Where have all the skilled trades gone? 12

[weeeds]

Access to good welding and fabricating capabilities is becoming a serious problem in North America.
The number of professional trades people, the ones who really understand what they are doing, is in serious decline. My experience recently has been that once a worker learns how to melt steel they immediately consider themselves your best welder.
Am I experiencing a local problem or is the same trend developing in other parts of the world.
Where in the world are the professional trades people?

 

[weeeds]

Tragically so far everyone seems to share my lament.
But surely there must be some parts in the world where skilled trades are being encouraged, forged, and perhaps even respected. If such a place exists then the laws of supply and demand will force companies to go there to source their equipment and leave the rest of us to fight for the scraps. I find it hard to believe that the entire world wants to sit behind a desk and provide "services".
My older son is in university for engineering but loves nothing more than coming into our shop on a weekend (yes I work most weekends as an owner of a small business) and doing things with his hands. He is learning to use various tools and is developing some basic welding skills but has no ambition to do this for a living.
Is there a country out there that has a formal strategy to develop its' skilled trades base?

 

[deanc]

widla:
Pacfic Rim,India,China,and some parts of the Middle East where it is more of a culture and traditonal.

Yes,we as consumers search for better prices and that contributes to the problem. However,lets look at wages to buy these goods.

Average CEO: $5,300,000.00 Avg.worker:$26,000~$125,000 year

Perhaps there is something wrong with this picture. Who really reaps the benefits of cost cuts?

 

[Ashereng]

deanc,

The Pacific Rim, India and China have a culture of skilled trade? I must disagree with your statement.

There are many reasons why the poorer nations of the world rely on manufacturing and producing products, and I would suggest culture and tradition is NOT one of them.

If we were having this thread 20 years ago, in the 1980's, the nation we would be talking about would be Japan. How they have a tradition and culture to work hard, were good as math and science, and America was going to H E double hockey sticks in a hand basket. Remember this one? "Japan has a tradition and culture of saving." As in they save more money.

Guess what? 20 years later, Japan has many of the same problem that the US has. Their kids have more means and opportuinity. Their saving rate is now lower than it was 20 years ago. Their kids prefer to watch TV, have fun, and work in high paying clean jobs with a future too. I heard that Sony opened a factory in China or Thailand or somewhere to manufacture their product for export because labour rates are lower than Japan's.

If memory serves, the "Rust Belt" of the US in recent memory was a bastion of manufacturing. Traditions and culture there were of the "blue collar" hard working "honest day's work" ethos. In 20 years, that has pretty much shifted to "lets make a ton of money". Why? Because they have the means and opportunit to do so.





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[arunmrao]

Opportunities are plenty to make a living. It is no longer necessary to mark your presence in the rust world.

It is kind of considered infradig to be associated with them. My wife who works in a software company follows a different set of value system than mine.

There is no encouragement for the younger generation as they are weaned away from their cradles(kidding!!) to join a call centre.

Even the Indian military is finding hard to recruit at various levels. once there used to be a mad rush.

The only field that I find flourishing is politics. there is no dearth of aspirants(Thanks to corruption).

 

[griffengm]

We are part of a global economy and unless there are global solutions regional problems will continue. I don't think this promotes "big brother" but is a call for world leaders who put the earth ahead of country.
As to the disparity of wages mentioned earlier, when a CEO cuts costs, he is doing his job. When a laborer does the same thing, he usually cuts his throat.

Griffy

 

[WilliamH]

I call this whole dilema THE WALMART SYNDRONE. That being; whatever is cheap is good. If to be the cheapest, means utilizing slave labor, no big deal, the public doesn't see the slaves.

Quality is not even a consideration. In fact, the term has no meaning to many individuals in the US anymore.

It costs time for a person to become a crafts person. During that time the wage may be lower than what is wanted. Therefore, go to some rotten liberal college and become a worthless, lazy liberal. One thing you will learn is how to milk the tax payer. No need to know any skilled trades whatsoever.

My company has not hired an apprentice in years. Reason? No one even comes in for an interview.

 

[DDRSS10]

I am one of the elusive "Talented" young people, and by coincidence am from the "rust belt". I was raised near the mines in northern Minnesota. I got to see the hardship of the 80's first hand and was told that the trades were a dying work place. That was a large factor in my decision to prove some people wrong. I come from a family of "white collar" professionals, all great poeple who hate their jobs. "I feel like I never accomplish anything" is a frequent complaint from most of them. If kids could experience the satisfaction of creating something with their hands I think a lot of them would look into the trades much more seriously. As far as apprenticeships, the young men and women that I have given the opportunities to have shown the "want something for nothing" quality all to frequently. Bright and driven are not enough for true tradesmen you also have to be willing to work. I trully hope this trend changes, without machinists and the machines they build to take other peoples jobs, the world will be a very different. Do your part, take someone under your wing, don't coddle them but teach them every thing you can, I owe most every thing that I've gained to my first boss, he busted my a$$ but taught me to take the reigns and run. Sorry if that was a bit preachy, I feel strongly about this.

