by Christopher Barratt

Created on: December 23, 2009   Last Updated: December 24, 2009

I cannot contribute information towards the trades and labour market in the U.S. but I can give you all a little insight into the state of play here in the UK. I could give an easy and simple solution to the problems faced by the trade and labour market in one swoop. A total reversal in pay structure. The men and women who actually risk their lives everyday to make a living in the construction industry at the top of the pile and the armies of pointless bureaucrats at the bottom, earning what they are really worth. As we all know it is generally the person in the office who is generally paid twice the amount the person on the ground receives, regardless of their position. Why is this so? Well it has always been an accepted situation that this is how it works. You where a tie, you are more important, rubbish, nobody, I repeat nobody is more important than the skilled people who have spent a lifetime learning their trades and who perform the work.

The fact is this, the armies of pointless office staff, bureaucratic nonsense, endless lines of assistants and the pointless people being paid to check the PAT test certificates on the refrigerator in the canteen, are sucking the lifeblood out of an already unsteady sector. Ask these questions, why would anyone want to join an industry where the hours are usually long and hard, where you will effectively arrive home too tired to move, where your life expectancy is greatly reduced due to the strains imposed on your body, where you know the guy riding your back all day is earning twice what you are for doing little more than sitting on his rear all day? Why would anyone want to enter into that? More to the fact, why would anyone with skills in the trade want to stay in that situation and not be rewarded sufficiently?

The reason for the reduction in the trades and labour market, especially here in the UK is down to one thing, Bad pay. People are simply not getting the money for the amount of work that is required, and they are not prepared to break their backs for inadequate pay, therefore they simply find something else to do. I realise this may sound like socialist talk but it really isn’t as being paid at “Market Rates” is just an excuse to pay low wages and who decides what the market rates are? The white-collar sector, that’s who. There was a time when a tradesman or woman could earn a very good living in the UK and this is what has been jumped on and has virtually been stolen from them. The

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