In our engaging series "Blue Collar Cruise #3," we continue to sift through the internet and publications to spotlight and debate even more controversial topics that are crucial for the blue-collar community. This episode extends our commitment to bringing to light the challenging, often overlooked issues that touch on the everyday lives and work of blue-collar professionals. By discussing these pivotal subjects, we aim to inform, empower, and inspire our listeners to think critically and advocate for meaningful changes in the industry. Tune in to hear the discussions that everyone in the blue-collar sector needs to be part of.

The Huddle was created by Paul Stuart of Stuart & Associates and Go Carrera, alongside Jose and Daniel Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring. Aimed at helping you maintain forward progress in your flooring career, they cover topics from personal and business growth, to installation tips & tricks and everything in-between.

Want to be a guest on The Huddle? Email thehuddleforwardprogress@gmail.com today!

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what's up team welcome to the Huddle welcome back welcome back good to

see everybody we are going to have a little shorter version today uh I've got a

board meeting that I got to get to in um at about four o'clock so about an

hour from now um I'm on the board of a children's home and once a month we have

board meeting so that's that we are doing our third edition of the bluecar

cruise I'm gonna ask the audience for a special favor please let us know if you enjoy

this this was a test it was kind of like figuring out if you guys want to hear

industry news as we dig him up uh we put a lot of effort into finding topics and

articles out there in the industry of construction that might be interesting

to everybody and um if you guys love it we'll keep doing it and if not we will

uh not keep doing it we'll figure it out yeah so um mainly

it takes a lot of effort to uh find interesting topics that are not just you

know run-of-the-mill stuff and digging through all the websites and the uh

intro webs to find stuff so if you guys like the blue collar Cruise please make

sure to comment in the chat that you do and uh that'll give us an indication on

on um you know whether we keep uh this effort rolling forward so Mr Jose

Gonzalez is with me today out of Grand Rapids Michigan with preferred

flooring as always uh either him or his brother or both of them are on here and

uh no worries because they fill in for me when I'm gone so uh and like next week I

won't be here you guys will be carrying the show no I'm going to sales training

with Milik and up in down in Georgia so awesome gotta gotta keep that education

going man see look at that sales training it is a sales training uh

awesome so yeah it's uh you know you want to keep on The Cutting Edge and the

front line of figureing out how to provide the best for your customers so that being

said we are going to be talking about several different topics today but uh a

few of them that are really they it's pretty cool it's it's

you know as I dig through all this stuff I always find like similarities and the problems out there and labor is always

an issue um so we're going to go over some stuff at the elevator World um and and

ex explore what they're doing in training um talk about wage theft on job

sites and a little bit of uh you know

flooring the future flooring focused uh items and this this actually comes I

believe from flooring Focus Magazine and then maybe if we can get to it I I

there's a really cool one uh where Ukraine is printing 3D

houses uh as they recover from the war efforts War efforts the tragedy I should

say of the war over there um I I don't care where you land on the political

front that thing shouldn't be happening uh nuclear bombs uh this is probably my

favorite one I hope we get to it but comes right on the back side of that Ukraine thing so it's kind of untimely

so I might skip one of these not to add a lot of bad juju to the conversation

but there are companies utilizing nuclear testing and working on uh

utilizing old nuclear weaponry as um excavation

tools that's so they're they're blowing up to you know we used use Dynamite now

we're talking about using nuclear weapon and you can all uh you can kind of uh

just imagine all the uh concerns and problems around that so what's up Jorge

good to see you brother I don't understand man uh so comment again as we're getting

more people joining if you like the blueco collar Cruise if you want um

maybe some different content in it uh but we as I stated before put a lot of

effort in it and it takes a lot of time so we love doing it but uh want to make

sure it's uh it's Landing well with the audience so let us know if you're on YouTube you know tell us you like it you

don't yeah Thumb Thumbs Up thumbs down say what you want what do you want to know about what do you want to hear about I mean that really does help out a

ton yeah we do a lot of research I have other I mean there's a lot of people involved in just uh or I shouldn't say a

lot but several people involved in in uh finding these topics and uh

trying to determine whether or not they are um you know

interesting so let's just jump into the first topic the headline reads how

regulation and immigration shape the future of elevator construction now it's kind of funny

immigration uh I maybe plays less of a role in the actual article but I it's

talking about the influx of of uh

population into other areas and the fact is is we're building up a few episodes

ago of the blue collar cruise we were talking about that highrise the tallest building

in the nation going in in Oklahoma City right y that means they was there but I

I listened to it I wasn't there but I listened to it yeah we need elevators right and so uh we're elevator side of

