my apology for my recent post on brownstoner
Dear brownstoners:
I wish to offer an apology and some clarification to some recent posts I have made in case I have offended anyone:
As some of you may know, I used a post on here, specifically the post about repairing a cracked sewer pipe and the comment made by DIBS that “our young people should go into a trade like welding” to lay out the reality of such a venture. I admittedly hijacked the original post but continued the discussion and conveyed how this 55 year-old has witnessed the use of race and discrimination to hire low paid help in the building trades. Wednesday, I got home and found an email from a member of the Brownstoner team. He informed me that they had received complaints about my posts about “race, gender, and affirmative action”. My posts were not about “race, gender, and affirmative action”; they were about racism, discrimination and not necessarily affirmative action, but pay parity and the potential use of affirmative action to justify discrimination and low pay in an unregulated environment by someone who very possibly had no knowledge i n determining what to pay a self employed worker. I was condemning racism and discrimination when used as tools to deny pay parity or pay equality.
Setting aside Brownstoner’s rules against off topic posts, which both DIBS and I violated, I wish to point out that Brownstoner encourages discussions of “quality of life issues” surrounding home ownership. I own a home. Quality of Life to me, includes, not just me and my family as we sit in our house, but the school across the street, the nearby shops, the people who ride by on the bus by my houses every morning, and the people who might come to work at my house. Quality of life includes all the people my family and I encounter in the vicinity of our house and how happy and healthy those people we encounter are; are they paid enough to feed their children, do they have health insurance, do they have paid sick days so they can take off as needed, is their employer paying into social security for them so have something for the future, do they have disability insurance in case they fall off a ladder? All that comes under quality of life to me.
I am not going to mention anyone by political affiliation this time, but I am going to say that when I go back to my friends on Long Island, some of them, most often well situated people living in nice communities, and I begin talking about benefits for workers (never mind pay) – even just the mention of the minimal protections required by existing law is met with massive pushback. I never thought I would encounter that push back in a progressive environment like Brooklyn. My guess is one of two things: First, people did not read all of what I was saying and made an assumption that because I am contractor (and I am not a big contractor, I consider myself a worker; I am a corporation in name only) I would have a certain disposition toward labor (and perhaps women; be careful here, my wife has referred to me as a “bigger feminist” than she) and as a result would think a certain way; if they read what I was saying, they would understand, I don’t think like a business owner. The other possibility is, money is speaking. My fear is, that it is the latter, that the people who complained to Brownstoner are thinking with their wallets. I find the possibility that money may be restraining free speech in this political environment to be very frightening.
I do acknowledge one other thing and I am sorry for this: people may find my discussion inflammatory. That may be why Brownstoner contacted me. But to tell you the truth, anyone condemning anything that they see wrong in society (and this is a social issue; its “en masse”) is going to say something inflammatory to someone at some point. It can’t be helped. Writing about UPS knocking down a one hundred and fifty-year-old warehouse over a weekend might be inflammatory to someone (someone who likes old buildings or, conversely, to the UPS executives themselves); writing about discrimination and pay equality shouldn’t be.
All of what I said had to be said. Every day for years, I have been witness to something I consider to be disgusting and wrong and every day I open a site like brownstoner and have felt it was wrong that we were writing about old buildings and nobody was saying anything about the conditions of the people who do the work. Are we actually living in 1890? Isn’t this what some of us are fighting against? I’ve said it and I have faith enough in the people of Brooklyn that my business will not suffer as a result.
Thank you all for taking the time to read this,
Steve Cymbalsky
stevecym
in General Discussion 6 years and 1 month ago
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stevecym | 6 years ago
you know, it would be great if the community would counter me on here if they think things I may be saying or suggesting are wrong. I am thinking, I can take this and turn it into a real article for publication someplace and if I had some people counter me – both progressives and more conservative or business minded types, I can address the points they raise in the article. I think this has to be written about on a larger scale then just here. I think people have to know the truth.
