[brightnclean]

If any of u lot out there are thinking of employing  .. get a Pole!!!

I mean a Polish employee 

The guy I have working for me is Polish and I well over the moon with him. He turns out at work without fail. His cleaning is superb. He is fantastic with the customers. (He works on his own most of the time in my van which he takes home and fills up overnight) He looks after the kit properly. He is honest as the day is long.

For example.  Yesterday I met up with him to do a big job and he only hands over to me over £100 cash which he has collected in Xmas tips and little payments from customers for those extra little jobs they are always asking us WCers to do. I gave him the lot straight back and thanked him for the gesture.

I pey him a good rate.. well above the minimum wage which a lot of his mates get at their jobs. I am putting another van on the road early next year and already have my new emloyee lined up.... vouched for by him.

Maybe this is a touchy subject but honestly I have never had such a good worker. I used to be in charge of well over 1000 people in my previous incarnation and my biggest headache was always staff problems. Maybe I am just lucky with this guy but I have got to know quite a few Polish people through him and I am well impressed.

[windowwashers]

If any of u lot out there are thinking of employing  .. get a Pole!!!

I mean a Polish employee 

The guy I have working for me is Polish and I well over the moon with him. He turns out at work without fail. His cleaning is superb. He is fantastic with the customers. (He works on his own most of the time in my van which he takes home and fills up overnight) He looks after the kit properly. He is honest as the day is long.

For example.  Yesterday I met up with him to do a big job and he only hands over to me over £100 cash which he has collected in Xmas tips and little payments from customers for those extra little jobs they are always asking us WCers to do. I gave him the lot straight back and thanked him for the gesture.

I pey him a good rate.. well above the minimum wage which a lot of his mates get at their jobs. I am putting another van on the road early next year and already have my new emloyee lined up.... vouched for by him.

Maybe this is a touchy subject but honestly I have never had such a good worker. I used to be in charge of well over 1000 people in my previous incarnation and my biggest headache was always staff problems. Maybe I am just lucky with this guy but I have got to know quite a few Polish people through him and I am well impressed.

sad to say, Polish people tend to appreicate working and paying their way and fair play to them, puts are lot of english people to shame, would I employ someone from there to right I would.

Ian

[Jago]

A couple of my mates are door staff and they are Polish
Never had a problem with any of em
Do not care what colour, creed, or  country you come from as long as U do not undercut my prices to nick my work
Thats all I am ever worried about
As U say at least you found someone reliable as thats the hard part
good on ya

[steve m]

had one in my other business. Word of warning, once they get acustomed to the english way of life theyre no different to us englis

[Stevie G]

totally agree with there steve m. same thing happend to me years ago
took this guy under my wing  help him and his wife gave them both a job
hard workers they where wont deny that. once they where on there feet
nice place to live, good income even helped sort out there visa problems
to bring there little girl over got a taste of good life again nothing wrong
that. but all the time plotting to take some of my business. and they did.
never tar every with  the same brush. but for me
never again.

[NWH]

How long do you think you`ll be able to take the P*** out these people,they`ll be back with avengence in 10 yrs and we`ll all be sorry we gave them work.At the moment 6-8 quid an hour seems good money for them until they  realise that it`s peanuts and not enough to live on.

[dave0123]

I got questioned by one a few months ago! on a bike push bike bwt didnt even look like a window cleaner and asking me did i own these roads???

then finally he said he was a window cleaner too! and how much do i charge? i wasnt going to tell him my prices and the houses were 3bed semi's i was charging 10.00 which is around the standard price round here even the lads doing it for beer money are charging about a fiver a house. Anyway he says o am charging £2.00 per house i said 2 pound!!!!!!! TOTALLY shocked! i dont even see that low pricing on council houses!

Havent seen him again thou dont think customers would go with 2pound a house think its abit low to wary over!

Dave

[simon knight]

Most of the Polish guys working around here are builders, plumbers, sparks or chippies...not seen any w/cers....yet!!!

[Stevie G]

 your right simon, but just to ad to my previous post it was when i had a catering
 company.

[simon knight]

These guys are hard workers, they think nothing of working a 10 hour day 6 days a week.

I think most of my customers are fairly loyal, but if some guys came around and offered to do the same job for half the money then I think their loyalty would be stretched to the limit...in any event I think I'd be asked to compete on price.

Anyway it's not happened yet so I'll cross that bridge if and when it comes.

[Londoner]

We have got our first Polish window cleaner round here. I saw him last week, good top quality aluminium A frame ladder, aluminium 6ft point. Not a cowboy in my opinion, the only reason I noticed him particularly was his Polish registered estate car.
We have had Eastern European window cleaners for a while but employed by local established window cleaners.
This one looked like he was his own man.

