Wages

[dubsie]

Been working on a building site for the last two weeks and I have been shocked at how little some fully qualified tradesmen are working for.

An electrian with his 2391 quality working for less than 10 per hour. This is virtually the same as someone working nights stacking shelves at tescos. The lowest paid are agency staff, yet the agency is being paid nearly over 700 per week for the above sparky.

Something needs to be done to stop these agencies ripping people off. If this carries on we will end up with droves of skilled people leaving the industry.

Worse still we are training an army of school leavers for unemployment and low pay.

[OnionTerror]

Been working on a building site for the last two weeks and I have been shocked at how little some fully qualified tradesmen are working for.

An electrian with his 2391 quality working for less than 10 per hour. This is virtually the same as someone working nights stacking shelves at tescos. The lowest paid are agency staff, yet the agency is being paid nearly over 700 per week for the above sparky.

Something needs to be done to stop these agencies ripping people off. If this carries on we will end up with droves of skilled people leaving the industry.

Worse still we are training an army of school leavers for unemployment and low pay.

But isn't there a glut of trademen looking for work, and the agencies know this? I know a plumber whose just starting out, and is charging £15 an hour labour until he gets his Gas Safe. Once he gets that, he'll put his prices up. Apparently he's really busy...

[ccc]

Shit happens. Tradesmen had their good years and we all heard about it. If they had any sense they would have saved up a nice warchest. I doubt many were as smart as ll the bragging would make us to believe.

If you don't want to go through an agency then don't. If you want to improve your rate through an agency negotiate.

[Mr Yogi]

I work with a lot of tradesmen and no-one who's any good works for less than £120 a day. £150 would be average and a sparky like your guy would get £200. This is private domestic work.

Most are still busy.

Edited October 30, 2010 by Mr Yogi

[dubsie]

Shit happens. Tradesmen had their good years and we all heard about it. If they had any sense they would have saved up a nice warchest. I doubt many were as smart as ll the bragging would make us to believe.

If you don't want to go through an agency then don't. If you want to improve your rate through an agency negotiate.

I'm fine as my trade is holding it's value but we have recruitment consultants making 70k a year from the down turn. They are worse than estate agents.

The problem now is that all the decent tradesmen are packing up.

[Democorruptcy]

Been working on a building site for the last two weeks and I have been shocked at how little some fully qualified tradesmen are working for.

An electrian with his 2391 quality working for less than 10 per hour. This is virtually the same as someone working nights stacking shelves at tescos. The lowest paid are agency staff, yet the agency is being paid nearly over 700 per week for the above sparky.

Something needs to be done to stop these agencies ripping people off. If this carries on we will end up with droves of skilled people leaving the industry.

Worse still we are training an army of school leavers for unemployment and low pay.

Tell them to offer someone at their council a brown envelope for a job there.

A council electrician has earned pay and bonuses of £124,000 in a year — far outstripping the remuneration of a minister of state or the head of a large comprehensive.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6982335.ece

[ccc]

I'm fine as my trade is holding it's value but we have recruitment consultants making 70k a year from the down turn. They are worse than estate agents.

The problem now is that all the decent tradesmen are packing up.

Yep they are a bunch of shysters. However everyone does know this so you have to act accordingly.

As for teh decent tradesmen - surely they are still getting good work and pay ? Any tradesman with a good reputation is busy non stop in my experience. One area of work where word of mouth really is #1 for most people.

[pathfinder]

When your rate drops to the floor, you do 2 things.

1/ Start looking into the things you had wished you had done or job ideas you never went for simply because you earned too much.

2/ If you did pay debts off, small mortgage, or str fund from all that lovely overtime and take a local job with the least hours you need to live off and let someone else spill their guts. Go out and live.

[Harry Monk]

2/ If you did pay debts off, small mortgage, or str fund from all that lovely overtime and take a local job with the least hours you need to live off and let someone else spill their guts. Go out and live.

Yep, I can't compete with the Bulgarians who will drive trucks around Europe for £100 a week these days so I have given up getting up at silly o'clock and working 15 hour days, I'm after a job working three days a week in a railway museum and I'll just spend the rest of my days living off of the proceeds of having been lucky enough to buy a house in 2000 and sell it in 2007.

[tinker]

Recruitment Consultants - parasites on parasites.

[SNACR]

Been working on a building site for the last two weeks and I have been shocked at how little some fully qualified tradesmen are working for.

An electrian with his 2391 quality working for less than 10 per hour. This is virtually the same as someone working nights stacking shelves at tescos. The lowest paid are agency staff, yet the agency is being paid nearly over 700 per week for the above sparky.

Something needs to be done to stop these agencies ripping people off. If this carries on we will end up with droves of skilled people leaving the industry.

Worse still we are training an army of school leavers for unemployment and low pay.

Why, won't new better value for money people come in?

Why is paying more for electrical work a good thing?

