I hate this town. I hate this fucking town.
I just want to sew. I’ve been looking for local sewing jobs for fucking ages!!! Everyone in my area is looking for upholstery work. There’s a fuckton of boats in my area that people want done. But every single upholstery shop has told me “no”. Four local shops. Have a fuckton of work they want done, but they don’t want to pay me the amount!!!
A local shop finally called me back. Guy gave me 4 outdoor cushions to make and said he’d evaluate my work & pay me when it’s done.
I worked on 4 cushions, 2 different sizes, complete with piping & zippers on all of them. Took me 3 days. Approximately 6 hours per day of work, a total of 18 hours, and that’s the low estimate.
Got it done. Looks awesome.
He gave me 100$. Then he said I could compete with his current seamstress for jobs and he’d choose the cheaper of the two estimates we give.
I want to fucking cry. I have to take this job. Any job. I need the money.
I’M ONLY ASKING FOR LIKE 300$ PER WEEK IN ORDER TO SURVIVE??? Am I crazy??? Is that too much???
At least he gave me the job where I quoted 35$ each for 2 vinyl boat pieces… that’s 70$… I think I can get it done in day… wow… 10$ an hour… fucking wow…
I hate this. I fucking hate this so fucking much.
God, I want to cry…
EDIT: Start my own business?
During a looming economic crisis + ridiculous foreign tariffs + with real estate currently at an all-time high?
Don’t think I can take the risk that right now, as much as I’d like to.
I think that might technically be illegal coordination, but good luck to you either way
Heads up, if grocers can collude on prices unmitigated for years, two seamstress aren’t going to be investigated talking about their wages.
Do the two seamstresses spend millions to leverage the government?
It’s called unionised.
if they are technically independent businesses (contractors) that would not be unionized labor but instead two business colluding.
They aren’t businesses if they aren’t paying LLC fees every year. You can’t just throw words around like business just because
sorry, I meant sole proprieter which is typically considered to be a form of unincorporated buisness.
Also wrong word use. If there’s no fees or licensing involved then it’s not a business, a proprietorship, or anything else that would mean individuals aren’t allowed to unionize. It is perfectly acceptable for them to team up against the actual business involved here
I agree with you on some of that, but if the guy is contracting out individual jobs to sewers and they use their own equipment and set their own hours they are sole proprietors and not his employees. This guy seems to be trying to have it both ways though and is just working to drive down the cost of labour.
Ehh… When you are talking about poverty-level income, I wouldn’t think it would matter too much…