Nick



"Speed costs money boys, how fast do you want to go?"

 

[Ashereng]

If you remember the 80's, probably, you are not young anymore. Sorry, I remember the 80's, barely, and my kids say I am old.

Like you say, talented young skilled tradespeople (I got flambed earlier for using the masculine form only) are "elusive" to use your word.

Unfortunately, you seem to be the tail end of a long line of skilled trades/crafts.

By the way, I meant absolutely no disrepect with my reference to the "Rust Belt". It is used in strictly a geographical sense.

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[maytag]

This has certainly generated a lot of interest- I work in the "rust belt" and BTW someone mentioned in an earlier post about no US steel producer was in the top 10 in the world -that has changed-the company I am with ranked #9 last year for tons produced and probably higher than that in profit-$1.3 billion for 2005. Anyway the skilled trade people are dying out-I see it firsthand, just about every shutdown that the quality of help has gone down.
AS smart and money driven as management is in this company, they are ignoring the fact that they need to start an apprenticeship program. We try to grow our own maintenance people and its not working very well. It is a complex problem and some valid points have been made. Maytag

 

[Warpspeed]

I wonder how much the introduction of computer controlled and fully automated production has reduced the need for skilled hand fabrication ?

Gone are the days when a skilled metal worker marks out a job from scratch, and manually carries out all the cutting, welding, drilling, milling, and final assembly. It is all just too expensive, too slow, and quality control may be unsatisfactory.

Much better to buy some expensive CNC machinery and hire a few specialists to run it, or move the entire manufacturing process overseas.

I am ancient enough to remember drawing offices that had row after row of draftsmen sitting on stools at drafting tables creating and amending full sized engineering drawings. Where have they all gone ? These days two or three people replace perhaps twenty in a modern CAD drawing office.

 

[GregLocock]

"These days two or three people replace perhaps twenty in a modern CAD drawing office"

Not in our place. I work in the old chassis drawing office. A workstation is smaller than a drafting table, it is still chock full of draggers (and 5 interlopers). Admittedly we are working on more programs than we used to but on the other hand a reasonable proportion of our drawings are done by the suppliers. I don't think it takes much less time to design on the tube, the advantage is that it should be a more useful model.




Cheers

Greg Locock

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[berkshire]

widla (Mechanical)
I think that your complaint is valid.
I also think that the situation is now starting to turn around.
The law of supply and demand is already changing this.
An example, in San Diego Ca. the local plumbers and pipe fitters union, is advertising for apprentices at $18 per hour to start. This is also about what a graduate from college with a bachelors degree in English makes. The tendency however is for parents to still push for their kids to go to college in spite of the fact that many would make more money in their lives working a blue collar trade.
I serve on an ROP advisory board which offers practical skills to people who want to learn. Interestingly the average age of the students is about 50. many transitioning from one skill set to another as the requirements in the job market change.
The complaint about companies not wanting to put on apprentices is valid, they are afraid that because of the employment at will laws in the US, that their investment in an apprentice will be stolen by their competitors as soon as that apprentice gets to be any good. Adequate compensation as the apprentice improves would take care of this matter, but most companies do not seem to do this.
The tendency instead is to show a worker only enough to enable him/her to do the task the employer wants, with the result that it takes many years for employees to learn useful skill sets.
Whilst the tendency now is to farm work out to countries that can do work cheaper. This can only go on for so long, there is a little thing called balance of payments abroad
It was not that way 20 or 30 years ago, when the dollar was stronger, then the tendency was to raid the countries that ran apprenticeship programs and find newly qualified journeymen, engineers etc., offer them what seemed like more money than they could make at home and bring them to the US.
As the dollar drops in value the companies with the skilled workers in place will benefit, if they have trained them.
B.E.

 

[ajack1]

For any country to grow rapidly you need a cheap work force, most of Europe did this on the strength exploiting the colonies, the USA did it on the back of immigrants, those days are disappearing fast. The fact is we now all earn too much money and have to many rights to be competitive in a global market, where man-hours are a key consideration.

What Berkshire says is also true in the UK, what were unfashionable trades like plumbers, electricians and builders are now highly sort after and are certainly making a come back. Also some strange trades such as blacksmiths, decretive wrought iron work rather than more traditional skills.

To stay up front you need to move with the times. I wonder if this conversation is that different to when cottage industries changed to work houses, or car companies introduced production lines, or starting using pressing and mass produced parts rather than hand beaten panels?

