Road Workmen

[marion29]

Can someone give any insight as to why contracted workmen(working for council) are allowed to get away with doing so little? Do the councils/government not check up on them as it's taxpayers money they are spending. Perhaps they don't care!

Currently where I live, opposite a seafront, they are redoing pavements etc and it doesn't seem to matter what time of day you see them, they are standing around drinking tea, chatting etc. etc

I work for the civil service and can't get away with that, and God knows how much longer it's taking to do the actual job?

[redcrx]

Have you asked you local council?

Although if anything like my local councils, town and disctrict, youll find that they are only working between 10 and 3. With 2 coffee breaks and a 2 hour lunch youll find youll have to speak to an answerphone and they may return your call once the pavement has been finished, or they may not.

[ugly_bob]

or phones may be obsolete once the pavement is finished!!

[rescuer]

About 20 years ago my local Council, as an experiment, turned a pair of Council houses into flats. They bought 2 items from the company I was then working for. The bill was �8-75. They 'phoned the office to ask if someone would call to collect cash so that they didn't have to open an account. I went along at 8-30am one morning.They sent someone to the Cashier's office for the cash. Time passed by. Meanwhile there was hardly any work being done by the 7 or 8 people in the office. Then a member of staff from somehere else came in collecting the football pools coupons (no doubt he was getting the commission on what he collected). One of his usual 'customers' was not there so he looked in his desk drawer to see if he had left the coupon there. It wasn't so he said he would call back when he had been to collect from a nearby block of Council offices.

Eventually at 9-30am they came with the �8-75. So there was an hour of my time wasted and so little work was being done in that office. But I know a Quantity Surveyor working for a Council who became tired of reading newspapers most days because there was no work, that he left and went into a private practice!

[Fat Boy]

The clue is in the question. They're contracted, not employed by the council. The company doing the work will simply have quoted a price and a timescale for the job. If the work overruns, that is a different matter and it would then fall to the council to invoke any penalty clauses that may have been written into the contract. If the agreed deadline is met, it doesn't cost the taxpayers any more money, no matter how many cups of tea they drink or holes they stand & look into.

[squiperly]

I used to work in the civil service and I left with the opinion that it consisted of the inadequate leading the inept. There was no proper training for anyone at any stage, and the practices were illogical and inefficient. I look on my time there as being more or less a waste of time. I for one had very little to do, and was thankful we had unlimited access to the internet!

[hartley]

Just playing devil's advocate but... if you work for the Civil Service and couldn't get away with it, how do you have the time to stand watching these workers doing nothing?!!

Seriously, I agree with Fat Boy - contractors only tend to really work flat out if they stand to gain bonus payments for early completion of work and these aren't always written into contracts (although they tend to be more common on major engineering projects).

Having said all that, these workers deserve breaks as much as (and possibly more than) lots of other workers. I know they're probably doing more physical graft than me - and I have numerous drinks during the day. However as soon as they have a cuppa there's probably a member of the public shouting at them to get back to work. I know the police have the same problem when they break off their patrols for lunch. Also there may be natural pauses in their work (waiting for deliveries of materials etc) which mean they may be justified in having a break.

[rescuer]

Sorry Fat Boy but the ratepayer is paying. If the work is being carried out by a contractor he will have included such elements in his calculations of the price. Almost certainly he will have given an estimate and not a quotation so he is not tied to a given price. Just take a look at some of the major constructions that have taken place over recent years and which have finished up costing much, much more than the estimate. The new Scottish Parliament building is a classic example.

[Coobeastie]

My father worked as a roadworker for the council until he retired and he was on piece-rate (not sure if that is the correct saying) and worked extremely hard for his money so its not all of them.

[ugly_bob]

Don't tar them all with one brush - It would take forever at their speed!!
Having worked as a conrtractor for the council - not on the roads - I can tell you taht the council pay over the odds for most jobs. Quotes we gave to the council were higher than the same job to a private client. The council would pay. And be grateful that the job got done - their guys doing the same job were useless and would have taken a week to do the job that we didi in a day!

[marion29]

Thank you all for your informative and amusing replies! Redcrx, you hit the nail on the head with your reply. Squiperly, I agree with you about the illogical, illthought out practices of government, but I have the opposite problem re work. I have only recently joined the civil service in my 40's and this also answers your response, Hartley. I am in the "new" contact centre(call centre)that deals with new calims to benefit at Jobcentreplus, and we are pushed relentlessly with crazy illogical targets and stats. So the workmen I only see on my way to and fro from work, but my partner works from home, so he fills in the rest!!