How bad is it in the UK? 16

[QCE]

Mr. Metal,

You have been so dedicated to this cause I will write a letter to Minister Volpe and my Association. Stating some concerns about demand for engineers.

Thanks

To Corus - My comments are not to put down the UK system but hoping to improve the system for engineers everywhere in the world. Sorry if my comments came accross as so harsh.

QCE

 

[makeup]

Listen guy and gals, I'm from the UK and really respect your opinion. Thats the one thing we all have in common, we can say (within reason) what we think. Please dont be to apologetic about speaking your mind.

 

[DrillerNic]

Makeup- the Learn Direct site linked above quoted average salaries for CEng as £40- 52k: Chemical engineers are a the top end (all those process engineers?!) Elcectric and Electronic engineers toward the bottom end of the range (which surprised me, maybe it's the continuing fall out of the dot.com boom?). They don't mention Petroleum Engineering, but I'm on £44k as a Well Engineer with 6 years experience (and if I went day rate, could get £500/d, more if I highlighted my knowledge in Completion Engineering) and I'm looking to be a Senior Drilling Engineer by the end of the year on £50k+.

 

[SomptingGuy]

My company has offices in the UK and the USA. People transferring to the USA offices typically have their UKP salary multiplied by 2.5 to get their USD equivalent (eg: 20000 pounds -> 50000 dollars).

And as Greg Locock points out:"as far as cost of living goes I reckon 1US dollar=1 Canadian dollar= 1 Australian dollar = 1 pound". One US dollar will buy you the same amount of living in the USA as 1 UK pound will in the UK. Exchange rates just don't come into it unless you are moving money from one country to the other.

The ONLY consumer goods I could find that bucked that trend were (oddly) shoes (which I bought in the UK on trips home).

My view is that Americans need high graduate salaries to pay back their college debts and that inevitably drives them up. I come from the generation who received student grants (and industrial sponsorships) and therefore graduated largely debt-free. I really pity those recent graduates who start work in the UK with a UK-style salary and a US-style debt.

 

[QCE]

SomptingGuy

Has a very interesting point of view.

It would be interesting to hear more comments regarding the original question:

"What caused the huge drop in applicants over the past decade?

Is it lack of jobs, low pay, low prestige, competition from cheaper foreign workers, or something else?

Britain was the workshop of the world in the 19th century. America held that title for most of the 20th century.

I'm an American and I'm wondering if the US is next in line for deindustrialization."

I think we already got your point regarding wages. I found a very similiar thing in the UK. I was offered 19000 pounds as a new grad so I moved to Canada and got $52000.

 

[ScottyUK]

QCE,

What approx year was that? In 1980 it would be remarkably good; in 2005 it would be tragic (and more likely).



----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[rb1957]

actually i was working in the UK in aerospace as a graduate for the princely sum of 5700 pounds (per annum). found a job in canada in aeropsace for $33000 ... the rest is history.

 

[SomptingGuy]

The 2.5 dollar/pound factor applies to the 1995-2005 era. Special cases apply, but this has been the norm for my company.

 

[SomptingGuy]

But getting back to the original question...

I was talking to one of my colleagues a few weeks back when he told me that he couldn't afford to live in England any more as an engineer and had no choice but to relocate (via an internal comany transfer) to America. His reasons were that he and his wife had just started a family and couldn't afford to live on one engineering salary over here.

 

[makeup]

The problem is that good engineering needs a long term investment and commitment from everyone involved and this is not what people or business wants today. Everyone wants or expects something for nothing and a fast buck.

Every engineering job advertised here in the UK requires years of direct experience. None offer training or compromise to this, thus those with transferable skills find it difficult to get in or are ommitted as to are new engineering students. This sets the scene for a skills shortage when really there isn't and 1000's of engineers sit redundant, underemployed or simply change career. Based on supply and demand, the low remunaration for engineers in the UK would support that engineering is still over subscribed.

We have this really bizarre thing here in the Uk where people retrain later in life, do degrees but no-one does anything to facilitate them into these shortage areas. Your either a young grad or experienced and there is no in-between. So many find themselves in the chickan and egg sinario. New skills no experience no job its crasy.

We live in one of the most congested countries in Europe, there are more than enough people out there willing and ready to work. What business needs to do is go out there and get them and stop expecting something for nothing. HR needs to go as do accountants. Good people are not a resource and you need some touchy feely in a firm along with some long-term investment. What you are now seeing is the results of not investing and treating people who have a very speacial mindest like a commodity. Now the industry sufferes from low moral. Very few people who work in engineering have a good word to say about it.

So how to put it right. Is more the question. Good into schools and telling kids how greta something is when really its crap is not the answer. Start with the engineers that are left, make them feel king and they will do all the promoting for you. Which busines is going to be brave enough?

 

[QCE]

Scotty that was in 1999.

 

[DrillerNic]

QCR- to answer teh original question, from my past experience with the IMechE I'd suggest the lack of applicants for this scholarship is simply because the IMechE couldn't be bothered to advertise it properly....in the past maybe they'd managed to get enough applicants via word of mouth, but then the careers teacjer at one of the school sproviding many of the past applicants retired.

 

[Ibrox2003]

I think DrillerNic has hit the nail on the head. This scholarship is hardly advertised. I'm an IMechE member and have sat sat on an IMechE area panel. It always seemed to me that some panels had little interest in promoting the profession particularly in schools.

