Benjamin Moore Exterior Regal Select Paint

thank you for letting me comment to that. i did not want to allude to the national origin of the people taking the jobs here as i am a firm believer that we should treat all workers in this country the same and i wanted to know more about how painters are treated in the UK because i have already shown that they make a salary close to teachers and i am sure the british government gives them additional protections as well that we probably have on the books here but do not enforce.

To jeff bezos or bill gates or other top income earners, money like this being sent outside of the country to help others can be a good thing or something they just don’t care about because $25 hour is nothing to them, even spread over the 2500 or so of them painting in NYC, 25 an hour may be nothing. but for some american worker who wants to make say $20 an hour plus progressive protections our government mandates and maybe some benefits, perhaps health care, that 25 dollars an hour is everything. i suspect that has been part of the division in this country; well heeled professionals c annot fathom what $25 an hour might mean to someone making (or hoping to make) even 20 an hour.

but now that you have brought national origin into this (i did everything to avoid this here; I did everything to avoid race here because it is wrong to enter it on a board like this) i will explain what is really bad about this for the american worker and why it is contributing to a racist system (racist against americans) and creates discrimination, especially with the working class: if a self employed american painter drops a ladder on someone’s car he can and will be sued in the in the courts (i doubt they would sue the other guy and if they did, he would leave) and if they got a judgement against the non american they would probably not try to enforce it but they would put a lien on the american or his/her assets. if an american gets caught not paying into social security – whether they are self employed or working as an ” independent contractor” they can be prosecuted and if an american gets hurt and goes to the hospital without insurance and has any assets, they will file a lien but they will let the other guy walk. so just to work in his own country, the american has about 20 and hour in expenses above and beyond the 25 he wants to make.

Painters (american born or not) cannot afford to live in brownstones. I don’t think someone on a non union painter’s salary really cares what that money is being used for. the american just wants a job; just like the Guatamalan you mention, he wants to feed his family. he is does not have the “luxury” to worry about people living someplace else; he has his own worries and own family to worry about and to threaten the american who makes the same amount of money (or wants to make the same amount of money) with legal action and ignore it when it is someone else is outright and systemic racism.

watch urban dad, i will get no likes for this nor will anyone comment to it. i will tell you why, the Neo Liberal Capitalists among us hate this language. Worker Protections and equal rights for workers, that is the language of true progressives.

I mean, the guys standing in front of home depot looking to make 25 bucks an hour are sending that money back home to guatamala where folks might be making 10 bucks a day. So I think there’s more complexity here than what we see on the surface.

and by the way, what i am talking about in the post above, this creates tension and hostility among workers and i sometimes wonder if the politicians on both sides of the aisle use the tension to keep workers divided to benefit themselves and their cronies. the only difference between the politicians is that they use different language to fan the flames but no one will make a move to enable the workers to help themselves in this nor will they do anything to fix the problems. they want the problems. the poor quality people suffer when they hire someone is the collateral damage in all this-

there is too much unskilled labor. it was not like this a generation ago (people who are in their 30’s now do not realize that it was not like this even 20 years ago; they assume we have to suffer with the low quality and people running around who don’t know what they are doing). people are tempted by the low cost of the unskilled labor and most of the unskilled labor is not on the internet. most people who want to do the right things for themselves, their families and society (pay into the system) cannot legally compete with unskilled labor charging $25 an hour off the books (we cannot pay the legal requirements placed on us by federal and state agencies and the insurance needed to protect us from legal action if we charge $25 an hour; if we get hurt the hospital will sue us and lien us and let others walk – what society treats it citizens like this?). we are living in a society that has come to accept people standing on street corners looking for work ( i come out of Gleason’s Paints in Woodside and i have 4 men asking me if i need a painter; it was not like t his 30 years ago) and those people do not have to pay for the things that those of us forced to operate legally have to pay for and and it creates an unfair and unjust labor market and the people who wish to follow the rules and plan for retirement or buy a house have no where to turn so they give up painting.

