Shit .. and I thought I earned good coin...

[kevfromcoro]

Working on a large site at the moment..
to-night i went upstairs ,, and was chatting to a mob of welders.
as we do.. they are doing 84 hours a week.. and getting paid $70 an hour
not to bad for a weeks wage in old NZ

[hospitalfood]

14 hour day,six days a week.............tough

[kevfromcoro]

14 hour day,six days a week.............tough

Yeah its hard going allright.....
these guys are doing 7 12 hr shifts
couldnt do it for to long

[junkmanjoe]

on the radio other day. under water welders in the oil fields.
spend 6 months under water, they live down there..and earn $84,000 us for there time.

that would be a tough job

[Timber020]

I would want twice that with all the crap they breath in and having to do epic size runs all day long. Takes a whole different type of thinking to do that kind of work for that kind of time. I get antsy after a dozen rods.

I do know some underwater welders who worked on rigs in the past. Guys just dissappear at depth. They get the narcs, take there gear off hundreds of feet down and go for a swim. I met one guy who looked 60 and was only in his 30's.
They used to spend weeks down in the bell with 3 others on shifts. Its like a small prison with time off for welding in the big dark wet stuff. Screw that.

[Blackbird]

Working on a large site at the moment..


No 1 Mill maintenance Shut at CHH Pulp and Paper Kinleith?:innocent:

[JimO]

the tax man will be rubbing his hands together, 70 ah hr isnt that flash some jobs i make over 300

[jrandom]

Tough job. They earn those dollars.

Then again, not all tough jobs get paid well. And not all well-paying jobs are tough.

Either way, good shit. This country needs less lawyers and more welders.

[Oakie]

Yeah its hard going allright.....
these guys are doing 7 12 hr shifts
couldnt do it for to long

And you have to ask yourself "what is the quality of the work they are producing at the end of 12 hours and at the end of 7 days straight?"

[Blackbird]

And you have to ask yourself "what is the quality of the work they are producing at the end of 12 hours and at the end of 7 days straight?"

Valid point but if it's Marine level welding, which I suspect it is for that rate; at least the welds are all radiographed before they're passed. In support of what you're saying though, there was a reasonable percentage of remedial work on pressure welding when I used to look after the maintenance shuts for my old company.

[Pussy]

I'm with Blackbird on this.
I have worked 12 hour shifts doing boiler tube work.. every weld was x-rayed.
Leaky boiler tubes are bad! Boiler go boom!
You earn the coin working in some very tight space in a used boiler

[AllanB]

the tax man will be rubbing his hands together, 70 ah hr isnt that flash some jobs i make over 300

So jumjim are you a lawyer or a Porsche mechanic?

[Jonno.]

Or an escourt?

[JimO]

So jumjim are you a lawyer or a Porsche mechanic?

no just a humble tradesman but quoted jobs can earn some serious money but if you cock the qoute up it can work the other way

[Naki Rat]

And you have to ask yourself "what is the quality of the work they are producing at the end of 12 hours and at the end of 7 days straight?"

For that sort of money they would be expected to have minimal (<2%) failure rate on the welds, which would undoubtedly be fully xrayed. It takes a bloody good welder to maintain that sort of standard so yes they are worth those dollars as the cost of rewelds on such projects are usually much more expensive in terms of lost plant production time.

Also there is a shortage of welders (like many trades) in NZ and the imported guys from Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands mostly don't measure up in terms of weld failure rates.

[Pussy]

Hmmmm... wonder if I should dig out my Kromer cap and my welding helmet?? :whistle:

[Molly]

Paying a drain layer about $900 for a day's work later this week. Needs to be signed-off by a qualified person or I'd do the work myself. It's a day's hard work but just a day and hardly rocket science.

Don't know how it came to be that tradesmen could command such figures. I suppose it must just be the laws of supply and demand (back in the UK it wasn't unknown for lawyers to retrain as plasterers just to make better money). Teachers and nurses make shit pay by comparison and those jobs take four or five years to qualify for. I once had a local property developer tell me he paid his labourers more than I earned (the same gobshites that just fell out of my school with f'k all qualifications).

I should retrain...

[Pedrostt500]

At 70$ an hr they would be contractors, when you are contract welding you learn to make every weld a good one because the rewelds are on you, + the cost of bombing the weld. used to be xray 10% and you were allowed 10% of 10% failure rate any higher and they Xrayed every thing you welded, though I have knowen some jobs to be 100% xray.

[JimO]

Teachers and nurses make shit pay by comparison and those jobs take four or five years to qualify for.

