UK construction bosses;lack of cheap labour post Brexit

[sPinwheel]

19 hours ago, Parkwell said:

I'm interested to know where Eastern Europeans get their superior training and what is stopping Brits learning the same?

 

Motivation.

[PopGun]

19 hours ago, Parkwell said:

I'm interested to know where Eastern Europeans get their superior training and what is stopping Brits learning the same?

 

Easy.

they compare UK school leavers with time served EE trades people. Or in other words apples and oranges.

Polish youth unemployment worse than ours, even with all the competition abroad. 

[Digsby]

4 hours ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:

Are we meant to believe, amonst thet 270,000 people there's not a 1000-2000 cheap labourers ?

These scum bags clearly want more immigration to put in their over priced shoe boxes, nothing else

 

This is the thing. Net migration is down, what, 59k IIRC. That means less demand for construction meaning less need for construction workers. If the balance between the demand and supply of construction workers has changed, it has nothing to do with the fact that net immigration has fallen by 59k. A certain percentage of the 275k increase in population we had will be construction workers and a certain percentage of the 59k we didn't have will have been construction workers.

The entire argument that some other poster made about foreign construction workers working harder because they value the wages more is just code for saying foreign construction labour is cheap because of the difference in the cost of living between the two countries.

I believe in in freedom of movement of labour, and free trade (to an extent, protectionism has its place within realpolitik). But the objective of such policies in my opinion should be to equalise the standard of living between those countries. I accept that means a fall in the standard of living in the richer country, but there are limits: If one country benefits by workers working in another country that pays higher wages and sends the profit home, that's fine but the host country should benefit from the lower wages paid, right?

But the profit from that arbitration is not shared, it is captured, leaving those who would have done the job worse off, not better off as they should be. Like automation.

If there is a dearth of British construction workers then the only reason can be that it doesn't pay because construction firms can get cheaper labour from abroad that British construction workers cannot compete with because the cost of living is too high. It's not because they don't value their wages, or they get sick too much, or they aren't dextrous or fit or bright enough. Such ideas are racist in the extreme. The construction firms themselves have created the situation by chasing lower wages abroad and devaluing construction work in the process.

It's all about wealth distribution. These construction firms complaining that there aren't enough EEs to provide the labour they need are simply complaining that that they need to pay more wages, less profit for themselves. That is how it should be. They have profited too much from cheap labour which should have translated into lower prices for new constructions but they have not passed the cost savings on.

Their profits need to to be reduced through higher wages, so that wealth becomes more equally distributed.

I've had a few pints now, am I still making sense?

[Digsby]

The thing that gets me about this is that I know damn well there will be remain voters saying or thinking "See? See? I knew I was right. Now we don't have enough construction workers thanks to you leave voters. You thought restricting immigration would lower house prices, but now less houses will be built because you lot have sent all those hard working, illness free, better European construction workers home leaving us with just lazy, unskilled, illness prone British construction workers, of whom we don't have enough of because the British don't want to do construction work. Racists."

[Hectors House]

21 hours ago, Parkwell said:

I'm interested to know where Eastern Europeans get their superior training and what is stopping Brits learning the same?

 

 

It's probably BS, there have  been a lot of issues with EE builders who have been doing sub-standard work which in some cases has required expensive remedial work

[One-percent]

2 hours ago, wonderpup said:

What really pisses me off about these kinds of stories is the fact that we have been told for decades that the free market is the way to go- but when that free market produces labour and/or skill shortages suddenly we have  company bosses whining and demanding state intervention to restore their access to cheap labour/skills.

If the problem is low wages then pay higher wages,if the problem is skill shortages then train more people- don't bleat to the goverment to solve your problems while at the same time pretending to be businessmen or entrepreneurs.

 

+1

[LittlePig]

24 minutes ago, Digsby said:

The thing that gets me about this is that I know damn well there will be remain voters saying or thinking "See? See? I knew I was right. Now we don't have enough construction workers thanks to you leave voters. You thought restricting immigration would lower house prices, but now less houses will be built because you lot have sent all those hard working, illness free, better European construction workers home leaving us with just lazy, unskilled, illness prone British construction workers, of whom we don't have enough of because the British don't want to do construction work. Racists."

Interestingly the Remains on my face book stream have had a bit of an about face due to this one  They started as you expected, but have been shown the error of their ways with:

1). It is not really the houses that are expensive

2). Wages might start rising with the return of EE's, validating the argument that wages were being suppressed.

[onlyme2]

Here's an example - 780 recruits over 3 years, but that is all grades including graduate intake. UK's biggest house builder.

Trade apprentices - 2016 intake - 4 in the west midlands, seen 2-3 in North east on another press release.

Also Barratt on their own site state they have a large number of applications for places, so no shortage applicants.