stevecym | 6 years ago
you know, we can talk about this as an “immigrant issue” or simply as an “issue”. if we keep it as an “immigrant issue” it is very easy to think it is “something else” that does not pertain to us. it does not represent us or our families. but once i stop thinking of this as an immigrant issue and include myself in it as a “labor issue”, it becomes an issue for all people who toil with their hands. So for people like Dibs who suggest that young people take up a trade, and that can be any parent reading this now (i have a son), as soon as you consider that your child may not be suited for college, this issue as i just laid it out is something we all have to consider. think of it as a labor issue and ask, do i want my child working in an environment where the lowest worker makes $10 an hour after providing himself with social security tax, unemployment insurance and worker’s comp and vacation and a few sick days, paid federal holidays (25 an hour minus t he cost of those) and the top worker makes $20 an hour after subtracting the cost of those? for me, as a worker, thinking of it as a labor issue and not an immigrant issue has pushed this right into my face.
stevecym | 6 years ago
see, I am not getting a reply when I ask the question. in all honesty, I have spent years working in different communities around New York City. as I have said, I get push back when I begin this conversation with certain folks in more conservative areas (my “capitalist” friends) but on this site focused in Brooklyn people are quiet. My suspicion is that people were not aware how bad this was, hiring people at this wage with no legally required protections. I also suspect that now that I have said something they know it is wrong (again, my trump supporting friend on long island will argue to the death with me and say “its capitalism”) but people in Brooklyn are not of his “ilk”; this I know because the areas where I work in Brooklyn had very different bumper stickers on their cars during the last presidential election than my friend had on his. my suspicion is that people did not know. it is not that I had to change anyone’s minds as jhcovert implied I was trying to do, but it was more of informing “like” minds.
thank you all for reading all of this. I hav e wanted to write something like this for a long time and also wanted to run it by sociologists and an economist, but that would never happen; just like the folks who I am writing about, who are out busy working hanging drywall, I have to work as well and taking the time to do something like this eats into something else. that is another thing: I am an anomaly; I work with my hands but have a degree in English which allows me the unique position of knowing what it is like to be a worker in the city but also post on here. I am sure if some of those folks hanging drywall could write, they would have a lot more to say on this subject. Perhaps we are all better off that it is only me.
stevecym | 6 years ago
BruceF or Dibs or anyone else on here or specifically anyone who has done contract work (even contract white collar work such as IT or writing) and knows what benefits cost: can anyone offer up a suggestion as to what a fare wage might be for a self employed person (someone not covered by unemployment insurance, has no paid sick days, has no one paying 1/2 of the social security tax for them, and is not covered by workmen’s comp) who labors in NYC? what about someone who is a bit more skilled and has to supply his or her own tools? I was saying minimum of about $40 per hour at the low end. Does anyone have any ideas? honestly, I really do not know myself and I work. I am wondering if there are others who have ideas. BruceF, you said you paid people a “good wage”. what is a “good wage”?
stevecym | 6 years ago
this is something I believe I have learned about loyalty with workers at this level, even on a small job that lasts a day or two; that is how they maintain the network. their jobs end all the time and they have no unemployment insurance and the environment is very competitive so they must show us their best side at every turn, including loyalty, so we will remember them and call them when something else comes along. they have to behave this way even if they are being underpaid or find something other aspect of the job intolerable. in the absence of unemployment insurance, this helps guarantee them work where as with an American, if he/she has unemployment insurance and does not want to go back to some crappy job, he not only refuses to show loyalty but he stays on the couch. the loyalty is not necessarily coming from a good place; it is coming from a place of need.
again thank you all. I wish I would get some likes for these posts from the socially conscience among us. I can be wrong about some of this, but be aware I have been in it for over 20 years now, s eeking help and hiring, firing, and working right alongside people with my hands (and there are other things I know too, with respect to discrimination, but I will not mention it as it gets too specific).
Thank you BruceF. If you have read my earlier posts on this matter, this is all something I have wanted to say for a long, long time but it had never occurred to me to make the comparison to when our ancestors arrived 100 years ago until you referenced just that. and when I made the comparison, I realized things were worse than they really are today and worse than they were back then. and the loyalty part, I knew why they were so loyal, but again, until you mentioned it and until you had, I never thought of pointing it out as showing how bad thing are for these people. thank you for allowing me the opportunity.