...

any proper tradesman that has done a apprenticeship has also trained for 4 to 5 years plus the teacher doesnt front up in the class room with around 100k with of gear that they have had to pay for, teachers and nurses dont take any financial risk where as a tradesman doesnt know if he is going to get paid until the cheque turns up in the leter box

[Pussy]

though I have knowen some jobs to be 100% xray.

Boiler tubes, for example

[kevfromcoro]

No 1 Mill maintenance Shut at CHH Pulp and Paper Kinleith?:innocent:

yeah.. thats the one.. cold tokaroa.... there are a few asians on site.. good welders.. but thats all they do...
what pisses me off.. is i did a 4 yr aprenticeship as a fitter and turner. and these blokes do a six week course to get a welding ticket. and earn 3 times as much as we do.

[taff1954]

Teachers and nurses make shit pay by comparison and those jobs take four or five years to qualify for.

Took me a 4 1/2 year apprenticeship to qualify as well - it's not only teachers / nurses and the like that train for that long. Add to that an average of 20 days a year on training courses, recertifications etc.

I was making that kind of money working in the oil patch, BUT, with those hours (12 hour shifts, living on-site, 7 days a week for 64 days straight on one particular job), you soon get (a) absolutely knackered (b) sick of working and (c) seriously homesick. Add to that the fact that on some jobs you only get 1 shot - screw up once and you're run off - and the pay's justified. I quit before the stress either put me in the cardiac ward or the psych ward.

There's few tradesmen who make that kind of money all their working lives, the basic pay in mechanical trades is generally crap. You take your chances while you can.

[Leyton]

They used to spend weeks down in the bell with 3 others on shifts. Its like a small prison with time off for welding in the big dark wet stuff. Screw that.

Yikes! That is quite a scary job. I will keep my desk job :P

[kevfromcoro]

Yikes! That is quite a scary job. I will keep my desk job :P

ya chicken

where is your sense of adventure....:wari:

[ready4whatever]

That makes my day. I want to become an engineer and thinking about applying for a course. Right now im a commercial whitebaiter (i like to call it), and i'd be better off on minimum wage. I want a job though. or else i have to put that new bike on hold for a year :shit:

[Leyton]

ya chicken

where is your sense of adventure....:wari:

Being shorter than most of the 1600 students at the school I work at and blocking www.bebo.com :Punk: Now that is adventure!

[kevfromcoro]

That makes my day. I want to become an engineer and thinking about applying for a course. Right now im a commercial whitebaiter (i like to call it), and i'd be better off on minimum wage. I want a job though. or else i have to put that new bike on hold for a year :shit:

its worth the effort... i would do it but my eyes are fucked for welding.
its a young mans game..
dont think its that easy.. a lot of guys fail the test... then a lot can do it.
either you got it you havent..
the next job these guys are ging too is a 55 day shut...
46k for just under 2 months..
not fucken bad......

[Indiana_Jones]

All welders = Jews?

-Indy

[davebullet]

Think of the brand new motorcycles choices you'd have after earning that money :drool:

[Blackbird]

yeah.. thats the one.. cold tokaroa.... there are a few asians on site.. good welders.. but thats all they do...


Hahahaha - I used to run the maintenance shutdowns at Kinleith in one of my old lives before major maintenance was contracted out to ABB to manage. Cold Tokoroa would be right, when we arrived in 1975, it used to go down to -10 C in winter. Dunno whether it's the effect of global warming but for the last few years, it would be lucky to get below -4 degrees on just a hadful of days. No regrets about moving though:sunny:

BTW, the manager of the pulpmill is one of my riding partners. Used to have a 'busa but now rides a Kawasaki.

[Naki Rat]

Paying a drain layer about $900 for a day's work later this week. Needs to be signed-off by a qualified person or I'd do the work myself. It's a day's hard work but just a day and hardly rocket science.

Don't know how it came to be that tradesmen could command such figures. I suppose it must just be the laws of supply and demand (back in the UK it wasn't unknown for lawyers to retrain as plasterers just to make better money). Teachers and nurses make shit pay by comparison and those jobs take four or five years to qualify for. I once had a local property developer tell me he paid his labourers more than I earned (the same gobshites that just fell out of my school with f'k all qualifications).

I should retrain...

The demise of the NZ (and others internationally) apprenticeship system :no:

[SPman]

yeah.. thats the one.. cold tokaroa.... there are a few asians on site.. good welders.. but thats all they do...
what pisses me off.. is i did a 4 yr aprenticeship as a fitter and turner. and these blokes do a six week course to get a welding ticket. and earn 3 times as much as we do.
So you're on $23.50 an hour???????


