How much do your building porters earn?

rentaplus said:
A friend of mine helped administer her building...saw the very high slary of the portero, arranged to fire him and now they outsource cleaning and security, which is what they do anyways...much cheaper and if you dont like the job they are doing you fire tem and get another....without paying a mountain of indemnization.

This is not possible if the building has over 30 apartments. My understanding is that if there are 30 apartments or more you MUST, by law, have a full time portero and not an outsourced service. Also your friend would have had to pay an indeminzation for the fired employee.
 
sergio said:
This is not possible if the building has over 30 apartments. My understanding is that if there are 30 apartments or more you MUST, by law, have a full time portero and not an outsourced service. Also your friend would have had to pay an indeminzation for the fired employee.

I'd also like to know how they were fired without paying an indemnity.
 
mini said:
I'd also like to know how they were fired without paying an indemnity.

There was a lot of talk several years ago about "firing" the portera in my building in Recoleta.

I am long gone and out from under the burden of paying monthly espensas.

She is still there...and making more $$ than ever.

I don't think the consorcio can afford to get rid of her.

Mini is right...the indemnity is (likely) prohibitive.
 
We have 18 units in the building, only 2 of which are actually lived in by their owners -- the rest of us are renters, so pretty powerless in our building. Only the 2 owners ever go to the meeting of the consorcia, and even they've pretty much given up on that, since none of the owners of the other 16 units show up, if there's a problem they'll just discuss amongst themselves.

All of this was fine when we moved in, but our portero has a drinking problem -- that has gone from being the occasional jolly drunk a couple of years ago, to being the surly guy you want to avoid. However we no longer have to avoid him, since he no longer even bothers working his shifts -- which were from 7 - 10am and then again from 6 - 8pm at night. Now he just takes out the garbage, sometimes not even that.

Last year he didn't work for more than 2 months of the year, and he still took his 28 days of holiday in January. So he makes 2700 a month, or about 35000 pesos a year -- but if you consider he only works about 9 months a year now, if that -- he's making around 3900. He's single. Has an on again off again girlfriend that does not live with him.

Since he got back from January vacation he has worked less than 14 days. In fact the only time we have seen him in more than two weeks was last weekend when we got the building administration to send an ambulance for him -- who took him away, dried him out, rehydrated him, deposited him back at the building -- and then I saw him the other night blind drunk again.

Everyone in the building likes the guy, and has tried to get him help numerous times, but hospitals aren't set up for treatment, and he hated the one meeting he did attend one time because he felt that everyone there was a crackhead or worse than him (I think denial still reigning).

So basically we're stuck. The poor guy is only in his 40s and will probably drink himself to death. He's refused help, and obviously the building administration doesn't know what to do because you fire a guy like that and he'll end up on the street. You keep him in the position, and you're basically enabling his addictions, since you're giving him a house and salary and he has job security so really he can just shut himself in and drink away his life and not really put anything at risk.

By the way, the building has even more of a problem if they do try to throw him out -- the reason they hired him for the job in the first place is because he was one of the construction guys for the building. He fell from two stories up and broke a hip, had a head injury, who knows what else (we weren't around at the time, this was 8 years ago). They hired him to stop him from suing.
 
syngirl, quite a story! I stopped going to the meeting because people were so rude and aggressive. There was total chaos, complete disrespect and a TOTAL lack of civility. I couldn´t take it.....
 
Sergio, I think you should consider selling & buy a PH....

Our portero is pleasant. He does his job well enough. The place is clean & the trash goes out regularly & we get our mail. He lives in with his wife & daughter. They mostly keep to themselves. I certainly wouldn't complain about him & I don't think he makes too much. (I think the the professionals make too little. But that's another discussion.)

The only thing is I'm not sure what his hours are.... We have a part time guy as well, which I see much more often. And now that the full time guy is on vacation, I've seen the woman filling in for him every day. The regular portero I don't see for months at a time....
 
I know a guy who was a portero in Belgrano for 10 years. A couple that moved into the building were hell bent on getting rid of him because they wanted to give the portero position to someone from their church. So they made his life miserable and tried to turn everone against him, accused him of being a drunken drug addict and voilá he was out.......however his indemnization was a whopping $50,000 pesos which the lawyers worked out to be paid to him in monthly installments over the course of a year.

Since this is a building with 65 units, the expenses did not go up that much to cover the monthly payments.

When I lived in New York City, my building with 60 units had a live in super, he had a 3 bedroom apartment (the largest unit in the building) free gas, electric, telephone, cable, internet and two yes two parking spaces in the underground garage (meanwhile there was a 10 year waiting list for a spot for the other unit owners) plus $52,000 per year salary, 4 weeks paid vacation and fully paid medical / dental benefits. Since this was a condo building, all he had to do each day was vacuum the hallways and elevator, and take the garbage out (which took 5 minutes since there were trash chutes on every floor and it all went to the basement). And get this.......around Christmas time he would send out cards to each apartment with a return envelope for a tip. Most people gave at least $100 and some a lot more so he probably averaged a $10,000 christmas bonus. So what I am trying to say is that while it may seem porteros here are cleaning up, it's a lot worse in New York and I am sure most of the US for that matter.
 
It´s actually quite simple, I think someone mentioned it earlier. The problem is not that porteros make a lot of money but that professionals make less than what they should. With the cost of living here in BA being so high, a 5K salary should be an average salary !
 
David, you are right about ´supers´having a good deal in New York. As you say, they also get fantastic tips. New York, of course, is a special case in the US. Condo and co-op fees are also high in New York - but keep in mind that New Yorkers earn very high salaries compared to Portenos. People who can pay a minimum USD $500,000 for a small Manhattan apartment can handle the condo fees. Let´s not forget, though, that a LOT of New Yorkers live in amazingly CHEAP rent-controlled apartments. Anyway, back to BA, it´s a lot tougher here where professional salaries are so low. Today a lawyer friend told me of a friend of his who is 40 years old and works for a TOP BA law firm. He holds an important position and earns $4,000 PESOS a month. This is the reality here and I don´t know where it is going to end. The latest populist attempt by the K people to require expensive indemnizations for firing part time domestic employees will help to eliminate one of the remaining advantages of the middle / upper middle class.
 
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