Master Builders of Iowa

| By: Leon Shearer, MBI Labor Counsel |

One of the frequent solutions that contractors use to try to avoid complicated employment situations is resorting to the independent contractor (IC) concept. With one simple contract they avoid complicated problems like paying overtime, time recordkeeping, reports to the government, payments and reports to the union for fringe benefits, cost of worker’s compensation, liability insurance cost, bothersome unemployment hearings and payments that usually follow these kangaroo hearings, and all those costly benefits like pensions and health insurance. These relationships also give them a great competitive advantage. Sound too good to be true? It is.

From the day we are born we start negotiating in some fashion. We move from negotiations for more milk, to more desserts, to another date, to another kiss and well I will stop here as I have made the point. In business we are also on a daily basis negotiating, unless your job isolates you from human contact. Some people are intuitively good negotiators, and some are awful.

In a busy company, it is often hard to figure out how to work in training. It often is just as hard to convince profit driven owners and managers as to the value of training when weighed against time off and the cost.

There are a lot of reasons to train people. The obvious one is to improve production and improve safety. The OSHA talks, the jobsite meetings, the toolbox talks are all part of a well run company.  These hit the bottom line quickly and everyone in the company can benefit from a safety culture.

There are other levels of training that have less immediate bottom line impact, but can protect a company from many nasty legal entanglements. This training is directed at the managers, supervisors and key administrators.

The workforce of today and tomorrow is growing with increasing size and talent from the female gender. The female often times has the challenge of changing roles in a flash. One minute she is a mother getting lunches ready, dealing with sick children, dealing with household jobs . . . the next she is an employee and often times a significant factor in a company.

Recent news articles about drugs in Iowa drive home a growing concern with the level of drug use in our pastoral little state. Who would have thought you would read about a college president growing his own pot in his garage, his family distributing pot in local high schools, and his family has a “potluck” dinner every week? Who would have thought that HBO would develop a film on meth use and its growing impact and use Iowans as the examples of the problem?