-Where do you work?
Family mechanical construction company that my bro and I own (along with a third minority partner). Grampa started it in the 50's, dad and uncle took over in the late 70's, and starting in the 00's we took over from my dad who retired completely December 2009. About 8 office staff, and in a perfect world around 40-60 plumbers in the field.
-What do you do? (Title/keywords)
I'm a plumber by trade/training, but I haven't touched a pipe wrench in years. Mostly I oversee the day to day administrative stuff, so basically paperwork, and also do estimating, design, shop drawings, O&M manuals and so on. Also do the easy tech support stuff around the office.
-What field/industry?
Mostly multi-unit residential construction (apartments, condos, hotels) but also medium to large commercial (warehouses, offices, strip malls, car dealerships).
-Wages?
We pay ourselves a salary of around 100k a year, otherwise most of our earnings are company profits distributed either through personal bonuses or dividends to holding companies. We haven't really made much money at all 2010-2012, unfortunately, and coupled with two projects that went sideways (had to buy 3 condos on one to get our money out and haven't been able to sell them as yet, the other one the city revoked the building permit and the financing froze a year ago with 400k of outstanding bills) it's not been a fun couple of years. We've got a whack of money on the books that should be paid out to us personally, with all the taxes already remitted, but haven't had the cashflow to do so.
Our guys in the field make anywhere from $18/hr to $45 or so. Journeyman wage is $36/hr right now for a guy fresh out of tradeschool and enough hours to qualify. Starters make 50% of that, second year apprentices make 60% and so on. Our PM's and purchaser make around 80-100k a year, and are basically plumbers brought in from the field.
-Bonuses/SEP?
See above for my own bonuses. For employees, it's done on a case by case basis depending on how well the company is or isn't doing and frankly, whether they deserve it or not. I'm personally not a fan of bonuses if only because it turns in to a giant pain in the ass where people expect them, regardless of their or the company's performance. Basically they become part of people's base renumeration.
-Benefits?
Hourly guys get 9.6% vacation/stat holiday pay added to their checks, so basically 3 weeks vacation and 2 weeks stat holidays. Being in Canada health insurance isn't a big deal, but we do have supplemental health insurance that we pay half the premium for. It's part of an overall benefits package from Merit Contractors, which is kind of an open-shop construction association. Guys get other stuff with it, like tuition rebates and the like. We also tend to have 3-4 company parties a year. Christmas, summer golf tournament, and then other misc. events. When the times were really rolling we flew 20 or so guys out to Victoria to go fishing, golfing, drinking and eating for 3 days one year, and Crown Isle the other. We used to do ski trips as well, but frankly they're a pain in the ass to organize and over half the guys never bothered to ski a run anyways, they just sat in their rooms and played cards and drank.
