How Long Before Builders Have Jobs Again

[Mr Yogi]

I don't disagree that these people are professionals, and arguably much more useful to society, although a plumber doesn't take 5 - 7 years to train like some white-collar jobs. Also, I think your position is indicative of the good times and out of sink with the imminent financial tsunami, and what I mean by that is you claiming that £200 a day is reasonable. I feel people have a big shock coming to them if they feel this is reasonable. Not only is is totally unreasonable (for lawyers as well as carpenters) but it is also yesterday's wages. Someone who trakns for a year to be a carpenter is not worth £20 an hour, when nurses who train for five years can't earn this. These people have been paid this money because of two factors: 1) a massive boom induced by lax consumer credit rules and 1920s-style decadence, and 2) a massive shortage of people skilled in these occupations.

The difficulty is that first, the shortage was addressed when news of plumbers earning more than QCs leaked and thousands started re-training, and second, we are entering the worst crash since 1929 and while plumbers and electricians will still find work here and there, it is doubtful people will have an "carpentry emergencies", so I feel for carpenters the most, and several in my family are carpenters so I am worried for them.

In edit - a family member hung a hardwood front door for me for £0, and it took him less than a morning. It looks great and is going strong for over half a decade.

There is no direct link between the length of time it takes to train for an occupation and the earning potential of that occupation.

Instead, it is down to the supply of and the demand for those skills. A classical opera singer might train for 10 years and then earn a pittance. Some X Factor warbler has a couple of lessons and earns millions.

I earn a very nice living as a cabinetmaker - far more than I could have made as a teacher, the job for which I trained. My formal qualifications in cabinetmaking are precisely nil - I have simply picked it over 20 odd years. The fact that I earn a nice living from it shows that I am good at it, and that my services are in demand. Why on earth would I need to have gone though years of formal training and get a piece of paper?

There seems to be a misconception that because we are entering a recession (or depression) that no-one is going to have any money, and that all businesses are going to stuggle.

Not true.

Most of my clients are middle-aged moderately wealthy professionals with no mortgage and whose kids have flown the nest. There are millions of these people out there who are relatively recession proof. They are not going stop buying things altogether or stop having work done in their homes.

What they may well do however, is not use some fancy company who advertises in the colour supplements, and instead use a local craftsman or tradesman.

Your carpenter relatives will be fine so long as they look for work in the right places and are open-minded as to what they take on.

[Little Professor]

Another one!

£50 to hang a door is not 'outrageous over-charging'. Done properly it will take a couple of hours. Add in travelling time and a trip to buy the hardware and you're looking at £20 an hour. About right, IMHO.

Not about right, IMHO.

I earn around £22 an hour as a doctor when I do locum shifts- that's after 6 years at medical school and 3 years postgraduate training.

Nurses get paid around £8.50 an hour for similar shifts.

To misquote the L'Oréal slogan, you're not worth it. You should feel lucky to be earning just over minimum wage, which is where you'll be in a couple of years time, hopefully.

[Mr Yogi]

Not about right, IMHO.

I earn around £22 an hour as a doctor when I do locum shifts- that's after 6 years at medical school and 3 years postgraduate training.

Nurses get paid around £8.50 an hour for similar shifts.

To misquote the L'Oréal slogan, you're not worth it. You should feel lucky to be earning just over minimum wage, which is where you'll be in a couple of years time, hopefully.

With that attitude, as a doctor, I suspect you'll be there before me!

[Mr Yogi]

Anyway, surely a surgeon is a 'glorified manual worker'.

Are you suggesting that they should be on minimum wage, too?

[Justice]

Most of us accept that a large number of the big building companies will either go into liquidation or lose all shareholder value.

Another question is how long before builders are back into work, builders bricklayers chippies sparkies.

Are they going to have to take a paycut, and what kind of future can they hope for.

Yes they will take pay cuts and later you will see councils taking advantage of the situation by having building renovated for a fraction of the current costs.

Wait and see how many mosques spring up in the next few years.

[symo]

I don't mind plumbers over-charging for work. We had something that needed doing on site, so I invited 8 companies to bid for the work. 2 bid out of the ball park of the others, of the remaining 6, 5 did not read the specifications to which everything was to be done to so their bids were invalid and the final comapny ended up refunding half their charge owing to lack of specification compliance. V professional, v professional. But I am sure this is not plumbing as a whole but at the same time as Mech Engineer, I can design the boilers you fit, prove the design safety factors involves and demonstrate compliance with UK/European standards to get a CE stamp. Yet I am by all accounts not worth as much as a plumber daily, interesting that.

What this thread has demonstrated is that the UK as a whole values services over heavy engineering exporters.

Interesting.

[Its time to buy]

I would pay a plumber/capenter/plasterer/eectrician etc a good rate if the job was done properly, because it is not a service I would need on a week in week out basis. Perhaps once a year.

