I’m 42 now and I left the trades a year ago after getting the life beat out of me for most of my life. It’s not that no one wants to do the work, it’s that no one wants to pay for a good tradesperson. When I left my last job they were only hiring techs for $16-$20 and hour. That was with HVAC certification. It’s laughable.
Matter of fact, the company I worked for withheld raises from one of their teams for 3 years and they pikachu faced when they all left. Literally the best tech team in the company too. (This team had over 100 years of total experience in the trades. Plumbing, electrical, you name it. They’ve done it.)
Not to mention like 99% of the companies require you to own your own tools and will not replace/repair anything that breaks while working for their company. Got a nice new impact and it broke doing a job? That $200 is coming out of your pocket. Always.
Fucking, also, all the jobs that require being on call. Got a family? Fuck you, go fix shit at 2am and then make sure you show up to work on time at 6am with no sleep. Work 10-12 hours, go home, get called the next night too.
A-fucking-men… That’s why I backed out too. Nothing worse than the 2am call, or JUST pulling into your driveway just to get a call and have to go back out for god knows how long.
Yes yes “money.” A little bit sure, but not enough to be ok with a company literally owning all of my potential time.
I thought most tradesmen were independent contractors. Doesn’t that mean that you don’t have to put up with shit like that? That’s what it means in IT…
Nah, you can work for companies and be a W2 employee. There’s a lot of both.
I’d say a majority of the ones I’ve met work for a company so insurance is easier. They don’t have to be bonded and insured on their dime because the company does all that.
The US has a perplexing set of labour laws, and I understand it varies wildly by state but damn, how is it not a federal standard that if you’re an employee, the employer is required to provide you with all tools to perform your work?
It’s a lot less a law thing as it is a work culture thing. Some jobs provide stuff, but you’re required to have the basics. Some provide everything. It all really depends, but it’s prevalent for companies to expect you to have everything but the big stuff. (Which I mean, even then, some still require you to have your own storage solutions like in the case of mechanics.)
I’m 42 now and I left the trades a year ago after getting the life beat out of me for most of my life. It’s not that no one wants to do the work, it’s that no one wants to pay for a good tradesperson. When I left my last job they were only hiring techs for $16-$20 and hour. That was with HVAC certification. It’s laughable.
Matter of fact, the company I worked for withheld raises from one of their teams for 3 years and they pikachu faced when they all left. Literally the best tech team in the company too. (This team had over 100 years of total experience in the trades. Plumbing, electrical, you name it. They’ve done it.)
Not to mention like 99% of the companies require you to own your own tools and will not replace/repair anything that breaks while working for their company. Got a nice new impact and it broke doing a job? That $200 is coming out of your pocket. Always.
Fucking, also, all the jobs that require being on call. Got a family? Fuck you, go fix shit at 2am and then make sure you show up to work on time at 6am with no sleep. Work 10-12 hours, go home, get called the next night too.
A-fucking-men… That’s why I backed out too. Nothing worse than the 2am call, or JUST pulling into your driveway just to get a call and have to go back out for god knows how long.
Yes yes “money.” A little bit sure, but not enough to be ok with a company literally owning all of my potential time.
I thought most tradesmen were independent contractors. Doesn’t that mean that you don’t have to put up with shit like that? That’s what it means in IT…
Yeah, these are people who want the work but don’t want to do the paperwork. It’s not that hard.
Nah, you can work for companies and be a W2 employee. There’s a lot of both. I’d say a majority of the ones I’ve met work for a company so insurance is easier. They don’t have to be bonded and insured on their dime because the company does all that.
Whew, my poor cousin worked for CN Rail a while ago. Absolute worst, most inconvenient on-call hours you could imagine.
On-call jobs can go to hell.
The US has a perplexing set of labour laws, and I understand it varies wildly by state but damn, how is it not a federal standard that if you’re an employee, the employer is required to provide you with all tools to perform your work?
It’s a lot less a law thing as it is a work culture thing. Some jobs provide stuff, but you’re required to have the basics. Some provide everything. It all really depends, but it’s prevalent for companies to expect you to have everything but the big stuff. (Which I mean, even then, some still require you to have your own storage solutions like in the case of mechanics.)