the construction industry uh are really struggling like the rest of us and have

significant growth in fact uh their growth is projected to grow 7% I think

Year over-year from uh between the years 2020 and 2030

so uh you know we're a quarter of the way through that at the this moment maybe a

little bit further but it's that's what highlights the the urgent need for

skilled labor so I thought one of the interesting topics or parts of this was

there's companies that are now integrating uh virtual reality and

augmented reality in the apprenticeship program so you can come out of these as

a low low-level apprenticeship um before you ever start

working and that's to attract you know people love that stuff uh the younger

younger uh population loves this stuff and you know if you can learn through a

device and some some sort look all of his old folks are like that's BS but

that's the truth I mean dang I'm one of the folks now I'm one of the old folks

now bro I know I'd rather learn hands too but I'm just saying like uh my son's

plays football and I guarant I tell you he he learned most of

the like stuff the the core principles of football from freaking Madden so um

and he's a he's an excellent little you know freshman football player so that's

it builds IQ you're right right I mean through it can I see a lot of benefits

for through the augmented it and all that only because it makes training more

convenient right like if you're set up and if it's pretty basic generic like on

a laptop you can do majority on a laptop um without the augmented reality portion

where you're wearing because I'm always thinking of uh like the goggles that you're kind of IM immersing yourself

into that reality yeah that's augment I mean you're pretty much there you don't

get to actually touch it and fill it but you're pretty much there you know what I mean yeah come a

long way since uh the one thing that Nintendo had back in the day where it was only like red lines the Mario I

forget I forget the name of it but um well this is where I think you know we

can learn in the flooring world there's a lot of what we do that could be taught this way I think that you're absolutely

right and you can program scenarios into it right like yeah any scenario you want

yeah so it's that I I think that's interesting we're uh you know after reading this we being in the tech world

uh with go Carrera but on the application world with my flooring

company uh this is really interesting to me if we could get people trained faster

that's one of our core uh initiatives with go career's encourage training to

increase Hammer rating to increase job performance and so you know we'll look into it but these initiatives they say

are crucial in addressing the skill Gap and and ensuring a steady supply of

qualified workers and that's what I was just talking about getting a steady supply means you got to make it easier

uh build easier onramps um that that's what we need to

do so I thought that was real interested in the the fact of uh you know

Construction is still like the the outlook for construction is still good we still have

people we still need businesses and buildings and and uh homes uh if you're

experiencing like I am looking for a new house you realize the market doesn't

have uh the the supply that it used to and Builders are working to increase

that Supply but um as the industry of Eves and continues to evolve uh you know

I think we need to think through uh some of these Innovative

companies approach I mean seems pretty cool to me yeah I like it you know you

mentioned this thing about the elevators and you know I I can remember as far

back as me starting in construction period that there was never enough to

begin with um as is a you said we're

build America's building up right now right and you need these guys I'm looking at some of the article right here and I'm realizing you had to wait

like two months for these guys to come in and shut it down or a month for for them to come in look at the floor and

say you can't touch that or yep you can do that one it's like okay yeah and there's a lot of

Regulation around elevators so I mean it's essentially uh you know a personnel

carrier so so uh there's a lot of Regulation around that and so getting in

you know this makes me think about safety and all of these things and how augmented reality could really double

down on that I could see uh you know you could have a safety course with augmented reality and I think in those

cases it's almost like why would you do that in person anyway it's not like

you're going to drop a hammer on someone's literally on their helmet in a

safety training so everything you're going to learn is intellectual anyway

and OSHA does and they do it like OSHA 10 OSHA 30 classes or you do them online

and so why not you know add some a boost to that through augmented

reality anyway it just shows that all of us have the same problems and we're trying to

find creative ideas and and you can clearly see that a lot of people are

trying to um you know focus on the younger crowd who are very digitally

oriented so yeah that that doesn't happen to be

me I would say yeah all right well that's that topic is

brought to you through con construction today uh if you want to check it out you

know we may start leaving links and descriptions uh in the YouTube channel

uh for you guys to go really dive deep on some of these topics uh if you if you

like them so on to the next

headline well actually what do you got on that do you think that uh that I mean

you said you like it do do you think it's it can be an effective way to train I think that it's a more efficient way

to get knowledge to an individual or a crew on a specific product or just

general broad terms of that line of work before they start um you

can you can program it however you want you can consolidate uh the teaching right

like even if it's an installer an old dog and you're teaching them a new trick he's going to be able to relate a lot