the internet allows those of us who are on it to rise above this – but i am not sure it can beat the full temptation of the low price and if i went around asking some contractors for work as a painter and wanted 20 an hour plus health insurance and be paid on the books (which means workers comp and the employers share of FICA and a lot of paperwork) they would not hire me because all that will equate to $50 an hour (hiring carpenters and painters at 50 and 60 an hour would price most renovation contractors out of the market; they still have to make money on top of that labor). and everyone reading this on here right now knows that $20 an hour is nothing in NYC.

that is my take on what happen here in the past generation. i have watched it happen and since we live in a free market and very capitalist society, there is no where for the worker to turn to seek protection from this kind of activity (the unions fight for their members, people like me have no place to go but leave). i can assume if we were in a true progressive society, not this Neo “liberal” BS (we have to stop kidding ourselves here; “Neo Liberal’ is a nice sounding name for unbridled capitalism) there would be more control over the labor force. i am sure if i were a painter in the UK, i would find it a lot easier to survive – with the legal protections of the law – than i could here.

we are ruining our labor force and the new people coming up in it are like the blind being led by the blind (and this is true, in the past it went from father to son or old worker to young worker; there has been a disconnect when the older people left the market).

thank you urbandad for allowing me to explain this. i will get no likes for it as what i am saying will cost a lot of money to a lot of people. Sadly, we live in a society that values money over its own labor force.

I guess that’s true. You could make a living doing odd jobs in NYC before, and you can’t really now. Probably it has to do with the intense competition from the internet. Back in 1990, you’d call 3 guys your friends knew or your contractor used and quote it up. Now you can find 30 guys in 10 seconds on google, and if you don’t like the price you move down the list. Maybe we need to find more things to paint to get folks busy so they can raise prices a little.

Urbandad, painters are more in line with cops and teachers in the UK and i am sure they are not starving. here we hear talk about how underpaid the cops are and guess what, a painter makes 57% of what a cop makes. 44,000 in New York is below the “low income level” of 68,000 for a family of 4; i do not know what 32,000 is in london. if painters here made even 80% of what cops make with like benefits, i bet some serious folks would go into painting as a career move.

if i wanted to run the numbers another way, i can simply convert sterling to dollars and see where that goes, but that would still not be reflective of the other market’s salaries.

the great equalizer in the UK is the healthcare. i bet a lot of painters making 44k in this city have to provide their own healthcare (my guess is they don’t provide it; they don’t buy houses and that way they don’t have assets to be siezed and therefor they qualify for assistance).

the unions here do very well. but there are only so many of those jobs.

and urbandad, i do not think people on this board like what i am saying when i say stuff like this because i think they realize to do something about it will cost a lot of money. for me, this talk is a double edge sword because i think it has to be said, but if people could not afford all of this renovation work because it suddenly cost 20% more, i would not have work and might as well move to ireland with my wife and dig potatoes or pour pints of Guiness.

It kinda seems like the painter makes the same in both places, and the union workers make a lot more in the NY?

Neo, no one is for low wages but for some reason people continue to support a system that is void of many worker protections and has gotten worse in my lifetime. and you allude to that happening in Europe as well. i have listened to recent immigrants to the US tell me that when they got here, they could make a living painting but the wages have gotten so low, they cannot do it anymore.

Using Glass Door i compared the salaries for the following job titles between London and NYC: “painter”, “teacher”, “police officer”, “utility worker”, “corporate lawyer” and “IT Director”. what i found was that in London the average wage for a painter was 32,094/yr. a teacher was 32,347/yr, police 36,536/yr, utility worker 38075/yr, corporate lawyer 75,470/yr, and 84,906. (in sterling)

in NY i came up with this painter 44,719, teacher 68439, utility worker 647590, Corp lawyer 154,892 and it director 145,189.

