So, if you believe some people we are now on our way out of the recession. The skilled trades job market seems to hum along as well as it ever has. A few recent news stories paint a picture of the present and future of skilled trades jobs.

The Guardian complains about government policy in the UK

A story in the Guardian – albeit, this is the Guardian – claims to uncover an issue that has been hampering policy there for several years: the persistent miscalculation of how employment will change by the year 2020 and what impact societal and other changes should be anticipated and how they should affect present politics. The article, in part, cites Ed Balls, the schools secretary, who says in part, that the future of Britain’s job market holds an “increasing demand for higher skills, with very few jobs available for people with low or no skills”.

The article offers a portrati of some young job seekers who have acquired skills but no strong job prospects. And on the other hand, “sceptics of the government’s policy [say the] predictions are groundless. There is no evidence, they say, that the number of mainly low-paid jobs that recruit young people with few or no skills or qualifications is going to shrink.”

Canada: more training, more demand and even some appreciation

In Canada, trade schools like the one offered at Sir Sanford Fleming College are successfully running students through the program and growing steadily. And a survey of Ottawa Valley businesses found that there is a growing shortage of skilled trades workers. Meanwhile, visiting St. John’s Newfoundland, Prime Minister Stephen Harper praised local construction and promised  that the Government will continue investment in Newfoundland’s employment and training programs.  Among other things, he told the crowd: “If construction professionals adopt new technologies and stay current with their expertise, they should have long, busy and successful careers,” the Prime Minister said.

Your neighbourhood

Leave a note to tell me and others how things are in your neck of the woods. Are there lots of skilled trades jobs? Do they pay well? Is there still a recession affecting you? Drop a comment and unless it’s spam I’ll allow it, to see if we can engage some discussion on the latest about skilled trades jobs.

And where have I been?

I would be remiss if I did not note that I have not blogged in an incredibly long time. The simple fact is that this is one of numerous gigs I have and I have numerous other commitments that (frankly) pay better and more immediately. You can bet that I will still be checking in now and then and blogging when there is proper blogging to do.

Many young people enter the job market wanting to ‘make a difference.’ This has probably been the case since the dawn of time: people want to do “good work.” But good work does not always mean a “good job,” of course, and in fact there are many employers who sell underpaying and in some case “sweatshop” jobs to young idealists who believe they are making a difference. In a wild open market, these employers are able to win contracts thanks to their lowered costs.

A report released in February examines the green economy, just as the US government has earmarked some stimulus money for so-called green jobs that include, for example, home updates that save energy, along with jobs in the solar and wind farm industries. The report’s author, Good Jobs First Research Director Philip Mattera, said, “Many proponents of green development assume that the result will be good jobs. We tested that assumption and found it is not always valid.”

While many companies in the green sector treat employees with respect and pay them fairly, there were examples in different sectors of the green economy that showed less fairness to workers. Mattera cites the example of “Two wind energy manufacturing plants where workers initiated union organizing drives in response to issues such as poor safety conditions and then faced union-busting campaigns by management.” He also noted that there are U.S. wind and solar manufacturing firms that weaken the job security of their workers by opening parallel plants in overseas low-wage havens like China, as well as Mexico.

A report by Labor Notes (http://labornotes.org/) offers similar cautions. Tiffany van Eyck says that community-labor partnerships in Newark, Los Angeles, and Seattle are rising to the occasion to make sure that green jobs in the stimulus package end up in the right hands, that unions are recognized and workers are compensated fairly. These community-labor partnerships are “creating a blueprint to help building trades unions dig into the green economy, while bringing new workers, many of them women and people of color, into the unions.”

An alliance in Puget Sound, Washington has been able to win a bill that stipulates “prevailing wage criteria.” This essentially means that stimulus money must go to projects that pay fair wages.

Previously, unions were critical of training models used in some federally subsidized weatherization projects. These favoured entry-level candidates who only took dumbed-down classes on specific tasks. As Union spokesman Bill Hayden put it, “when that work is done, there’s no other work for them.”

While they do acquire a little experience and do receive training,  only a few ever make it into a union or are able to develop their careers. “We don’t want to see more green sweatshops,” Hayden says.