quicker a lot sooner say we have someone who does a residential we're trying to transition over to commercial flooring

um you know you start with the the items that they relate to and then you then you start peppering and everything else

that you need them to understand and know and you can show them the difference explain the difference all in one shot um like this is I just picture

like I like to listen to podcasts I like to watch uh uh videos on different on

how to do different things like YouTube videos right like DIY stuff this is no different for me um I know I might be a

little bit different than most people but I would I would love to learn that way on my own time when my house is

quiet and nobody else is bothering me and my phone's not not on for work or

you know I would that would be the time that I would Dive Right into something like that um and I I mean I'm a I like

to be in a class in person I do but I also like my quiet time and I would absorb a lot more in in a a more

intimate setting like that I would say um yeah maybe maybe it's something where

it's like you personally I'd love to try it out and see you know try something

like that out and see how it can apply I mean I've done some there's a company

locally here that did some virtual walkthroughs of a project so they take

your Blueprints and turn them into a virtual walkthrough for

and that it was it felt pretty real so with the technology I I could

see it actually working I think uh pretty amazing I think that's where I'm

hopeful that that's probably where the direction everything's gonna go you know pretty soon you're GNA have the literature on installation instructions

uh accompanied with a QR code that sends you to a uh augmented or virtual reality

if you will that will give you a walkthrough on a scenario on a job site so you can can visually you can put the

words together with the visuals so you understand exactly what they're talking about so there's nothing Lost in

Translation um terminology is huge and um I was just reading some installation

instructions yesterday I'm trying to help Eduardo out and it was very open to

interpretation and I didn't like that I didn't like that I could read that three

different times and view it three different ways when all it would take is a picture or a short video to explain

exactly what they were trying to say yeah yep imagine a product if they had a

video that could be uh stream to virtual reality and you went to uh you know you

put on a headset and you were able to like see it put in all angles uh in the

room that you are going to be putting it in y you know what I mean that's pretty

cool teaching how to do a layout you know just and then you can whoever's instructing it will talk their way

through it and yeah if you're like hey the layout starts right here and you're I it's it's pretty cool it's very

futuristic in my head but it's here it is it is I'm sure that somebody's working on that somebody a lot smarter

than me is working on it right now and I'm jealous well speaking of um Labor uh our

next topic is uh talking about wage theft on job sites and this is both

directions so a quick overview here is uh you know about $35 million in 2023

alone was uh secured for back wages for over well for nearly 18,000 construction

workers here in the US so this wage theft is typically

uh unpaid overtime uh failure to pay union dues uh

misclassification of full-time employees as independent contractors and we've

talked about this a lot and I'll bet that's the biggest one if if I'm a

guessing man that's probably the biggest one out of those three um obviously this creates

challenges for the gc's and you know when sub contractors

have this problem and gc's you know they're not above everybody they're just

in the first line of of payment on projects but it doesn't necessarily mean

they they don't do some of these uh um you know problems you know or cause

some of these problems and Jorge by the way I think it was Otis who built the

Willie Wonka Chocolate Factory elevator if I'm a guessing man

anyway um so the the the the wage theft that they're

talking about is uh you know really from the employee side um at this

point now here later in the article it talks about first off how how these um

these General Contractors become unknown uh liable for these wages ultimately

from their subcontractor so in an effort to stifle that first

thing I would say you know mobile timekeeping is a thing and it's the best

way to combat this um and keep yourself legal there's also U I would assume a

good amount of false claims in here uh where people are saying they weren't uh

paid enough or paid what they think they should be paid or what have you but the

the the fact they cover recover 35 million bucks is uh you know shows

pretty substantial Miss Miss uh Miss

mismanagement and ultimately really poor leadership in the companies that are doing that kind of thing so I've been

I've been part of and Daniel too we've been part of a couple different angles on this um as an employee not 1099 as an

employee um I was on projects that you know because we don't ask right we just go do our job show up our paperwork been

approached by the the GC and he's like are you receiving your prevailing rates

like no idea what you're talking about said I'm just showing up he's like well come with me um you know and and here

in in Michigan a lot of the projects you have to have it posted on a job box like you have to have it like they're a

little extra in some places like they have everybody's breakdown the classifications of the disciplines that

you're doing U from electrician plumber to um fortunately flurrying is a little

weird because we don't always have our own um our own name right wage wage

determination right right so but yeah as and all of a sudden they went

from hey boss they just let you know like this guy approached me and you know

sometimes whether they knew it or not I don't know but we had to be compensated for that um they had to show um when