stevecym | 6 years ago
I myself did not realize that we are taking advantage of people by paying them 25 an hour until I began working in it. with the more exposure I had and the more I saw and the more I learned about how much it costs to give myself the minimal protections required by law (never mind health insurance), I realized there is something seriously wrong here. when I first hired people at 25 an hour, like BruceF, I thought this was great; i am getting work done and I’m helping them. and i can justify it; in the 1990’s i worked on the side doing handyman and light construction work for 20/hr – but i had protection from another job and was paying into retirement and social security and unemployment through that other job. so like others reading this on here, at first i thought 25 an hour was great and i was doing people a favor. and the hard work and loyalty 25 an hour buys is not a sign of a good thing; it is a sign of how vulnerable these people are and how competitive the environment has become that they have to suffer that wage and work like animals (some of these peop le don’t take lunch; any American would demand his lunch and a 15 minute morning and afternoon break as he should). let’s not kid ourselves here folks, we are doing no one but ourselves (i will include myself in this as i might hire a painter for my own house soon) favors if we pay MEN $25 an hour.
stevecym | 6 years ago
so back to what BruceF said, about the hard work and loyalty and wanting to help these folks, can I get a like for suggesting that if all that is true we should be paying these people either $25 an hour with the basic protections that we would be required by law to provide a US Citizen (which I do not know how we can give them since they do not have social security numbers) or $35 an hour so they can save a little and “self-insure” should they get hurt and can’t work or fund themselves unemployed for any period of time? Every human deserves the basic minimums required by law. Am I not correct in this? Let me point out what a union mason makes including benefits which are above and beyond the what is legally required by law: $92 an hour. Has anyone here considered that rate when they claim to have “no regrets” about what they pay someone to work? in all honesty, I have paid people $25 an hour and I felt there was something wrong with it. We can si t around and talk about how hard people work and how loyal they are, but we have a saying in America “money talks…”
stevecym | 6 years ago
FYI: tally the cost of workmen’s comp, disability, unemployment, (not to mention health insurance) and a few paid sick days, two weeks paid vacation and payment into social security, divide it down to the hour and add it to $25 an hour and pay someone that hourly rate and you are helping them. the numbers don’t lie.
stevecym | 6 years ago
i can also point something out about hiring americans at this level. it is harder for us (americans who can get hurt with a machine) to take jobs with no worker’s comp protection or disability and in general we want other things, the minimum required by law. if you offer say 25 an hour and provide the minimum protection, you will find plenty of dedicated americans (i have). the problem is, if you offer 25 an hour with nothing else (or say less than 40 an hour and expect him to provide his own insurance and pay into social security), the American might as well sit the couch because if he gets hurt, this will cost him a lot more (i have a house; the hospital will take that from me or i should say us). what you get when you hire americans below the legally required protections are people who have other issues and may be working for a day here or a day there to support a habit and you are correct that we would rather hire someone new to the country than deal with those issues but that does not mean we are not underpaying them, especially when we do not give them mini mum protections required by law. in a way we are discriminating; we would give those protections to an American but we are not giving those protections to someone else. it is wrong. and we can sugar coat it and talk about how nice we are as we do it and we can buy them lunch (which to me seems paternalistic anyway) but it does not change or hide the bare facts.
stevecym | 6 years ago
Brucef: thank you for the opportunity and thank you for reading this, all of you. i know people are reading and thinking.
stevecym | 6 years ago
what I am seeing looks less and less like the 2000’s and more and more like something else from a much earlier time, earlier than say the early 1900’s. after brucef pointed out that someone helped his ancestors when they arrived here, I tried to make the same comparison with my own ancestors and cannot do it because when my own great grandfathers arrived here as unskilled laborers (they had been farm laborers in Eastern Europe), they were still able to build houses several years after their arrival (one with the help of his employer; in case any of the employer’s kin are reading this, his name was Fordham and he was a lawyer living in Greenport, LI and I think giving an immigrant laborer a mortgage was a real leg up, thank you; you gave my family a good start here and my cousin still owns the house).
Unless i am missing something, paying someone 25 an hour today can not come close to producing the example I give above. It won’t even put someone in a coop in one of the outlying areas. $25 an hour is good if there is unemployment insurance, social security, and other minimal benefits as required by law. toss in disability. without those, we are fooling ourselves into thinking with are doing something good for people when we hire them at that rate; we’re taking advantage of their desperation.
stevecym | 6 years ago
so if we wish to make a comparison to when our ancestors arrived 100 years ago, I can tell you this:
one of my great grandfathers arrived in 1907 and by 1916 was building a house (as financed by the man he worked as a “gardener” for). this on the east end of LI.
another great grandfather arrive in 1909 and by 1916 he was building a house in central Nassau county and was working as a farm laborer. at some point he worked at Hicks Nurseries as a laborer.