I bet he's working his nuts off at the moment and as soon as his Polish mates realise he is making more than they are earning on the building sites it will turn into a stampede.

Make no mistake, Polish workers are grafters but they are only here to make a few grand and then go home with the money. The effect on the people who live here is serious because they are being displaced from the job market. The bosses may love migrant workers but only because they can exploit them.

In the mean time they are driving down wages like mad. All driving jobs in London now are advertised at "Polish Wages" no local man could live on them. Labourer on the buildings £50 a day OR LESS cash in hand. Bricklayer, carpenter, plasterer paintere etc are all well down in the wages stakes.

The garage trade is going the same way I am told.

[NWH]

Enoch.

[brightnclean]

Just to put the record straight I pay my Polish employee well over the £6 to £8 per hour mentioned above.

If you exploit anyone and pay them peanuts of course they will soon catch on and try to better themselves no matter what nationality they are. Treat them with respect and reward them well for making you money (That's what employing is all about) then you will have a fraction of the problems.

[cybersye]

[quote author=brightnclean link=topic=46896.msg382980#msg382980 date=1196964103
If you exploit anyone and pay them peanuts of course they will soon catch on and try to better themselves no matter what nationality they are. Treat them with respect and reward them well for making you money (That's what employing is all about) then you will have a fraction of the problems.

Well said
Why then do you have to emphasise the fact he's polish?
I use to window clean for someone a couple of years ago, got paid £7 an hour, worked hard for him , made him a lot of money. I'm not Polish 
Think I'd have been better off working for you
Maybe I'm looking at this from the other side of the fence but it seems to me there are just as many bad bosses as there are bad workers, glad to hear you have yourself a good one though.
Simon

[Paul Coleman]

Most of the Polish guys working around here are builders, plumbers, sparks or chippies...not seen any w/cers....yet!!!

If there is a problem in window cleaning, initially it would probably be with displaced building workers rather than the immigrants themselves (IMO of course).

[Londoner]

Thats right and thats what is happening. In my previous posting I said the local blokes are being displaced and thats the key word, displaced.
There aren't thousands of jobs going begging round here that the employers are unable to fill. So where is the work for all these people coming from?

In the simplest terms the job market works like any other market. The employers pay as little as they think they can get away with but not everyone is able to live on just over £5 an hour.The ones that can afford to do so take the jobs but what happens to the ones with mortgages etc that can't?

[East coast window cleaning Services]

Good point above. Personally i wont employ them.

[Londoner]

We have to recognise the difference between a migrant worker and an immigrant. On first appearences they seem to be virtually the same thing but they are not.

Migrant workers only come here to work not to put down roots. Its a whole new experience for this country to be flooded with young, healthy, keen, well motivated people who's only interest is to make a wad of cash and take the money home.

They represent a whole new pool of workers who simply didn't exist in this country even two years ago. Because they are migrants they are still living in the Eastern European economy and paying Eastern European prices for their houses food etc. They come here to work for a few weeks or months but while they are here they live as cheaply as possible. With wages here about five times what they are back home who can blame them?

The question is, are they doing all this at the expense of those who live here whatever their origins?.

Can you imagine Arthur Scargill standing back and allowing Polish miners to flood the mining industry with cheap scab labour in the 70s? And he was a Communist!

[steve m]

got bit once never again. The thing is all we are doing is training them up in another trade for them to take over. Go onto the building sites and see how many there are working tere. I mean the likes of dry liners, painters, roofers, the list goes on. And the major thing that kno-one has really thought about is what is happening to all the monet they earn?. Straight home to the family in poland or russia. Every one wonders why the interest rate is on the up, its simple, all the money is in other countries. And why is it that if they go home for 14 days every 6 months they dont have to pay income tax, while people like us are holding up the nhs and the rest of the country. It mught sound like I got the hump with immigrants, well I have. Its not the fault of the immigrant, but of the government as this law counts for ALL immigrants

[stevekennedy]

We have recently taken on a Pole. Excellent worker. He has told me that by the time he pays his rent, bills, food, clothes etc he has £100 a month to save. Which he has already said will go on a car. All of his money spent right here in Scotland. We spend more on our foriegn holidays than these guys will take home with them IMO

Also, I do not see them all becoming w/cleaners. The British born guys who are labourers on the building site have been working for peanuts for years. They are not all clamouring for window cleaning rounds.

Fortunately for us, window cleaning is a job that is snubbed as too menial by most people. Even labourers on building sites think they are above us cleaners. They don't want to tell their mates that they are a cleaner. Much rather have a macho builders job on the site.

Some W/C's might hate this attitude but I say its great for us. This attitude means that demand continues to outstrip supply meaning we get paid very well.

They may laugh at us but we are laughing all the way to the bank