...where as a tradesman doesnt know if he is going to get paid until the cheque turns up in the leter box Ha ha ha - the cheques in the mail.........fuck that - I didn't leave the job without a cheque...or cash.



Don't know how it came to be that tradesmen could command such figures. I suppose it must just be the laws of supply and demand The demise of the NZ (and others internationally) apprenticeship system :no:Certainly makes a change from the crap money , late 80's and 90's.

[Fatjim]

Mate, you can earn that quite easily in IT, and you don't even have to be any good or actually work.

[Molly]

any proper tradesman that has done a apprenticeship has also trained for 4 to 5 years plus the teacher doesnt front up in the class room with around 100k with of gear that they have had to pay for, teachers and nurses dont take any financial risk where as a tradesman doesnt know if he is going to get paid until the cheque turns up in the leter box

Fair enough but I'm guessing they get paid whilst they train? My MSc was funded but only because I worked my arse off and got a first-class BA(Hons). However, I had to pay for that first degree and towards my teacher training. I also had to support myself throughout the five years it took. In the same five years a tradesman would earn, even as an apprentice, a sizable sum.

I used to drive a truck when I was much younger but finally figured going back to school was the smart thing to do (one redundancy too many forced my hand a little too). Anyway, maybe I can't be that smart after all if I did all that study for so little reward? I actually quit a funded PhD when I saw how much the lecturers were earning (less than the blokes delivering beer to the pub just outside my office window). It just wasn't worth another three or four years' study.

[Molly]

Mate, you can earn that quite easily in IT, and you don't even have to be any good or actually work.

Tell me more. Can I top six figures? Got to beat teaching IT for a living.

I'll still want three months a year off though! ;-)

[ready4whatever]

Become a politician, so you can rob mr average joe bastard and get away with it.

Seriously, i always think of ways to make some cash. hav'nt quite cracked the nut yet. I just know its hard to get ahead when everyone wants your money

[geoffm]

One big thing that helps wages on jobs like this - they can't be offshored to China very easily.
It doesn't stop Asian poroerty developers bringing in the site workers on holiday visas from China, Vietnam and Thailand, but it puts a bit of a crimp on it.
Anything that cna be easily offshored and doesn't require local registration (office work, legal work, tax returns, call centrers, IT) will go sooner rather than later. At work we are getting CAD drawing done in the Philipines - at half the price of what a local will charge.

[kevfromcoro]

Hazzards of the job............
about a year ago a bloke was killed.. he was a rigger and stropped up a load.. it let go and the strop broke.
the dee shackle hit him the head .. killing him
have just learned that he had the wrong shackle on the load.
Now OSH are sueing the co manager for improper training.
Cant seam to win these days.
Woulnt like to be in his position

[sinfull]

Hazzards of the job............
about a year ago a bloke was killed.. he was a rigger and stropped up a load.. it let go and the strop broke.
the dee shackle hit him the head .. killing him
have just learned that he had the wrong shackle on the load.
Now OSH are sueing the co manager for improper training.
Cant seam to win these days.
Woulnt like to be in his position
OSH are always gonna sue someone along the chain !!!
Some of the shit we got away with in the last few years, would have any OSH geek pulling his hair out !
It's only when things go bad that things go bad !!

[ready4whatever]

If anyone knows of jobs in Whakatane or Tauranga please contact me. I will give you bling every day for the rest of your life

[Timber020]

Hazzards of the job............
about a year ago a bloke was killed.. he was a rigger and stropped up a load.. it let go and the strop broke.
the dee shackle hit him the head .. killing him
have just learned that he had the wrong shackle on the load.
Now OSH are sueing the co manager for improper training.
Cant seam to win these days.
Woulnt like to be in his position

Its not OSH anymore, its the helpful and infinitely useful Department of Labour now. We have had 2 audits in 2 months. Apparently arborists are dangerous sorts. They have banned some of our saws, banned certain model harnesses that have been industry standard for over a decade, and are trying to get us to sign off on rules made up DEEP in the pits of offices, far far far from any people who do work.

They have figured out that if we spend all our time writing about doing tree work we wont have time to actually DO any tree work, and this way we will all be very very very safe.

We loose guys to often. From a course I did 8 years ago, out of the 12 guys at least 4 of them I know got injured out of the industry, only me and two others are still doing tree work that I know of. three quit due to age, (most get out by 35). Heck one of the instructors was killed a couple years back to.

For such a hazardous, hard and short lived job, arborists are paid jack. If only it wasnt so much fun.