host

I was the managing partner for 7 years of a business with 17 employees. When I was not firing someone for "cause"....Cause is "no call, no show, theft of company property, etc....I always explained the dismissal as a workforce reduction, and offered the option of uncontested unemployment benefits.

I was faced with declining demand for our company's services and products, at times, and the nagging and rising cost of providing the traditional major benefits at that company, a defined benifit pension plan, and company payment of the entire family major medical benefit for each employee.

I never reduced wages....I went some months without drawing a paycheck, I only gave across the board pay increased to employees at the top pay scale (a workforce primarily of skilled craftsmen) two times in the seven year period, and I changed the costly defined benefit pension plan to a 401(k) plan, offsetting some of the loss of benefits that older workers would have received under the defined benefit plan.....by offering a 100 percent company paid match to all employee personal 401(k) contributions.

After the longest period of being unable to offer wage increases, I designed and debuted a successful, "gain sharing" incentive plan to increase productivity and efficiency, and I increased advertising budgets and invested in equipment and methods to increase both the perception and the reality of market leading, "quality work", in our industry and in the minds of potential customers.

I was active in managing and promoting the trade assoc. in my industry, regionally, and on a state level. I was an officer in the local assoc. and a delegate to the state assoc. I helped draft lobbying strategies and met with the lobbyist for our state assoc. to isolate and plan "pitches" for "make or break issues. On a local level, I shared cost and pricing info and business strategy with competitiors who were fellow trade association members, to successfully educate craftsmen turned business owners about the economics of their businesses, and the importance of offering guarantees to customers and fair wages and benefits to employees to influence "realistic" pricing, across the local industry.

Competitors who were non-members, were often encouraged to join our trade association. If seven years is enough of a measure of successfully lowering costs and maintaining the value of wages and benefits to workers, in a period of declining and or static revenues and profits, I succeeded without "help from the government". Taxes, licensing fees, accounting fees for the business and it's pension plans, increasing government regulation and health care costs all were aggravating, but they were equal challenges for all "top tier" competitors, as well. My business was located in a high cost, highly regulated state, but that also meant access to a pool of higher income customers, an above average population concentration, and a large pool of potentially educated and qualified workers.

None of what I experienced influenced me to be "more conservative or libertarian." I am still bitter, though, about the "Harry and Louise" "hit job" by big insurance and partisan republicans who derailed the Clinton "health reform" plan. All of the small business owners who I knew then, who were burdened by the high cost of company paid employee health benefits, were disappointed by the propaganda "blitz" that permanently shifted the profit advantage to competitors who paid little or no employee health benefits, in 1993....and since.