do you think that someone making 25 an hour will be able today in NYC will be able to dream of building a house in say 8 years? 25 an hour is helping someone eat. 40 an hour is helping them out and maybe a husband and wife team each making 40 an hour can save enough to buy something down the road.
stevecym | 6 years ago
brucef: i can go one further; my great grand father bought land and built a house and his employer, who he labored for, held the mortgage on the house. is anyone out there holding a mortgage for any of these people? the conditions are not comparable to back then. it has deteriorated to very little.
stevecym | 6 years ago
@ brucef: if they are paid a fair wage but I am not sure anyone knows what that is when people are working off the books. there is no insurance, no social security, nothing. so people think $30 an hour is good and I have heard people say that is too much. my family came here to 100 years ago and it was a very different time in terms of the work arrangement; there was no modern safety net and pretty much everyone who labored was on the same contract. Today, these folks are here working in the same conditions that existed 100 years ago while the rest of us at least get pay into social security and worker’s comp and a few other things; unemployment. if you tell me you paid self employed day laborers $40 an hour to cover those things, I will stop here. but something tells me that is not the way it works and if they are so hard working, why should they not get that? giving them 40 an hour would be assistance; 25 an hour is taking advantage of them. who is helping whom here?
brucef | 6 years ago
Interesting conversation. I have used undocumented workers for various projects over the years, and have found them to be hard working, in stark contrast to many Americans. I have always thought that I helped these undocumented workers out by paying a decent rate, and helping them in any other way I could to help them make their way in a hostile environment. In return I received loyalty and dedication that is greatly lacking in modern America. I don’t regret my actions and take pride in whatever assistance I was able to provide. Roll it back 100 years when my family came to this country. Thank heavens someone helped them out.
stevecym | 6 years ago
jhcovert: I was not trying to annoy, offend, or change anyone’s minds on this subject. I know this kind of conversation annoys a certain ilk of person as I have those folks as friends on long island and we begin these discussions just to goad one another (these are life long friends, politics won’t divide us for long). politically and on social issues, we are at opposite ends of the spectrum. I came on here not so people would complain, but to open the eyes of a like-minded and socially progressive audience as to what is going on around all of us. I honestly don’t think anyone complained; no one really did on-line and I got some likes for what i was saying and someone could have anonymously emailed me or tossed a rock through my window, they didn’t. I think what was saying has the potential to tick a certain element off and that may be bad for business. not my business, I work in a highly educated and rational circle of people anyway.
cate | 6 years and 1 month ago
Please everyone, no personal attacks (and nothing libelous). Thank you!
stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago
and more: when I was finishing high school one of my shop teacher’s tried talking to me about going to a trade school, welding school, to learn to be a “nuclear welder”; someone who works in the construction and maintenance of nuclear power plants. probably a trade that can be learned in the navy. but I did not want a military career and nuclear welding might have been a mistake as we have not built any nuclear power plants in this country probably since before I had that conversation with that shop teacher. and again, you have to be willing to move around.
stevecym | 6 years and 1 month ago
to continue what DIBS says:
part of the reason of a board like this is that people can speak frankly as we did in communities of the past, where we learned from others of the older generation. so I will continue with something as I think it is good for others, including young people to see:
I don’t think college was for me. I was never happy inside sitting and if I do not do physical work for at least 3 hours a day, I am restless at night (I have a cousin who was a farmer on the east end of long island and after a lifetime of hard work, he retired at 72 and went right back to work doing the very same job only now 3 days a week; he cannot stop). I regret not have gone to a trade school right after college (and I was in Wilmington, NC and there is a boat building program at their technical college; one of my regrets). in Lieu of college, every youth should consider a trade school. a lot of them are gone though; the boat building program in NC has moved their main focus from wood to plastic hulls; who wants to work with plastic?). with the criticism I have put forth about going into a trade, there is something to consider and that would be telecom or electric or IT. running communications or terminating wire or assembling pc’s might satisfy those who don’t think college is right for them.
there is something else DIBS said and I am not sure what this means to everyone and yes, populations have always moved. DIBS said that the trade situation might not be the same throughout the country and that is true. but as soon as he said that, I thought “do I want to work on an oil field out west?” in this country I would like to think that we have the luxury of not having to move too far from our roots to find a job. I was born 45 miles from where I live now and I like it that way. people are different and some don’t mind moving but with the mass of money here in the North East, I would like to think we can stay near home.
being able to think and say what I just did is why it is good to have a “troublemaker” like DIBS on here.