Unfortunately there is still a cowboy image out there, and you just don't know what service you are going to get, even if it was through word of mouth. If I go into Tescos, I can reasonably expect the same level of service in everyone of their stores that I go in nationwide.

I m still hearing of horror stories of people taking OAPs for a ride - and thats in the BOOM times!

If the job is not done properly, you have to call them out again, and again and thats a real pain if you have to take a day off work to wait for the problem e.g. the boiler, to be sorted.

Lucklily we got a good plumber and electrian now.

Edited July 8, 2008 by notanewmember

[laurejon]

Tradesmen can be bought really cheap now, and fortunately if they dont like the wages on offer there are plenty of others that do.

The one benefit the public can have from Globalisation and the EU is the labour is about to get much much cheaper.

I have heard of Bricklayers working for £40 quid a day in the North of England, and people are queuing up for the jobs.

A roofer I was talking to last week was on a two day week at best, and was prepared to work for £50 quid a day, I had him cutting my grass and hedge, cleaning out my gutters, washing my car, all for £50 quid for a 10hr day, its brilliant.

[Brian Potter]

Staff employed by housebuilders = toast time for the majority. The more skilled staff could perhaps get by on a reduced wage for another construction company. Your poll does not account for the difference between housebuilders and other types of construction.

Generally, I believe many on this forum do not understand the difference. I would guess you are in main contracting or consulting, like myself.

[gordonbrown]

Well being that i am in the trade myself, i would say not for very long as there is a serious skills shortage in this country

Was a serious skills shortage. Not is a serious skills shortage. Not good, but things have to get back to some kind of sanity one way or another. My dads a builder so I have lived through these grim periods in the past. They are not a huge ammount of fun.

Edited July 8, 2008 by gordonbrown

[Timil]

This day of reckoning has been a long time coming for some of the muppets in the building trade.

I know an old timer who has steered his company for 35 years and has built hundreds of homes, he was just saying he has to deal with complete ars*holes who want £3.00 to lay one concrete block and has had to pay it to get the job done or they're off down the road to the building firm which set up a couple of years ago by the Range Rover Sport driving 20 something old.

[Concrete Jungle]

Generally, I believe many on this forum do not understand the difference. I would guess you are in main contracting or consulting, like myself.

I am in what to many on here is a dirty profession (surveying) Not many understand that the word quantity before the aforementioned dirty word, puts plenty of distance between myself and residential property surveyors. Oh well ignorance is bliss!!

[Jacksaw]

I am in what to many on here is a dirty profession (surveying) Not many understand that the word quantity before the aforementioned dirty word, puts plenty of distance between myself and residential property surveyors. Oh well ignorance is bliss!!

I dont mind Quantity Surveyors, as long as there calcs are in my favour. Its the Architects who think they walk on water that bugs me

[Concrete Jungle]

I dont mind Quantity Surveyors, as long as there calcs are in my favour. Its the Architects who think they walk on water that bugs me

We try to be reasonable to all sides re the calcs. Some Architects well erm can be difficult prima donnas at times.

[Jonnybegood]

My experience of the last decade has been a massive increase in the price of tradesmen and a bloody hard job in trying to find one, one with a good name is gonner cost you.

Driving to work each day I pass tens of flashy vans, roofing companies , electrical companies , plumbing companies all going somewhere so the work is obviously out there even at these prices.

However since the start of the year we have started to get flyers through the door for carpentry and roofing work, there is also less of these trademan vans on the roads in the morning, the ones that are seem to be the old school type builder with his 10 year wagon and ladders on the roof.

It is inevitable that tradesman of all types are going to have to take a pay cut (or go back to realistic prices), the reasons behind this are that over the last 10 years construction has been booming and many local tradesman getting work on building sites a few days a week and then a few private calls for the rest.

With the building sites slowing or coming to a complete halt there is a surplus of tradesman who will be relying on private work and competing for that job, at the same time those who have had the luxury to mew over the last 10 years have not really queried the prices being charged as the money is borrowed and within a year or so the property will be worth far more type attitude.

Now that is about to change, with little loans out there and the banks refusing to release equity many of these jobs will be paid for directly from savings and this I feel will drive prices down, because it doesn't matter if there are only 5 tradesman within a 50 mile radius, unless the prices being charged are acceptable to those paying they get no work and no work means no money coming in.

Yes certain tradesman will be better positioned, a roof will always leak and so roofers will be needed, but there may be a scenario where there are 3 roofers queuing up to do the job lowering the price, the trades that will suffer will be the home improvements, plasterers , decorators , carpenters as people tighten on the spending home improvements get pushed back as food on the table is more of a priority, and whats the point of improving if your home is losing 10% a year and gaining like we have seen over the last decade.

Spend £5k on improvements and increase the properties value £10k, why would you question the prices being charged, now it will be a case of spend £2k lose £10k.

Also need to take into consideration that if many jobs are lost people with free time are going to tackle many jobs themselves, roof repairs, removing radiators, fitting doors, skirting boards etc etc