 

http://www.midlandsinbusiness.com/2016/03/apprenticeship-opportunities-award-winning-home-builder/

The company, which owns five-star homebuilders Barratt and David Wilson Homes, aims to recruit four new trade apprentices to work across the West Midlands.

Over the past three years, Barratt Developments has recruited 780 graduates, undergraduates, apprentices and trainees – more than any other major housebuilder in Britain and plans to recruit a further 185 through ‘Future Talent’ programmes in 2016.

[One-percent]

5 minutes ago, onlyme2 said:

Here's an example - 780 recruits over 3 years, but that is all grades including graduate intake. UK's biggest house builder.

Trade apprentices - 2016 intake - 4 in the west midlands, seen 2-3 in North east on another press release.

Also Barratt on their own site state they have a large number of applications for places, so no shortage applicants.

 

http://www.midlandsinbusiness.com/2016/03/apprenticeship-opportunities-award-winning-home-builder/

The company, which owns five-star homebuilders Barratt and David Wilson Homes, aims to recruit four new trade apprentices to work across the West Midlands.

Over the past three years, Barratt Developments has recruited 780 graduates, undergraduates, apprentices and trainees – more than any other major housebuilder in Britain and plans to recruit a further 185 through ‘Future Talent’ programmes in 2016.

The mindset of employers is that the job of training people belongs to someone else.  This is why they are always on telly moaning and whinging that the education system does not provide them with people with the skills they require. Well no, it wouldn't would it.  Each employer needs their workforce to work in a particular way, one that suits their needs.  So, they need to take the mass produced educated person and shape them, through training, to do the job they require. 

It reminds me of a story related to me.  Shell would take on people with doctorates to carry out research and write reports.  They could not understand why these people 'could not write '. On investigation, it turned out that these bods with PhDs had been trained to write in a certain way and shell's requirements were that they produced reports written in a different way.  

[ChewingGrass]

39 minutes ago, One-percent said:

The mindset of employers is that the job of training people belongs to someone else.

Thats the problem with the system now, too much focus on the bottom line, the constant willingness to outsource no matter what the cost, its almost ideological.

When british industry collapsed in the aftermath of WW2 due to worn out factories and equipment, materials shortages and a dearth of skilled labour most sectors were nationalised, everything from road transport to power generation and manufacturing.

With nationalisation came shiny new purpose built training centres.

This is only one of many, privatisation meant their closure as an expensive overhead, especially as there was a pool of labour to be exploited, well maintained or new infrastructure in the case of the utilities to be exploited and industries to be run down and sold to  those who like monopolies and the offshoring of production.

Training is now paid for by the prospective employee, the employer wins, the government wins and the employee looses.

Construction is a terrible industry to work in, ask an electrician or plumber, the decent ones do commercial/industrial work or work for themselves and do not work on new-build housing. Thats is why the quality of most new-builds is so slip-shod. They hire, they fire and the decent ones don't go back.

[One-percent]

4 minutes ago, ChewingGrass said:

Thats the problem with the system now, too much focus on the bottom line, the constant willingness to outsource no matter what the cost, its almost ideological.

When british industry collapsed in the aftermath of WW2 due to worn out factories and equipment, materials shortages and a dearth of skilled labour most sectors were nationalised, everything from road transport to power generation and manufacturing.

With nationalisation came shiny new purpose built training centres.

This is only one of many, privatisation meant their closure as an expensive overhead, especially as there was a pool of labour to be exploited, well maintained or new infrastructure in the case of the utilities to be exploited and industries to be run down and sold to  those who like monopolies and the offshoring of production.

Training is now paid for by the prospective employee, the employer wins, the government wins and the employee looses.

Construction is a terrible industry to work in, ask an electrician or plumber, the decent ones do commercial/industrial work or work for themselves and do not work on new-build housing. Thats is why the quality of most new-builds is so slip-shod. They hire, they fire and the decent ones don't go back.

Good analysis chewy, thanks for that.

re construction, my mate's son managed to get an apprenticeship with a small electrical firm. He was doing so well that at 22 he was running a BMW. However, these proper apprenticeships are so few and far between now so he is incredibly lucky. 

The 'golden age' of apprenticeship was the 70s and there were 250,000 apprentices per year being trained. Every firm took on apprentices. Not only to train up their future workforce but also, it makes economic sense.  Why have a fully qualified, relatively highly paid qualified person fetching and carrying when you can have cheap labour doing that?  The payoff in the past was that the cheap labour was learning a skill. Everyone happy.    

[Craig_]

Zero sympathy for the construction industry. They've been selling sub-standard product at two or three times what it's worth, and using cheap labour to achieve this.

F*** them.

[Guest]

Interesting how 3 new accounts turn up to spread propaganda about migration.

