Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Just curious about vocational skills

When I was in school, they allowed the retards into the industrial arts with us 23 chromo kids

Anyway, this girl Joan, she got one of her flippers caught in the damn belt sander.

Holy fugk we heard her over the Powermatic planer.

We have a local community college (DMACC) and the last I knew the only skilled trade our school was running was auto tech and wood working. There is a perfect opportunity to run college ed classes with the Tool and Die program or the Auto Tech at DMACC but the last I knew our school system had not yet opened up that opportunity. It was all about going to Iowa, UNI or Iowa State and getting a 4 year degree. If they utilized DMACC it was for college transfer courses only. I retired in 2008 so I have been out of the loop for some time but I have heard nothing about any skilled trades via the high school.

kwg

150 Grand plus or they’ll just stay right there in the basement and play video games. That’ll show the world by god!

Osky

I think a lot of people here believe that the trades pay better than what they really do.

For the amount of knowledge and skill involved plus the physical demands of the work and travel and layoffs often being a part of trades depending on the trade. The pay should be higher than what it is on average. Sure a union tradesman in a major city with high cost of living can make good money especially if it’s a heavily union area that drives up prices overall but on average the pay is decent but it isn’t great for the work, travel, and skill required.

When I was with the IBEW about 12 years ago first year apprentice started at $13.50 an hr with two days a month of 8hr class time unpaid. Journeyman electricians topped out at $35 an hour. Generally the more rural the lower the pay and the more travel by a big margin for both. Our local covered everything on the eastern half of the lower peninsula from Bay City MI to the bridge (about 150 miles).

Between unpaid travel for work turning 8 hr days into 10 usually in a company truck but occasionally my own and the gas/wear tear, or being put up in a motel for anything over a 1.5 hr drive, NO paid vacation, NO paid sick days, and NO paid holidays “you take off what you can afford to take off” and “travel comes with the work” layoffs being common from January through February unless willing to travel to other locals chasing work.

The healthcare and retirement plans were good but a whole lot of travel often boom or bust work life and zilch for a paid day off all sucked. The non union guys usually had paid vacation, holidays, and sick days but no pension and made about $10 an hr less.

By comparison my wife has a BA in business that she doesn’t really use and an associate degree in nursing. She makes $40 plus an hour working a set schedule three miles from home in a heated office doing very little physical work and has great benefits.

The trades aren’t all bad but they’re not what some believe that they’re cracked up to be either and depending on the trade it isn’t always a realistic career path for someone without some hands on mechanical experience going in.

Cousin taught in the vocational school in the Dallas ISD. Said after Carter signed the Dept. of Education in to law in 1978, vocational classes were slowly whittled away over the years by the district, under the watchful eyes of the DoE until there was nothing left of the department.

Exactly.

Good opportunities for training in the trades here, as this is a blue-collar area, but pay lags. In some cases almost embarrassing.

Example, two young guys I know, one is about done studying to be millwright. He just landed a MW job for $18 an hour.

The other kid is taking welding classes, but wanted a part-time job and got one delivering ice on the weekends. Starting pay is $25 an hour to deliver ice, doesn't even need a CDL. Summer will pay him $28/hr and lots of OT.

For whatever reason, the trades in this area start people about where they would if they worked at McD's.

Lots of young guys leave the area/state to make a decent wage.

I think for my area - we're fairly rural and not a ton have been off the farm for multiple generations so many have good skills already. They know how to weld to a decent degree so the pool of available applicants is pretty large - suppresses wages I think. For example.

Somebody has to do the work.

Lonny;
Top of the morning to you sir, I trust you're all keeping warm enough with this latest bit of weather that seems to be upon us.

Thanks for that bit of insight on your local situation, it's interesting to say the least.

While I can't speak to millwrights here, the young apprentices in the construction trades so carpenters, plumbers and electricians seemed to be in the same place where the starting wages while they were apprenticing were lower than say a summer landscaping job would pay.

I'm not certain if that's from the employers being able to get away with it so they do, from them having a high turnover rate once the apprentices reach journeyman status or just what exactly.