they submitted their uh the wages what do they call it um certified payroll

certified payroll yep they had to do all of that and then on the other side as a 1099 when we were um brand new as

preferred flooring we went and did work for a company they gave us some rates you know this is you know we're

obviously trying to create and generate relationships and we're you know a

couple week a week or two on this project and we got approach like all right we need to see your uh your

certified payroll we're like uh what are you talking about oh yeah this is prevailing rates we need to see you and

we call like you guys didn't even tell us like why why is there no information

on this you know and that goes for the past three projects that we were on

there we didn't we're not trying to get anybody in trouble but at that point we were in trouble so we ended up having

done yeah you got you got to know that in fact every work order that goes out from our company that's prevailing wage

we post it at if it's going to go to a subcontractor that it's prevailing wage

they must uh keep track of all their payments and and turn in their uh

certified payroll and we uh add the wage

determination into the work order as well so that it's all up and up and

clear because yeah really I don't know how a company could get away with it I mean we have to prove and we do a lot of

certified payroll projects and we have to prove that we're paying the amount or

more than even with Subs I mean the subcontractor has to make at least a

certified payroll amount so at the end of the day um you know it's it's really

important to uh to know that yeah we I at my first employer in floring we

really got more so um our wage theft was just you didn't

get paid at the end of the week and and sometimes hold five checks until it would clear so yeah interesting

yeah interestingly in this uh conversation here there's also

some uh that it takes the other side where 1099 workers are making false

claims on W for wages on projects so they'll demand you know they'll they'll

basically say that they haven't been paid when they have or they had some other agreement because there's often

times when people are subbing they don't have any proof they don't have a

contract there's a lot of flooring companies out there that don't have contracts that they're sub sign and um

you know like at Stuart Associates we have a master subcontract agreement and then list very clearly in there that

every work order you accept through go Carrera falls under that agreement and

but there's a lot of companies that don't have uh have that and that exposes

you as a flooring contractor and if you're subbing it out to people making

false claims and de or they'll demand full PL full payment upfront and

um not show up and then demand the rest of the contract uh but this verbal

agreement is the big problem and you need to put in there quality assurance stuff to prevent yeah from having to

deal with shotty work and you know substandard materials being used

but again this is as a general contractor not me as a general

contractor but the general contractors are exposed here as

well a question from Mr Kendall there why is there a prevailing wage is it because the project govern is government

funded I've heard of the highway workers being paid a prevailing wage on Highway projects um yeah prevailing wage is

really just a a governmental act called the Davis bacon act and that is uh that

was I think it was 1970 something that that act came through and it's a federal guideline for federal projects or

federally funded projects so it doesn't have to be a federal a job for the federal government but a federally

funded or um and not all federally funded uh projects have prevailing wage

but most of your true federal government projects um is a prevailing wage and

what that does is they set the prevailing wage on a job meaning you must pay these guys pay your employees

this amount for being on the job for the different classifications so we've had

projects where tile Setter makes everything anywhere from 32 bucks an hour with fringes to $69

with fringes uh we were just talking about the elevator guy and I was looking at a prevailing wage job the other day

they make a on this job that we just bid uh they're prevailing wages $100 an

hour just just just over a hundred bucks with all the fringes and benefits so and

I think the highest I've ever seen was 150 and that was for a pipe fitter right so yeah Pipe Fitters are are high up

there as well but um but yeah the the that's what

prevailing wage is and they do that to make sure that they the the federal tax

dollars going to projects is going back into the people's hands at least this is

what they say back into the workers hands and making sure that they uh that the

government uh anybody working on the government's job that there is nobody

unpaid and so they have sort of certified payroll forms have to be filled out weekly and submitted

notorized and sent in and so it's a whole thing and it's also so that way

when a union comes in and it is part of that project they it's their wages are pretty close

to well they subsidize that's a whole that's a deep deep poll there it's

always a deep hole Yeah I was just talking about that with some people the other day it's do some research because

all it is is a after you do the research is how you uh interpret it

yeah so I am going to uh I've got to get going here pretty quick so I'm gonna

spend this last five minutes talking about uh the one that is like the the

craziest one to me is the topic reads project plow share nuclear bombs used as

construction tools so early in the sometime in the 1950s after the nuclear

arms race or kind of in the the midst of it the atomic energy act launched uh

project plow share exploring the use of nuclear weapons for large large scale

Earth moving projects uh there was a project called Project Chariot

aimed to use nuclear blast to create a harbor in Cape Thompson uh Alaska Harbor

holy smoked yeah uh this ambitious plan uh

involved deating multiple thermonuclear bombs to excavate a channel and and

turning the Basin into or and turning into a basin uh with combined explosives

yield significantly this was crazy the combined explosive yield significantly

greater than that of the hirosima bomb

so yeah uh so there was a lot of enthusiasm

early on for project plowshare and project uh or the initiative plow share

and project sharot but obviously all these concerns about nuclear

fallout um you know harmful effects on distant locations

all these public health concerns H sparked WID widespread criticism from

all kinds of scientists who link the new uh who link radioactive fallout to

cancer and other diseases so obviously this was

um probably well before its time uh back then but they're they're kind of looking