there are a couple of things to consider here, the health insurance as you mentioned and whether the painters in london are union or not and if the painters we are ta lking about in Brooklyn are union (i doubt it) and if they are not we can go below that 44k average. there are other things people have to consider, benefits etc which the police and teachers may get but a non union painter does not (so they have to pay toward that out of pocket)

we can do a simple calculation between the buying power of sterling vs the dollar. 35k sterling probably equals 50k. but that is not enough. before someone can say that someone else makes a less in one economy, they have to consider what others make in that economy to see where someone stands and what they can buy with that income. so i did this:

in london, the painter makes like 98% of what a teacher makes, 88% of what a police officer makes, 85% of what a utility worker makes, 42% of what a corporate lawyer makes, and 37% of what an IT Director makes.

In NY, the painter makes 65% of what a teacher makes, 57% of what a police officer makes, 69% of what a utility worker makes, 28% of what a corporate lawyer makes, and 30% of what an IT Director makes.

by this simple measure (and their may be other factors an economist or statistician would have to consider) a painter makes a lot less here than in the UK. i suspect that when you have painters making something close to teachers and cops as in the uk, you probably get the opposite of poor quality, people are possibly willing to go into that job with a commitment to it (and why not, a teacher needs a 4 year degree but a painter does not) and willing to learn more. i think that is why we have the problems here. people cannot say i want to be a painter and expect to go out on their own and make even $60,000 (and buy health insurance?) and put the commitment in; it is not worth it; you will not get work. if a contractor hired people with the expectation that he/she could pay a painter 25 an hour and give them vacation and health insurance, they would not get the jobs, they would price themselves out of the market because people would take the chance on the lower quality lower pay person. that is what i think happen here to quality.

on a side, note, i am a duel national, ireland, and i have traveled to the UK and ireland quite a bit and find dining out to be VERY expensive, though there again the tip is included so that upsets that comparison.

Steve, I’m certainly not arguing for low wages. Far from it. I support Robert Reich’s analysis of our economy and the tremendous damage done by wide income disparities. Wages are lower in the UK, then again healthcare is free (cradle to grave, most Brits never see a medical bill), public transport is a thing, food is less expensive, as are phone and internet services, the Arts are supported (at least somewhat) etc. The punitive austerity measures over there in recent years have been copied from US “rake and take” policies.

after i wrote what i wrote above yesterday, i got in the car and put NPR on and they were talking about worker’s pay, benefits, the right to organize and the issues at Amazon. a lot of the issues mirror what i see in brooklyn and the speaker spoke about groups that use all sorts of justification for paying workers nothing and denying them benefits and part of the problem is, i think, we have a willing and desperate unskilled workforce willing to accept terms that an american or someone living in the UK would find unacceptable (and this upsets the entire labor rate for those at the bottom across all sectors) . this is true in Brooklyn as much as it is true with amazon. unfair comparisons are just another part of the problem. not comparing apples to apples. looking at the pay without considering the needed benefits. asking yourslef, “would i want my son or daughter to do this for even $35 an hour with no legal protections and no benefits, no retiremen t” no matter what someone else makes someplace else because someplace else is just that, its someplace else – its not New York City where everyone comes to make money.

Neogrec: i cannot let this go because it is not fare to have people thinking that labor costs a lot here when everything costs a lot here and everyone makes less in the UK. everything is relative and as soon as i began traveling abroad i began taking note of what people make and things cost. in 1989, i had to go to the hospital in Oxford (with someone who got injured); the ER doctor on call at midnight or so made L50,000 a year and told us that was his salary as a doctor, not an intern, and that was basically all he could hope to make. in 2003 i was back in the UK and had to go to a doctor for a sinus infection and since i am not part of their socialized medicine plan, he was kind enough to chare me L35. (at those times did american doctors make 50k or the dollar equivalent and would an american GP have charged me the equivalent of 35 pds? i don’t think so) . i just did a quick check as to what GP’s make in the UK vs the US now and the us salary is about double of the UK (150k US and 80K UK). i am sure this sort of thing is true through other sectors; we make more here but we should ALL make more here, not just the people at the top).