It seemed almost punative in some cases to me, but I do hear now that it's turning around a bit as companies are trying to retain the journeyman status workers.

The OP asked about high school here and in our part of BC it appeared to us that 95% of the curriculum was aimed at pointing students into university regardless of what level of liberal arts basket weaving would result.

We had one daughter who couldn't wait to get out of school and the system and one who knew she wanted to get a couple of degrees so worked towards that end.

The crazy thing was the local system really and truly didn't help either one that much and if the one who is now a high school teacher - which takes two degrees here - hadn't done a whole bunch of work on her own to chart her own course, it would have been a longer and way more expensive process.

One of her goals when she teaches now is to educate the kids who want to go on with secondary education how to do that, since as stated she got very little useful help.

Meanwhile though here for many trades but especially construction, we're so short of Red Seal tradespeople that they can walk onto a job and if they can refrain from chewing on their arm and have a pulse, they'll be hired.

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

Dwayne,

This is fantastic that your daughter is using her experience on achieving education to pass it on to others. Good for her! That is so needed.

I'm around a fair amount of young guys and so few have a viable plan on how to get what they need in either experience or education to make it to the next level. Too many think money and GOOD job offers will just fall into into their laps. The good jobs are still hard to get.

You mentioned landscaping paying more than some trades starting out-so true. My son is a machinist. When he started out machining a couple years ago, he was working at a screw-machine company and making $14 per hour. He had a list of clients he mowed lawns for from high school and kept mowing those lawns because $14 an hour ain't going to leave much left over. The lawn mowing paid more. At one point, he seriously questioned why he even went to machining school. He didn't stay long at the $14 job and they seemed to accept the fact they were a training ground for everybody else and some other young guy would come along, stay for 6-months or so before moving on to greener pastures. Seems to me to be a crazy way to run a business?

The running joke in these parts is Idaho's best export is it's young people. Employers like rural background kids who work without complaint and in many cases don't even question the wage because they were taught never to ask.

Lonny;
Thanks for the reply and further information, I appreciate you taking the time.

It's at best a questionable business plan to think you can have staff turnover and exist as a training ground for other shops. I know this intimately because I worked 27 years in the cabinet industry, in the same shop but with 5 or maybe 6 different groups and combinations of owners.

Our staff turnover for key positions such as CNC operators and stain/top coat applicators was way too high to get the continuity that was required. One could argue that they survived doing it that way to give me employment that long, but when I closed the doors for the last time, lack of forward planning was a major contributing factor. I was middle management for a lot of the time and finally was GM when cash flow from the owners shut us down and again not retaining the right people was a couple pounds of nails in our coffin.

To be absolutely crystal clear I'm a card carrying - literally and figuratively - Conservative and have little to no use for government intervention. That said, it would be a far, far more useful way to spend my BC tax dollars to have our kids become journeymen Red Seal whatever and stay here and use that skillset than to be giving free housing and hard drugs out to the homeless crack heads.

Call me crazy Lonny......

Again I don't like to see government meddling, but it could be as simple as some tax breaks for business as incentives to train and retain skilled labor. It's construction and not rocket surgery, but then again that's why I chose to run small businesses for people in my working years and not go into politics I guess? Maybe?

Anyways sir, here's hoping we who can see the fixes needed are able to work towards making them in time so our kids can have the full lives we had - due in large part to the functional system we were given.

We'll see.

All the best.

Dwayne

There are quite a few Vo Tech schools in this area. The biggest challenge for parents is getting the lazy bàstards out from infront of the video games and off weed long enough to want to do something with their lives.

They don't teach the importance of success in school and most parents would rather be their kids friend instead of a role model of achievement!

The trades are suffering from lack of qualified people. I turn down so much work because I cannot field two or more crews.

Highschool dropouts and druggies are the only labor force readily available for manual labor jobs......

I would gladly take on a couple of apprentices and teach them the finer points of automotive machining, but I can't even get my own kids and grandkids interested. I'm turning down high dollar offers from all over the country to build antique engines for car collectors- - - -I'm just too old and tired to increase production on my own!