[Harry Monk]

Why, won't new better value for money people come in?

Why is paying more for electrical work a good thing?

I sort of agree, and see my earlier post about my previous £700 a week job having gone to a £100 a week Bulgarian/Romanian/ truck driver now.

It's better for you, me and everybody if the stuff can be bought cheaper at the till. That cost-cutting spreads across the entire manufacturing and distribution process.

However, I'm not spending anything any more, just embracing minimalism. Not a problem for me, I'm 51 and I've been here twice before.

It is not, I think you will agree, the model for a thriving economy.

[Coldberry]

I sort of agree, and see my earlier post about my previous £700 a week job having gone to a £100 a week Bulgarian/Romanian/ truck driver now.

£700 per week to drive a lorry about?

That's £36400 per annum based on a 52 week working year. Well over the national average wage for what would be considered a low skill job.

There are highly qualified professionals out there on less than this.

Ludicrously overpaid.

[Harry Monk]

£700 per week to drive a lorry about?

That's £36400 per annum based on a 52 week working year. Well over the national average wage for what would be considered a low skill job.

There are highly qualified professionals out there on less than this.

Ludicrously overpaid.

Yes, that's why we aren't doing it any more.

What to do next, who knows?

[miko]

There are highly qualified professionals out there on less than this.

Name some

[mrmagooisagovteconomist]

I sort of agree, and see my earlier post about my previous £700 a week job having gone to a £100 a week Bulgarian/Romanian/ truck driver now.

It's better for you, me and everybody if the stuff can be bought cheaper at the till. That cost-cutting spreads across the entire manufacturing and distribution process.

However, I'm not spending anything any more, just embracing minimalism. Not a problem for me, I'm 51 and I've been here twice before.

It is not, I think you will agree, the model for a thriving economy.

I think you would find most of the saving would go to which ever supermarket giant that used to employ you !! As to being over paid, is that too much for someone in charge of 40 tons of highly mobile (potential) carnage on the same roads as you and yours ?

[cybernoid]

Name some

Any form of engineering I can think of, lab work requiring science based degrees, basically jobs requiring science. Probably teaching as well.

[cybernoid]

£700 per week to drive a lorry about?

That's £36400 per annum based on a 52 week working year. Well over the national average wage for what would be considered a low skill job.

There are highly qualified professionals out there on less than this.

Ludicrously overpaid.

Or everything else is underpaid. Relating income to the cost of housing I'd say everything is underpaid.

[Harry Monk]

Any form of engineering I can think of, lab work requiring science based degrees, basically jobs requiring science. Probably teaching as well.

Yes, quite possibly, but all I am saying is that I used to be paid that much to do that job (and tens of thousands of others like me) but the work is all being done by eastern Europeans now as they have lower operating costs.

No other work within 100 miles of here so I'm on the Dole and accepting of it.

[Coldberry]

Or everything else is underpaid. Relating income to the cost of housing I'd say everything is underpaid.

Everything else is underpaid. The NMW skews everything at the bottom rungs. Everyone else in the 'pay ladder' should have recieved a representative rise to keep the pay differentials constant.

But they didn't.

[Harry Monk]

Everything else is underpaid. The NMW skews everything at the bottom rungs. Everyone else in the 'pay ladder' should have recieved a representative rise to keep the pay differentials constant.

But they didn't.

Hang on, ten minutes ago you were telling us how good it was that my job was being done for a seventh of the cost.

Make your mind up, will you?

[miko]

Everything else is underpaid. The NMW skews everything at the bottom rungs. Everyone else in the 'pay ladder' should have recieved a representative rise to keep the pay differentials constant.

But they didn't.

Wrong , the NMW was to put a floor under wages, and stop explotation. People higher up the ladder did not need to have rises to keep pay differentials the NMW was not about that. How would the people receiving the NMW have any affect on someone on £50k.

[miko]

Any form of engineering I can think of, lab work requiring science based degrees, basically jobs requiring science. Probably teaching as well.

Lot's of those people you describe earn more than that. Also how many of them do shift work like the lorry drivers.

[dubsie]

Yep they are a bunch of shysters. However everyone does know this so you have to act accordingly.

As for teh decent tradesmen - surely they are still getting good work and pay ? Any tradesman with a good reputation is busy non stop in my experience. One area of work where word of mouth really is #1 for most people.

there are plenty of people in the trade who prefer employment rather than self employment. The construction industry has always been crap but it says something when someone selling work makes more from one post than the actual person doing the actual job. These consultants are leeching off the back of hard working people and calling it a job. I do agree though if your prepared to work for yourself and put in the hours then you can do well.

One person I know has downed tools and now works as a caretaker in a public building.

[Coldberry]

Hang on, ten minutes ago you were telling us how good it was that my job was being done for a seventh of the cost.

Make your mind up, will you?

I did not comment on the differential in wages of your chosen profession between now and then. I only commented it was above average wage where more educated people would be on less.