Onus is on whom????

[Abe]

I had the usual rep visit............

They ask me about how biz is going..........I says fine, but lack of engineers is problem

Now...........If I was a supplier of parts I would now think???

I got a shed lot of parts ready for distribution.
There is plenty of work out there
But few people to fit the parts.

What would I do???


This is what I would do. I would invest money to bring more engineers in. Yes...........Invest

No good talking about it, the government wont do anything, no one going to spoon feed our industry.

Intrestingly, I had a copy of Construction News pop in threw my post..........Guess what, Big building projects have same prob...........no workers

Where are the workers coming from?? Poland mainly and other EC states

So, this is what I say to the wholesalers.............Get together and promote your industry.........Invest in your industry

No one else will..................If engineers die.............You die

Set up schools, training courses, whatever............Get the youngsters in............train them, put them on the rung to a new careeer.

[WebRam]

you forgot to add to pay them well

[Latte]

Hi Aiyub,

I have said it for a long while there is no training available.

I live just outside Newmarket in Suffolk.Cambridge, Peterbrough and Norwich are all county towns and all withing an hours drive but when i enquired about C&G courses i was informed that there are no training centres locally. WHY !!! is the question i would like to know. Is it a case that it is not financially viable to set up and run a training school on its own without also doing other bits and bobs on the side (Hopefully Reeferjon might know this).

Unless the government can run some scheme to help pay for this training i cannot forsee the situation improving in the near future

Regards

Raymond

[rbartlett]

there are several schemes at the moment.

http://www.apprenticeships.org.uk/

being one of them..

funnily enough i contacted them on friday regarding finding a potential apprentice

there are several reasons as to why there is a constant lack of training in most modern societies.

part of 'progress' is to not want our children to do what we did..

this includes not getting their hands dirty and going to university being 2 obvious reasons why there are shortages.

another is that historically our 'heroes' were the builders of the empire -IK brunel et al
now it's people who can (or in beckhams case cannot) kick an inflated pigs bladder around sucessfully

this g.ment wants to get more and more kids to uni -why?

because this sounds good on the doorsteps of Uk (see above)

but in reality we need thicko's to do the mundane -which is why we now have to import them from the poorer parts of europe.

plus small employers are scared to invest in a youngster knowing that another 10p hr will see him up the road once he's finished the training
(who can afford the extra 10p coz they don't invest in training )

anyway in all honesty if my child asked if fridge was a great career move i would shuffle awkwardly before changing the subject.

i remember a g.ment years back introducing W.I.S.E women in science and engineering

and thinking why on earth would any girl want to end up in a career with such pisspoor conditions when she can get more money and a better lifestyle sitting in a nice office enviroment ?

then there is the financial factor. our trade and engineering in general is generally the poor relation with regards to charge out rates.(accountants solicitors PR consultants etc etc)

this is of course related to the poor public image engineering has -see above..

plumbers (at least corgi ones) got it sussed -make your trade a closed shop then force the public to respect you by hiking up the hourly rate

a s/e friend who is a/c + corgi gets £30 ph working on one £65 ph on the other

guess which is which???????

so unless we can get the respect of people -by fair means or foul- this issue will never go away..

cheers

richard

[Peter_1]

Hello Richard,

Nice piece but I needed to read some things twice because it's written - at least for me - difficult English.
What is a corgi plumber?
65 GBP per hour? Serious?
I will move the UK.

Honestly, I find for myself that I'm well paid here in Belgium for what I'm doing. I don't complain at all regards to the wages.
I can afford more then many peoples can.

Peter

[Brian_UK]

What is a corgi plumber?
65 GBP per hour? Serious?

CORGI = Confederation of Registered Gas Installers; our natural gas industry had too many 'in house' explosions and people dying from CO poisioning so now all installers etc have to be CORGI registered to work on gas systems.

This also applies to LPG.

65GBP, oh yes, and plus some...

With the shortage of "trained" plumbers the price is rising.

[Charnwood]

Hi guys,

Throughout last year I franticly tried to get an apprenticeship with all the "big boys" in the industry. And was met with the same response from all. I like to consider myself a reasonably intelligent bloke (some may disagree!), but I wasn't offered an interview at all. For some reason, and many of you may suffer from the same affliction, I am fascinated by refrigeration.

My question to any of the people in management positions that use this board. How do you go about taking on your apprentices?

Regards