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

[Pussy]

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

[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?

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....

[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

[Leyton]

ya chicken

where is your sense of adventure....

Being shorter than most of the 1600 students at the school I work at and blocking www.bebo.com 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

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

[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

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