 

[weeeds]

There appears to be a lot of blame put on the Management of companies for a lack of effective apprenticeship programs.
The problem that I see, as a small busines owner, is that what I am really missing in my business is the "Professional" Tradesperson. This is the individual who really understands what they are doing and respects the source of their knowledge. How many welders have you seen who really understand what is happening when they lay down a bead? How many even care to understand things like "Heat Affected Zone" or the "Ferrite" in a stainless weld? I have seen very, very few!
A true Professional will take a task and execute the task without being pushed or poked. If they do not know how to solve a problem then they will have the strength of character to ask for help, and not waste away a full shift dickering and then damage the component. Companies can not find these Pros any more, the employees will walk accross the street to another job for a marginal increase and give no respect to the source of their knowledge and the investment made in them by their trainer. Is this not a strength of character issue?
All this asside, we still have a skills problem.
Is there any country, state, province, city who has come up with a working solution?
What about the unemployed youth who is living on social assistance? Is it draconian to force these people to attend any form of apprenticeship in order to continue living on public support? Is any part of the world doing this effectively and in a socially responsible manner? There must be.
The skilled trades issue is a very local problem for fabrication business owners. Local economic circumstances will control how much success we have in the international market, no matter where in the world you live. Furthermore, my welder in Canada can not weld any faster than someone in a developing country where the wages are a fraction of ours. So why would a customer buy from me? Quality is hardly an issue any more. All that is left, in my opinion, is convenience. I must make it more convenient for my customer to buy from me and not someone else. A part of the convenience is the faith the customer has that they will get what they are paying for. To ensure that we can satisfy that customer we need professional tradespeople, or go out of business.
Who in the world is doing apprenticeship development right?

 

[arunmrao]

"Who in the world is doing apprenticeship development right?"

Widla,
I will ask who in the world will join an apprentice program? Right away after schooling other glamorous and lucrative opportunities exist like in the call centres. I have failed miserably in motivating anyone to join.The government agencies too have expressed their inabilitie. Today it is a question of market forces which prevent the young ones joining the conventional trades.

After my degree in Engineering with a gold medal from a reputed institute I joined an apprentice program for Rs 150/ per month(Approx then 18-20 USD)

 

[maytag]

In the US, I know of no companies running apprenticeships. The building and trades unions do ,i.e.ironworkers, pipefitters,electricians all still run apprenticeships. Maytag

 

[JStephen]

Maytag, what I had heard was referring to largest mills, not largest companies. Anyway, that's been several years and may have changed.

 

[Ashereng]

widla, it seems that you on the employer side, and are having difficulties finding good "Pros"?

I would like to offer some viewpoints from the employee side, and am having difficulties finding good "employers".

I hope to not offend.

Companies can not find these Pros any more, the employees will walk accross the street to another job for a marginal increase and give no respect to the source of their knowledge and the investment made in them by their trainer. Is this not a strength of character issue?

To the first issue, "Companies can not find these Pros any more", I would like to submit that this is more of a problem "that companies can not find these Pros at the wage they are offering". If you need a "Pro" enough, you can find them.

To the second issue, I humbly reply no. This is not a character issue. This is a case of difference in pay issue. If it is only a marginal increase, why are you not making it to your own employee?

What about the unemployed youth who is living on social assistance? Is it draconian to force these people to attend any form of apprenticeship in order to continue living on public support? Is any part of the world doing this effectively and in a socially responsible manner? There must be.

No, I would not call it draconian. I would call it a slippery slope towards forced slavery. If you believe that people have a right to freedom, and society has an obligation to take care of those in society that can not take care of themselves, then forcing them to do something in return for public support can not be allowed.

Furthermore, my welder in Canada can not weld any faster than someone in a developing country where the wages are a fraction of ours. So why would a customer buy from me?

Hopefully, the reason your Canaidan welder makes more money is because he/she can weld more different metals, using more different techniques, and can do it right more often than a less expensive welder (regardless of origin). A ruined part is usually more costly than the welder's rate. A failed part is also usually more costly than a welder's rate. Not to mention additional costs due to possible injuries, destruction of property, and production losses.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[WilliamH]

A star for you Ashereng!

Will

 

[berkshire]

widla (Mechanical)
Using the law of supply and demand, the really skilled work people: Welders, Sheetmetalworkers, fabricators, engineers etc.,tend to gravitate to the companies who offer the best percieved pay and benefit package.
If you cannot find good people at "any" price, then you need to look at your competitors to see if they have these people, and if so what they are paying them.
I cannot believe that a country like Canada, which was strong on apprenticeships for so many years, does not, have people with the skills you are looking for.
B.E.