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

[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

[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

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.