The one thing the UK (and i suspect most of Europe; i had this conversation with someone who is on this board all the time and who has lived in sweden and recognizes this as well) has over the US is just what you mention, that “you call a painter and get a painter” (i quote the person who lived in sweden). you can get one here, but you have to pay for it – a union painter is 90 an hour with benefits and vacation and sick days and when you compare that to what others make here (in this city), this is not a exorbitant . consider the cost of benefits here. since many workers here have to provide their own health care, it might not be a fare comparison to the UK.

i have to say this on here because in this Neo Liberal economic environment (read free market or capitalist; Neo Liberal does not mean progressive, quite the opposite in fact) where people think it is ok to pay people off the books with no worker protections, they also think it is ok to pay a non union painter $25 an hour (can you share what the people working on your house might have been getting an hour? if you tell me 45 an hour plus benefits and payments in to social security and paid vacation, i might agree that labor is expensive; a city cop gets about $40 an hour plus all these things) . $25 an hour is not a lot of money. out of that, the painter has to buy health insurance, vacation, sick days, often worker’s comp, social security; he is left with $2.50 an hour to pay rent with and buy food (or he hope to die before being seriously injured or retiring?). how long can we try to kid ourselves that $25 is a lot of money in NYC? how long can we kid ourselves that $50 an hour off the books is a lot of money, in NYC? (this is what and who we are talking about when they talk about the income gap in the media; it is happening right here in Brooklyn, right under our noses).

when we make comparisons like this, we must consider other sectors in that economy and we must take into account benefits or the lack there of. Unless we do that, i see no comparison between what someone makes in Great Britain and the US .

Thanks, Steve. Interesting that the alkyd paint hasn’t changed recently. In the UK, the cost of hiring tradespeople is significantly lower while their skills are higher. It’s a question of competition. If there were more established small GCs, who took the time to train their workers, I suspect we’d all be happier. Casual laborers chase jobs they don’t have the skills to perform. Consumers chase high end GCs they can’t afford to hire. More competent small operators would help. Then again, NYC throws up so many barriers for small business owners and consumers alike. We’re stuck in a vicious cycle.

Neo, i did what i said i would do and called Ben Moore yesterday (by the way, i have been painting things since the 1970’s – and have used all sorts of applications and every product except behr and yesterday was the third time i called ben moore this year to ask a tech question).

the ben moore rep told me that the last time the oil base paints, including satin impervo, went through a chemical change was about 15 years ago (i recall that change, i think it was about 2003/2004 (i recall where i was working when we learned this); that was also when they stopped making gallons of satin impervo – a product for wood – as the EPA outlawed gallon containers for oil based wood paints). nothing has changed since then.

here is what he told me “the failures and issue out there are isolated and not a result of the paint but a problem with the substrate or the application”. and i have said that on this board, failure to prep is the problem. i keep telling people on here, painting takes patience and skill and the current stock people are taking every short cut they can fin d.

also, neo, to your comment that labor is so high that shortcuts are taken. keep in mind all things are relative; labor may be high but everyone is making more money anyway. i ran some numbers the other day, based on what i know from someone’s wages in the 1970’s and 80’s in suffolk county and find that the labor is actually less than it had been. yes, their are some changes to labor laws that are costing employer’s money – but we should suggest they are an issue as people who toil with their hands need those. i suspect what is going on is, there is such an abundance of cheap labor out that that there are too many people for too few good jobs (we have people hanging out on the side of the road looking for work; this is not the great depression; too many people too few jobs) and people underbid to get the jobs and then must take short cuts to complete it and still be able to eat. the issue is that homeowners are tempted by the cheaper bids and take them where if we took those bids out of the equation, they would have to pay a painter for a proper job and that would be it. that was the way it was when i was a kid and the people who wanted to hire cheap hired high school kids and if you want them to do something right you had to hold their hands and babysit them just like you have to do with many of today’s “experienced” talent (and with us when we were in high school, we wanted to learn and were happy to get 3/hr to work for the neighbor, these people today will talk back to you if you tell them to sand something or stir paint).

neo, all paints have changed over the years. they seem different (the latex paints smell different, less ammonia smell). but i have not had any failures.. with painting, prep work is the job.

since you came on here and addressed me directly, i will see if i can call ben moore and continue this conversation with their tech team next week.

i will bet money the satin impervo has changed. the government must really be on them about voc’s inside houses.