 

[makeup]

I couldn't disagree more. Look at this site and many others and the views of people working in engineering, what sort of a picture do they paint? Most of them will have families and will relay that same message at home. We have lost 1 million manufacturing jobs in the last 8 years in the UK (telegraph today). Thats 1 million families with a negative view, look at MG Rover 6000 in one hit. Now go and tell these families and schools in that area that it isnt really that bad, in fact its all a myth. Do you honestly believe that the lack of interest in engineering is due to teacher naivity?

 

[QCE]

Of the 1 million lost jobs - how many were really engineers? I would guess it is not one million. Of course I'm talking about engineers from my point of view. I'm sure most of these people in the UK thought they were engineers because anyone that does anything remotely technical in the UK considers themselves engineers.

Just for the record:

A manufacturing job is NOT an engineering job!

 

[ewh]

How about degreed manufacturing engineers?

 

[makeup]

No I agree that manufacturing does not mean engineer, but they are supported by, working plant and machinary that is design by, make products that are designed by, yes engineers. The other point is, we lose the benefit of giving people the manufacturing experience before they become engineers. I can remember a gripe not so long back about graduates not having enough practical experience. Where are you going to get that from if there isn't a manufacturing base, a text book.

 

[corus]

I'm not sure why QCE should target the UK (yet again) as 'anyone that does anything remotely technical in the UK considers themselves engineers' when it seems to be a worldwide phenomena. Personally I blame american management style gurus who have convinced cerbially challenged managers to change obvious sounding job titles such as Typists to Document Creation Units (or DCUs for those advanced in the technique); where people in work are labelled as a resource and hence spawning the Human Resource department (and presumably the Penguin Resource department for those who work in zoos) instead of Personnel; car salesmen to being promoted to Sales Executives; and the title of Engineer for those who are likely to see a spanner or shovel in their working day. My favourite title is the Knowledge Engineer, Knowledgist, who presumably sit around all day spouting words of wisdom. At least those Knowledgists at Rover will have no problem finding a job.

corus

 

[makeup]

For your reference, news today, verbatim

A minister enraged skilled workers who lost their jobs in the Rover collapse by telling them yesterday to go and work for Tesco.

With manufacturing industry on the verge of recession, Margaret Hodge, the work and pensions minister, said employment was being created in the service sector.


Margaret Hodge: 'crass'
Phil Hanks, a former MG Rover worker, said: "The jobs we had were highly skilled. Working at Tesco's would obviously be nothing like the same kind of work and the pay would be nowhere near what we used to earn."

Tony Woodley, the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, said his union would not tolerate supermarket jobs replacing work at the Rover plant at Longbridge, Birmingham, which closed in April.

He said Mrs Hodge's remarks were "the comments of an incompetent idiot masquerading as a minister".

Sir Digby Jones, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, welcomed flexibility in the labour market, saying: "Just because you were making cars yesterday does not mean that you can make cars tomorrow."

But he added: "Where Mrs Hodge is wrong is if she thinks that this country can afford for skilled people to be stacking shelves."

Mrs Hodge made her comments in an interview with the Wolverhampton Express & Star about employment prospects in the West Midlands.

She referred to the proposed creation of 350 jobs at a new Tesco store in the Yardley area of Birmingham and was asked whether skilled Rover workers should apply.

She said: "Well, they will work all over the place and there is a new brownfield development site in the West Midlands as well. I am saying that some of the jobs are in Tesco and they will meet the needs of some of the unemployed and people looking for work.

"There are also other jobs arising out of new industrial developments."

Mrs Hodge later denied saying that MG Rover workers should apply to Tesco but said it was one example of a range of new opportunities. A business park to be built a few miles from Longbridge was another.

She said that more than 560 manufacturing and engineering employers had contacted the Government with 5,000 vacancies. Ministers were working closely with the MG Rover task force to find training and employment opportunities.

"Already more than 1,000 former MG Rover and supply chain workers have been found work and more than 2,000 have joined training programmes," she said.

Mrs Hodge, who is close to Tony Blair, has a reputation for gaffes but is unlikely to be disciplined for her latest remarks. The Government has long advocated labour flexibility, saying that workers no longer have jobs for life and will have to retrain when industries close.

John Butler, an economist at HSBC, said that Britain had been quite successful at retraining people. In the past two years most of the jobs lost had been in manufacturing and most of the jobs created had been in the public sector.

MPs regarded Mrs Hodge's remarks as insensitive.

Julie Kirkbride, the Tory MP for Bromsgrove, who sits on the Rover task force, called the suggestion "stupid".

She said: "We do not want to lose manufacturing jobs and skills from the West Midlands. It is important for the prosperity of the area that as many Rover workers as possible find jobs using their engineering and other skills."

David Willetts, the shadow trade and industry secretary, thought Mrs Hodge had been "rather crass". He said he was a fan of Tesco but the average manufacturing job contributed £75,000 a year to the economy compared with £25,000 for a retail job.

The manufacturing sector has lost 42,000 jobs so far this year, hit by cheap imports and the strong pound.

Manufacturers have also been badly affected by the doubling of oil prices and a steep jump in the price of steel and other raw materials.

 

[corus]

I am surprised that the Consevative gutter tripe is being quoted when Maragaret Hodge's comments are quoted in the same post. She has obviously been asked to fall into a trap by one of the journalists from the sewer press and has simply replied that some of the jobs will meet the needs of some of the unemployed. Seems fair enough to me.
Do we have to have quotes from the hysterical Conservative cess pit?

corus