at will this work they're still kind of looking at this and the uh budget cuts and all and and

the you know kind of led to the fall of project plowshare uh but there were some

successes um really yeah like project sedan and gats buy gas buy I guess is

how it's pronounced which probably still saying it wrong but it sounds cool yeah

yeah yeah I'm definitely saying it but you get the you can uh it sound it's

spelled just like it sounds gas buggy so um it's probably said completely

different uh it they did demonstrate the feasibility of using nuclear explosions

for gas field expansion uh these projects uh were

really um you know overcame

insurmountable uh which doesn't make sense if it's insurmountable but they were surmountable uh uh obstacles and so

they did have some success with some things but ultimately at the end of the day this has all kind of fell on deaf

ears I mean if we're scared of nuclear power plants I can't imagine us being as

a society real uh happy with harnessing the nuclear technology for non-military

purposes and Earth moving but I thought it was absolutely a crazy

story that I could end on and really nuts I'll be honest like you know like

think about that dude hey we're gonna excavate you your your your Harbor with

nuclear weapons well you're yeah I'm thinking like that but I'm thinking in terms of you know it's instead of hey

dude somebody walked off with our job box today I don't know where it is I know I locked it up can you imagine hey

dude somebody just yesterday I don't know I turned the lights off all the nuclear bomb morning they're gone I don't know

what to do you want me call somebody the security around that and everything yeah

I I thought that was pretty crazy I mean we've used TNT dynamite for a lot of

years uh but man

more yeah Hazard pay Ren uh probably got him more than 150 bucks an hour for

doing that I think what they did is they wrote checks to the families just in case something went

wrong um that's that's who got paid was the

families what is pronounced Kendall told me it's it's it's pronounced Gatsby well

thank you Kendall because I couldn't have figured that one out on my own I I appreciate that you know what I'm just

more impressed that Kendall knew how to use Google to figure that out so

all right guys well I really I really um

oops I keep going back and forth here I really appreciate everybody this is GNA be a as stated right when we got going

today's gonna be a little bit shorter uh a lot a bit shorter than normal we uh we

have been going crazy um with longer

episodes so this is a nice short one I do want to mention to everyone that we are um that next

week we are gonna be having the Spanish

episode hey check this out what' he say gets free tequila shots and nachos

at the CFI convention hey dude like he's gonna who's viewership we're gonna have

to step it up over here we're have to get something genius Jorge's got ideas

bro that's awesome all right guys well thanks everybody for joining us

today I know it's shorter episode I hope maybe uh you guys loved it please

remember if you're on YouTube or you're watching this live or you catch us on Facebook let us know if you like the

blue collar cruise I only got through a few topics today but uh they were all pretty cool topics I I enjoyed talking

about and I love doing this because it really gets us out of just this flooring

bubble and makes us think outside the box a little bit and so I love it um if

you love it let us know if you don't love it let us know let us know either

way please do let us know because one way or another we we would love your guidance on whether or not to continue

with the blue collar Cruise after our initial 10 episodes that we have planned so looking forward to next Tuesday uh

that I won't be here but I'm still looking forward to it Jose and Daniel are going to be your hosts next Tuesday

I'll be gone on sales training uh and maybe it's just Jose or just Daniel but

one of us will be on here you can depend on us three o'clock Central every

Tuesday One Way Or Another We're GNA make it so next week uh is the Spanish

episode hey Ashton is is is it in place of or is it uh

overtime in place of all right perfect so to be honest with you you're going to

get Jorge next week and that is absolutely fantastic that dude is a host

of the mostest the hostess that has the mostest so if you uh speak Spanish

understand Spanish or love uh you know learning new languages get on there and

uh transcribe it and learn some a new language but Jorge is going to be the host for next uh week's huddle and uh

best of luck to you guys and uh have a great day guys everybody out there love

you appreciate all the uh interaction and uh it's been a blast so

we will catch you guys the Tuesday after next for us and enjoy next week next

week's Spanish episode