Where I live the problem is the contractors. The illegals show up at 6 AM by the dozens in empty lots. Construction company vans pull up and pick up 5-6 guys in each van. At the end of the day all are paid cash and driven back to the empty lot. By avoiding taxes and other regulations the contractors are keeping more money in their pockets and keeping legal workers out of work.

This is exactly how Margorie Taylor Green and her ex-husband made their money. Stop crap like this, make contractors hire legal workers, pay them a living wage, and pay their taxes and you eliminate the incentive to come here.

And to the original question. We have a very good vocational education system in our area. Any kid who wants to go to a vocational school can do so for free here in GA and come away with a good career.

Vocational / Technical Education has been a blessing to me and the wife.
Worked in the field I was trained in, then taught my subject for 31 years in a Voc/Tech HS.
Started a part time job doing what I taught and now am in my 50th year doing it.
Been retired for 20 years with a great pension and good benefits,
My part time job, which has turned into my Hobby is paying me between $70 and $100 an hour.
Fun money for my hunting trips, some fine guns, and a good life with my wife of 54 years.
Can't say enough for Vocational Education.

Always glad I went through the Boiler Makers Apprenticeship. Only worked 10 years in the craft. But I knew I could always find a job. As stated earlier illegal immigration has hurt a lot jobs because of cheap labor. But not so much in the skilled crafts. Welding, pipe fitting, electrical etc. Hasbeen

My son inlaw took up diesel mechanics in vocational school & works for a large company who has hundreds of trucks on the road but mainly water hauling trucks for the natural gas industry. He is doing really well and loves what he does. He works 6 days a week and 10 - 12 hr. days. A lot of the breakdowns are due to stupid emissions where the truck barely stays running. He grabs his laptop computer to find the problem & gets the truck going again. His phone rings pretty much nonstop.

Same.

It was the Local 692 electricians union for me. It got my foot in the door as far as what I do now. I was glad to get out of it but I liked the actual work, it was something to fall back on and a bright spot on my resume.

Fugg illegals. I saw a lot working as brickes, and hanging drywall. Good for them for working hard and bettering their lives but it comes at reduced pay for every hard working American. I absolutely hate the lie about doing work that Americans won’t do. B.S. there isn’t a job that an American won’t do. They just won’t do it for a lowball under the table wage with no benefits and wouldn’t have to if millions of illegals weren’t flooding the border each year and undercutting wages while double dipping in free welfare, foodstamps, Medicaid, ect;

Clarksvegas ain't stopped growing since I got here in July 90

Trade school over in the industrial park.
Problem around here is most of the trade work cats seem to be age progressing.
You will see young guys doing construction but not in ratio to their demographic population #,s

Hard work is a alien concept to many of all ages now.

Skilled trades welders , plumbers, carpenters, electricians,ect ect ect .
Not seeing alot of early 20 somethings.
Throw in the illegal alien/ 151 card types doing trade work.
That has a effect on wages and job availability for young Americans also.

Do see alot of the city crews of various departments.
Gas and water
Parks and rec
CDE
Other on the site working city types

Have a good share of 18 19 yr olds on up thru 65 70 yr old bide their time types
Most of them are nepotism hires to begin with.
Generational schitt...
Numbnutts types for the most part, can't help saying what I see...
Alot of the more complex ground work and overhead electric work is contracted out here.
Cause the city crews can't do it and have groomed it away long ago and plus it also greases the skids of the good Ole boy network with contracts.


Repeat across america.

Another view…

How many take advantage of what’s offered?

Local junior college has a satellite branch in our county.

They offer different things throughout the year.


Welding, CDL, heavy equipment operating, beginner nursing, few other things.

Country supervisors will reimburse tution if you complete the training.

(You pay up front, must complete training to get reimbursed. That way you have some skin in the game. )


I taught the welding for 2 years ( about 5 yrs ago).

Trouble was filling the classes.

Like no one wanted to learn.

Maybe it’s easier being on welfare. 🤷🤷.