Steve, Your comments about painting techniques, preparation, dry times etc are all very useful. I don’t disagree that standards have fallen. However it feels inevitable when labor costs are so high (both for contractor and consumer) — short cuts are now the order of the day. I’m still curious to know if the formulation of the alkyd paints has indeed changed.

you are correct urbandad, a lot of people roll and brush. the only disadvantage is that the profiles cannot be rolled without pressing excess paint out of the roller.

Regarding 5, I’ve found it’s much faster and better to roll on trim and then brush out than it is to brush on. The roller gets more paint on, the brush only lays it real thin, which sometimes is desireable, but not on most trim I’ve done. But there may be a disadvantage I’m not seeing.

neo grec: i hit on this in another post. another reason why paint will fail is a lot of people today do not let it dry long enough before recoating. and i have watched people who “make a living painting” do just this; they put a coat of paint on and with oil they try to recoat at the end of the day or with latex they will recoat as soon as it is “dry to the touch” (like two hours). what happens when someone does this is, the paint underneath is not dry and the later coats will not adhere properly. they do this to speed the job along.

so i can make a list of things here that “people who paint” for a living do wrong and what i have seen and the arguments i get from such people:

1. they do not want to use primer.
2. they do not stir the paint (i had a guy go to pour paint that had been sitting in my shop for years from a gallon can into a quart can for us to take on a job on Borum St. had i not caught him and we used that that paint it would have ruined that job; did he give a toss? no. not in the least).
3. they do not sand before or between coats;
4. they will overcoat before the first coat is fully dry;
5. they roll trim as opposed to brush
6. they will not tack the work off

if i think of more, i will try to list them later so people know what is going wrong.

these infractions have become so common place among the “talent” out there that when someone like me hires one to paint, all i get is argument (i am being “difficult”). i have been told “we do it this way now”, often over things that are quite contrary to what is written on the directions on the back of the can. and i have told people “if you follow the directions on the can and something goes wrong, you are covered, i will not fault you”. they still do not care. i do everything myself now because of it. sometimes when you watch them, they will do it the way they should but as soon as you turn your back or walk away they are back at their old tricks (i have walked away and watched from around a corner or inside a building). it is just not worth the trouble.

this is the issue. to do all of this correctly, a real painter would have to charge over twice as much as the bottom feeders get. because of this, homeowners take the chance on the bottom feeder and sometimes they get lucky – if they get lucky. keep in mind, a paint job will look good the day you are paying the contractor but six months later?

unfortunately, i have not seen a real painter around the outer boroughs in years. i know one who works in manhattan and he tells me every time he sends a fair quote for quality work outside of his regular work area, he does not even “get a thank you” back from the person he sent the quote to. pros have been driven from the market.

just because somebody does something for a living does not mean they are doing it correctly. and unfortunately most homeowners who have not done this for a living do not know enough about this to weed the bad ones out from the good ones. if just read this, you know a little more.

after commenting here yesterday, i did wonder if perhaps neo grec used satin impervo inside and i am considering that ben moore has been messing with that product due to voc’s in the house. i have not used it in years, so i do not know. when i work inside now, i tend to go water base. i still would not fall for the stories Neo Grec’s painters conveyed to him or her.

i know i said this before, but let me restate this: the issue with paints is the “painters” not the product. People go into painting because they think it is easy. it is not easy. the prep work and knowing what to do in a unique situation or in less than ideal conditions is paramount; the painters today are not in it to learn these things. its about getting paid and getting paid fast.