The Raise Is on the Ladder, Not in the Ask

The problem in one breath

Every week somebody on the crew asks for more money. Not the same man — a different one each Friday, in the truck, at the tailgate, in a text at nine at night. You say "let me look at it" because you don't know what he's worth yet, and by the next Friday he's asked again and a second man has started.

Why it happens

A crew with no raise process asks for raises constantly, and it's not greed — it's the only way any of them can find out where they stand. When you hired him you told him the low number was a start, not a ceiling (Module 4, Play 1), and nothing since has shown him the path. So he asks. The fix is to put the path on paper: the rungs, what earns the step to the next one, and when you look. Once he can see that, the asking stops, because the answer is already on the wall. We learned that the slow way, with payroll crews for years and no ladder, and the Friday ask was the sound of it.

The play

1. Three rungs, three numbers. New guy, roofer, foreman. The new guy starts as an extra pair of hands at about half what the foreman makes — around twenty an hour in our years running payroll, which is a starting point for your sheet, not a rule. The roofer is a man who can be handed a slope and left alone. The foreman runs the roof. Put a rate on each rung, and a date next to the new guy's.
2. The new guy gets looked at every sixty days, on four things. Did he show up — every day, on time. What his foreman says. What the monthly reviews said (Module 4, Play 4). And what he can now do that he couldn't — each skill a card on the training matrix (Module 3, Play 4). Pay follows the proven skill, never the calendar.
3. Set a dollar on each skill before anybody earns it. Welding a boot on a low-slope section is worth a number. So is running a valley clean, or flashing a chimney without a callback. Write it on the ladder in advance, and the raise conversation becomes "the card's signed, here's the bump" — no negotiation, no Friday.
4. Review the roofers and the foreman monthly, on the same page. The sit-down already exists (Module 5, Play 6); the ladder is what you bring to it. A man who's stopped adding skills has stopped earning steps, and the page says so before you have to.
5. The foreman's deal is the top rung, not a bonus. Hourly, well paid, with the authority sheet in his hand (Module 1, Play 5) and the training card as his job. We tried bonus plans for foremen and never saw one pay back; the project manager is on salary and nothing else. His tools are the other half of the deal: a thousand-dollar bag we bought a foreman was half gone in thirty days, so the ladder says which tools are his to bring and which are the shop's to sign out.
6. When the answer's no, the ladder says why. The man who asks between dates gets pointed at the page: here's the rung, here's the skill that isn't signed yet, here's the date we look. That's a clean no with a path on it (Module 3, Play 9), and it holds without a fight.

Do this this week

Write the three rungs and their rates on one page, tape it inside the truck, and put a sixty-day date next to your newest man's name. Next Friday, the ask has somewhere to go.

The tool

The raise ladder — one page, posted where the crew can see it:

THE RAISE LADDER — what each rung pays, and what earns the next one

Rung          Rate         Earns the step up
NEW GUY       $____ /hr    looked at every 60 days: showed up every
                           day · foreman's word · monthly reviews ·
                           skills signed off on the training card
ROOFER        $____ /hr    can be handed a slope alone; reviewed monthly
FOREMAN       $____ /hr    runs the roof; holds the authority sheet;
                           trains the card; reviewed monthly

SKILL BUMPS — set before anybody earns them
  [ ] Valley, clean, no callback            + $____ /hr
  [ ] Chimney / wall flashing               + $____ /hr
  [ ] Low-slope: boots and seams welded     + $____ /hr
  [ ] ______________________________        + $____ /hr

TOOLS: the man brings ____________________; the shop signs out
  ____________________ and it comes back or it comes off the check
  where your state allows — ask yours.

Name: ____________  Rung: ________  Next look: ____/____/____

The Spanish twin is the Spanish card.

If your crew is 1099

A sub crew doesn't climb a ladder, and you don't hand out rungs to another company's men. What a sub gets instead is the next roof's price, and the crew price list (Play 2) is where a crew that's gotten better gets paid for it. Never put a sub's individual men on your ladder or review them like they're yours — that's the setup that makes a sub look like an employee on paper, and the tests for it are set by federal and state law and vary by state. The tools line is a payroll question too: what you can take off an employee's check for a tool that didn't come back is set by state wage law, so ask your accountant before you write that clause.

One more thing: this play is how we run a shop — it's not legal advice. Rules change by state and by contract, so before you act on the legal-sounding parts, run them past your own attorney or accountant. It's your business, and what you do with any of this is your call and your responsibility.