Let's all retrain as plumbers..... NOT

[Lobster]

From today's Times:

Work dries up for City boys lured to plumbing By Will Pavia

IT WAS one of the most curious episodes in British employment history: City workers were abandoning high-flying jobs to retrain as plumbers.

Now, as trade associations give warning of a major oversupply of trainee plumbers, the employee exodus from the Square Mile may be going into reverse, with plumbers returning to the City.

The rush into the trade began four years ago with a report that there was a desperate shortage of plumbers, who could earn £70,000 a year.

Now the shortfall is put at 1,500 plumbers for the next three years, but there are 26,000 on NVQ2 courses, many more working for higher qualifications and thousands on ?fast-track courses?. Competition for apprenticeships is fierce. Plumbing companies report turning away hundreds of hopefuls. And starting salaries are low.

Richard Nissen, the head of the London plumbing company Staunch and Flow, said: ?Trainee plumbers are paid £10,000 a year. No one can afford to pay them a living wage.? Workers from Eastern Europe are filling the shortage on building sites; in the domestic trade favoured by former City workers, plumbers cannot expect to earn more than £20,000 for several years.

Jason McCafferty, 23, was part of the exodus into plumbing. The Construction Industry Training Board had said that the UK faced a 25 per cent shortage of plumbers by 2005, exacerbated by the retirement rate in a profession where most workers were aged over 50.

?I was working in a City law firm,? Mr McCafferty, a geography graduate from Exeter University, said. ?I didn?t particularly enjoy working there. Plumbing seemed an interesting vocation.? He took the NVQ2 course and began casting around for employment.

?I would have been on £10,000 for two years, while living in London,? he said. ?I would have to have taken a second job five days a week.?

Now he has returned to the City working in credit risk management. ?When I was offered work with a bank, I took it,? he said. Ivor James, 38, a former office worker for HSBC, also switched to plumbing. He has now been unemployed for two months. ?I have sent out 75 CVs,? he said. ?Fifteen companies replied. The only one that could take me on was offering peanuts.?

Mark Embury, formerly a derivatives broker on the Stock Exchange, left his £100,000-a-year job to run a plumbing business, part of the Drain Doctor franchise. He hoped that the venture would generate a turnover of £500,000. Last month he sold out.

The Association of Plumbing & Heating Contractors has expressed concern about the proliferation of ?rogue trainers? offering two-week courses. ?No one can become a skilled plumber in two weeks,? Clive Dickin, the chief executive, said

[John Rumm]

It begs the question, why go to all that bother of training yourself only to try to work for someone else again? I would have thought the main benefit of the exercise was owning the business.

[Christian McArdle]

Yeah. I don't think that anyone earns much money working for someone else in the plumbing field. The whole point is to work for yourself and keep the profits.

Christian.

[Dan delaMare-Lyon]

So why does the average daily rate for anyone half competent work out at ~£300 + vat?

That's (300*5*4.2*12) £75,600 - even after tax etc that's a good high 40's

Ho hum.

Cheers Dan.

[John Stumbles]

'cept that if you're self-employed you carry all your own overheads of admin, purchasing and stock control, visiting potential clients, working out quotes, training etc which cut into your actual earning time. Possibly the ideal solution would be to work as part of a collective sharing these burdens to minimise costs while still getting a good share of earnings, but I suspect that working for a medium size company run reasonably efficiently doesn't work out much worse than being s/e, especially if you factor in the hours you actually put in to the latter.

[daddyfreddy]

Indeed. And note it's the head of a plumbing company that's quoted in that article. He's hardly likely to want more plumbers coming on the scene and destroying his riches.

[usenet]

Because a daily rate implies self employed, thus:-

You won't be working every working day

There are expenses, tools, van, accountant, insurance, etc.

You haven't included any time off, in addition to days where you haven't got any work you will hopefully go on holiday occasionally.

[Tony Williams]

After a year or so of being self-employed (electronic design) I realised that I actually only plied my trade (ie, doing direct money-earning stuff) for about 2-3 days a week, and only for about 40 weeks/year, if lucky.

[Andy McKenzie]

Because the numbers you quote are a bit optimistic:

One might accept the 300 a day (I bet it's less on large contracts) but: (5*4.2*12) makes no account for holidays, being sick, admin, tax returns, training, tendering, advertising, givng quoutes, watching the cicket, having a life. Lets assume, optimistically, that all this can be done in 1 day a week, you are now at £60,480. This gives a net after tax and NI of around £40K. This assumes that you are such a good plumber that you always have full day jobs lined up every day that you are available to work. No scope for jobs being cancelled, postponed or for losing that tender that would tide you over till xmas. Lets assume that these make up 2 days a month (wildly optomistic?). Now we are at £53280, or £36 K after tax.

Now start deducting all your expenses - tools, van, premises, insurance, registration, telephone advertising, Maybe £10K a year. So now we have £26K. Of course you might want to put some money into a pension, or health care insurance, because if your're not working your not earning. As an employee these benefits might be provided.

Andy (on a salary and happy)

[Dan delaMare-Lyon]

Coat being fetched.......hadn't thought about it t that level of detail....

Dan.

[daddyfreddy]

Those costs are nothing. Only PAYE people actually pay the right amount of tax.

Try running a retail shop - the rent and rates alone are a MAJOR expense and then security, staff, heating, lighting etc. A man and van operation from home is very cheap.

[daddyfreddy]

Premises? - don't know one self employed plumber that has premises and even the firms either work from home or from some shed.

[daddyfreddy]

Half (at least) of which is never declared, cash in hand. The other half worked against all expenses (inflated).

[sPoNiX]

Not forgetting NI contributions of only £110 per year!

sponix

[DJC]

And in a large organisation you may do even less real work; having factored out the time spent in pointless meetings, form filling, working round idiot specifications etc.

[Richard Conway]

Who is this Will Pavia, and why his penchant for blow-torch weilding "City boys" in overalls?

[Tony Williams]

Absolutely true, especially with the trained? managers these days. But in a large organisation (especially one feeding off the taxpayers) it doesn't matter so much ..... you still get paid every month, get to eat, and get your index linked pension guaranteed by the taxpayer.

When self employed, if you don't work at things that get the money in regularly, then you don't eat. BTDTGTTS.

[Owain]

OTOH an increase in the qualified labour pool may reduce the wages a qualified employee can command.

Owain

[tarquinlinbin]

Yes. Perhaps we should apply the same principle to the so called professions who think they are above such nastiness.

We could do with more lawyers, estate agents, managers etc etc as they charge/are paid far too much.

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Make free phone calls

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