have a bunch of photos i need to upload on me somewhere) and short of one room which essentially had the "strainers" for odd bits that get introduced into the system somehow (Essentially [[Un-Flushables) which that room was near impossible to breathe in levels of smelly, the entire plant didn't have much of any smell!. They basically had Fume Hood type things, that then lead to a Biofilter (Theirs was a Packed Column with some sort of microbes (algae if i remember correctly) that simply needed to be fertilized every so often, although they did mention using a Wood Chip Biofilter before that)
- My Grandpa on my Mom's Side was an Agricultural Extension Agent for OSU and went to all sorts of farms, Pig Farms were the worst supposedly (although i never visited one, honestly for the better commercial ones are often quite horrific, but i'm digressing from the point ), i have some videos on a playlist i'll probably add to the page on these systems eventually, but it is some current ag agent doing a tour and mentioning how there is little to no smell due to the system they installed and so on
- A similar thing would be Fall Protection vs people Building the Empire State Building saying "This Will Always be a Risk" etc
- With my "Introduction to Water Resources" class at FSCJ, we toured a Wastewater Treatment Plant (I have a bunch of photos i need to upload on me somewhere) and short of one room which essentially had the "strainers" for odd bits that get introduced into the system somehow (Essentially [[Un-Flushables) which that room was near impossible to breathe in levels of smelly, the entire plant didn't have much of any smell!. They basically had Fume Hood type things, that then lead to a Biofilter (Theirs was a Packed Column with some sort of microbes (algae if i remember correctly) that simply needed to be fertilized every so often, although they did mention using a Wood Chip Biofilter before that)
- But yeah, despite potentially costing money / needing more people working on a crew (Re Optimal Construction Crew Size and Overstaffing / Understaffing ), it is fixable
- Number 3 is a bit harder due to interpersonal stuff being all complex, but again it is solvable (Re Emotional Literacy / DBT and Media Literacy )
- Also just not tolerating any of the "ism's" / "obia's"
- This can be difficult too with how ingrained in culture some of that can be, but at least getting everyone to "play nicely in the sandbox" is a must, albeit not perfect (Re "Southern Hospitality" / whatever word there is for where people are superficially fine, but there is some deep hatred / ism there in the subtext, and thus the situation is very uncomfotable still)
