02-20-2018, 01:56 PM
An interesting point-of-view I recently heard when I started preaching my position on sidewalk clearing is: what do we do with the seasonal work?
The assumption is that we need skilled labour to actually clear the sidewalks, but then we'd need to offer them a compelling reason to take a seasonal job (no snow in summer). It's all well and good that $30 will buy us winter sidewalk maintenance... but do we also need to factor in paying workers year-round? Or paying them more because we _won't_ be hiring them year-round?
My position was that this is a difficult problem _worth solving_ because nobody wants pedestrians to chose to walk on the roads. Maybe there'd be some summer work as well. Maybe there's a skilled labour surplus and this isn't even an issue. Maybe the amount of labour needed to clear sidewalks to a reasonable standard is lower than we expect. But I'm not happy with my answer, as I didn't have anything solid to offer.
Does anyone have any details on this angle?
The assumption is that we need skilled labour to actually clear the sidewalks, but then we'd need to offer them a compelling reason to take a seasonal job (no snow in summer). It's all well and good that $30 will buy us winter sidewalk maintenance... but do we also need to factor in paying workers year-round? Or paying them more because we _won't_ be hiring them year-round?
My position was that this is a difficult problem _worth solving_ because nobody wants pedestrians to chose to walk on the roads. Maybe there'd be some summer work as well. Maybe there's a skilled labour surplus and this isn't even an issue. Maybe the amount of labour needed to clear sidewalks to a reasonable standard is lower than we expect. But I'm not happy with my answer, as I didn't have anything solid to offer.
Does anyone have any details on this angle?