[Big Orange]

Wow, we have the awful shock and horror of UK firms having to *gag* properly employ and train UK people!

With FoM one of the biggest things essentially unbalancing and breaking the EU as we know it, with obvious diminishing economic returns with Romani Big Issue sellers and Bulgarian manual car washers (alongside UK based workers being paid so little that retailers are seeing profits being eaten into year in year out, despite employment coming down), the glut of cheap foreign labour (OK for a stop gap measure, complete utter utter disaster for a lasting cure) was a bubble that has burst in the past 18 months (with even more desperate economic migrants from further afield trampling over Europe's relatively lax borders). 

[oracle]

On 24/02/2017 at 10:25 PM, Parkwell said:

I'm interested to know where Eastern Europeans get their superior training and what is stopping Brits learning the same?

 

it's since we swapped school curricula with them about 30 years ago.

we used to have a competitive work ethic, until they started teaching the kids that the collective is more important than the individual, so nobody will get a prize for winning, but you all get one for taking part,no matter how sh1t you happen to be.

schools have been preaching and teaching communism/collectivism for decades,so the minds of your babies from the age of about 3 upwards, have been poisoned, and they have wanted earlier and earlier state control over the kids, replacing parental input.

 

now who was it who said "give me a boy until the age of 7 and I will give you the man"

THAT is where it's gone wrong.

[WinstonSmith]

I personally know of over a hundred jobs in asbestos removal in the north east that have been lost to Eastern Europeans because they're willing to work for just over minimum wage. The local lads we're getting nearly double that and, unsurprisingly, aren't willing to do a dirty, unpleasant job for less than they can make stacking shelves in Lidl.

 

I was speaking to the guy who ran the demolition firm taking down a chemical plant I was buying salvage from and he said: "Ive always used local lads but everyone else is switching to the Romanians on £7.50 an hour, if I don't do the same then I can't compete and I'm out of business."

 

That was 8 months ago. I saw him last week and he doesn't have a single Geordie, Mackem or Teessider on his books now. 

 

100% local workforce to 0% in less than a year. 

 

Immigration is great.

 

**** Off.......

[doomed]

1 hour ago, WinstonSmith said:

I personally know of over a hundred jobs in asbestos removal in the north east that have been lost to Eastern Europeans because they're willing to work for just over minimum wage. The local lads we're getting nearly double that and, unsurprisingly, aren't willing to do a dirty, unpleasant job for less than they can make stacking shelves in Lidl.

 

I was speaking to the guy who ran the demolition firm taking down a chemical plant I was buying salvage from and he said: "Ive always used local lads but everyone else is switching to the Romanians on £7.50 an hour, if I don't do the same then I can't compete and I'm out of business."

 

That was 8 months ago. I saw him last week and he doesn't have a single Geordie, Mackem or Teessider on his books now. 

 

100% local workforce to 0% in less than a year. 

 

Immigration is great.

 

**** Off.......

+1

The problem is who is supposed to be representing these people who have lost their jobs to immigrants? We have politicians beholden to large corporations whilst the media tell everybody they are racists for suggesting uncontrolled immigration may be a problem.

Maybe things may improve if we start to import our politicians; I am sure we could get them cheaper from abroad.

 

[One-percent]

Just now, doomed said:

+1

The problem is who is supposed to be representing these people who have lost their jobs to immigrants? We have politicians beholden to large corporations whilst the media tell everybody they are racists for suggesting uncontrolled immigration may be a problem.

Maybe things may improve if we start to import our politicians; I am sure we could get them cheaper from abroad.

 

Your second point is the real issue.  Tptb have managed so successfully to control the narrative that any questioning of what is going on is immediately shut down as being racist.  Unless there is open and honest debate, which is what should happen in a democracy, then little will change. 

I really don't see this ending well

[sPinwheel]

2 hours ago, WinstonSmith said:

I personally know of over a hundred jobs in asbestos removal in the north east that have been lost to Eastern Europeans because they're willing to work for just over minimum wage. The local lads we're getting nearly double that and, unsurprisingly, aren't willing to do a dirty, unpleasant job for less than they can make stacking shelves in Lidl.

 

I was speaking to the guy who ran the demolition firm taking down a chemical plant I was buying salvage from and he said: "Ive always used local lads but everyone else is switching to the Romanians on £7.50 an hour, if I don't do the same then I can't compete and I'm out of business."

 

That was 8 months ago. I saw him last week and he doesn't have a single Geordie, Mackem or Teessider on his books now. 

 

100% local workforce to 0% in less than a year. 

 

Immigration is great.

 

**** Off.......

Free market baby!

 

Think of the profits the company increased by doing it cheaper.

Edited February 26, 2017 by sPinwheel

[stormymonday_2011]

39 minutes ago, One-percent said:

Your second point is the real issue.  Tptb have managed so successfully to control the narrative that any questioning of what is going on is immediately shut down as being racist.  Unless there is open and honest debate, which is what should happen in a democracy, then little will change. 

I really don't see this ending well

Believe me large corporations absolutely love identity politics as it fractures any potential popular opposition 

The left buying into it so completely must have been like all of big businesses dreams coming true in the short term. Of course, long term it threatens to destroy western capitalism as it undermines the consumer base as well, something a few major US companies are belatedly starting to realise.  This continual playing of Russian Roulette with the economy is sooner or later going to end up with a bullet in the head.

BTW one of the solutions to the problem is not just limiting the movement of people but ending the free movement of capital.  If it was more difficult to export wages and benefits then I would imagine far fewer overseas workers would be attracted to the UK. In fact putting UK benefit payments either in kind or in a form of a card that can only be spent in the UK would be number one on my reform agenda.

Edited February 26, 2017 by stormymonday_2011

[One-percent]

59 minutes ago, stormymonday_2011 said:

Believe me large corporations absolutely love identity politics as it fractures any potential popular opposition 

The left buying into it so completely must have been like all of big businesses dreams coming true in the short term. Of course, long term it threatens to destroy western capitalism as it undermines the consumer base as well, something a few major US companies are belatedly starting to realise.  This continual playing of Russian Roulette with the economy is sooner or later going to end up with a bullet in the head.

BTW one of the solutions to the problem is not just limiting the movement of people but ending the free movement of capital.  If it was more difficult to export wages and benefits then I would imagine far fewer overseas workers would be attracted to the UK. In fact putting UK benefit payments either in kind or in a form of a card that can only be spent in the UK would be number one on my reform agenda.

Good analysis that suggests the the issues discussed here have multiple strands of causation.  The movement of capital (both in and out of the UK is probably under discussed and underestimated. 

[winkie]

simple....there is more money to be made selling education as a business and the certificates that are supposingly but so often a very expensive mistake in both valuable time and money,  a so called gateway to a long and well paying successful career, than having a brilliant and knowledgeable employer teaching and learning and earning on-the-job the skills and competencies the paymasters actually require and want.....

...always said....good A level results along with a good job interview and possibly short test of attitudes and abilities required for the job can easily tell who will succeeded or fail......no special expensive time consuming degrees required for most well paying jobs......training on going, day release, block release and/ or night school.....

 

Quote

Three men are in a plane, a pilot, a boy scout, and the world's smartest man. The engine fails, the plane is going down, and there are only two parachutes. The smart man grabs one. "I'm sorry about this," he says, "but I'm the smartest man in the world, I have responsibility to the planet," and he jumps out of the plane. The pilot turns to the Boy Scout and speaks of how he has lived a long, full life and how the Boy Scout has his whole life in front of him. He tells the Boy Scout to take the last parachute and live. "Relax, Captain," the Boy Scout says. "The world's smartest man just jumped out of the plane with my backpack."

Our world is full of smart people jumping out of planes with backpacks.

[gf3]

More expensive labour doesn't reduce the profits of the house builder. It reduces the price of the land the house is built on.

[PopGun]

2 hours ago, sPinwheel said:

Free market baby!

 

Think of the profits the company increased by doing it cheaper.

And as this thread demonstrates it's a two way road.

[Dames]

On 2/25/2017 at 10:51 AM, onlyme2 said:

It is the small trades that have been most severely affected by the slew of new rules, the oversight required for running a team of 50 not that much different to that of 1 or 2,  you can run 10's, 100's installers with NO qualifications and just have one qualified person to oversee work, one man band needs same qualification level. No coincidence that regulation and rules/practices that have been introduced have been heavily influenced by big business to benefit big business hence the next generation take one look at the overhead and numbers stacked against them and think sod that.  Then there is the financial side - small house developer has in most cases no chance of obtaining plots - a bit of garden grabbing and private work but that is it. Big land banks and withholding land supply has worked very well for the listed builders and the other big builders as a lock out mechanism for any meaningful competition.

 

 

 

 

Quote

 

  On 2/25/2017 at 8:23 AM, winkie said:

Not building but a very bespoke called for trade......Guy said looked into getting an apprentice to earn and learn alongside him, in fact the student asked if could be his appreciate, he looked into it and decided against it because of all the bureaucracy and red tape involved......Years ago trades would be passed down from father to son and there were many apprenticeships and technical schools.......Now many of our skilled trades people are retiring and taking their skills with them without leaving a legacy........I think recent governments expected to import these skills cheaply from aboard......goes for the caring professions also.....Reap what you sow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is it in a nutshell.

 

D.   -  Sole trader 28yrs.