The concern across the country is that people are able to get into a union pipeline, so they can truly make a decent living at green jobs.

And in the end, argue the unions, it is the consumer and the taxpayer who benefit from seeing their money spent best, on people qualified to do good work (people with “good jobs”).

As Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy says, “Many states and localities already apply job quality standards to companies receiving job subsidies or public contracts by federal as well as state and local agencies.” The Good Jobs First report, says LeRoy, “only wants to ensure this.”

To learn more, see:
goodjobsfirst.org/pdf/gjfgreenjobsrpt.pdf
labornotes.org/node/2318

This summer’s World Skills Competition in Calgary means that people all over the world are training and otherwise gearing up to compete for gold, silver and bronze.  Canada Skills is holding its national showdown May 20 – 23 in Charlottetown, PEI, approximately 100 days ahead of the ‘Olympics of skilled trades.’ For agenda, logistics and registration information visit the Canadian Skills Competition at www.skills2009.ca.

Meanwhile, in Charleston, West Virginia, they are competing just for the fun of it.  Mike Finlayson is one of a number of apprentices competing in the West Virginia State Pipe Trades annual apprenticeship contest at the Civic Center. Says Finlayson, “I went to Carver Career Center, did well there, got into this and never looked back.”

The competitions allow apprentices and experienced tradesmen to network, learn from each other and about each other. Jim Cartwright, a veteran, says that apprenticeships offer “a great opportunity for young men and women. They go in at fifty percent, thirteen dollars an hour. And, in five years, they double that to twenty six. Great health care and pension. I’ve been doing this for thirty years and I love it.”

Prejudices persist against tech training and trade schools, say critics of some recent moves by Michigan lawmakers. Read more.

The province of New Brunswick is stepping up efforts to get women involved in the skilled trades as it adds new development projects and suffers – as do so many areas – from a lack of skilled tradespeople. In 2006, the province invested $4 1/2 million in a project that introduced women on social services to skilled trade work in New Brunswick.  But now it needs even more help as it plans major projects such as a proposed energy corridor with the state of Maine, announced last week, that would see renewable electricity and natural gas exported from Atlantic Canada to the New England states.

Rosella Melanson, Executive Director of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women  says, “There have been very few efforts to get women into non-traditional jobs in the province.”

Other projects in the province include the possible construction of a 500 to 600- megawatt power plant, a 1,200 to 1,500-megawatt transmission line and the addition of an unspecified amount of wind power. All the growth provides an opportunity for both women and smart employers. Says Melanson, “Smart employers will think of women because they are an untapped pool.”

Pat Darrah is the Executive Director of the Saint John Construction Association. He says that the opportunity is always there for women: “We have a number of ladies working out at Point Lepreau and we got a number of ladies working on the maintenance side of the industry and on the industrial side.’ The govenment’s employment initiative has helped, as there are more now and in 2006 there were no women.

Irving Oil is holding a “Women in Trades” networking dinner in May that is part of that company’s intitiative to attract more women.

Elsewhere, women in the workforce are finding that they are getting more respect – slowly – over time. At a celebration of the 30th anniversary of its local chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction, a New York contractor noted how in the early days, many clients treated her “like a secretary.” For women, it may be harder to get respect but they have made great strides, say chapter members, by putting knowledge first.

Kate Beach, an office manager at a fabricating plant called Atlantis Equipment Corp., says, “You just have to know your stuff. You gain that respect the first time you have
someone saying ‘She knows that?’”

While repect for women in construction has ridden the same wave as respect for women in society in general, there are still issues with compensation in New York’s construction trades. “There is not equal compensation,” said Lisa Harding of Lash Contracting in Latham. “In terms of pay, there is a long way to go.”

That same issue haunts New Brunswick’s construction industry: “What is often forgotten is preparing the workplace so that those women are tolerated and welcomed,” Melanson says. “We have seen so many women train for something and then not continue in that line of work because they’ve been harassed from day one or made to be pioneers, and they just move on. It’s a waste of dollars, a waste of talent and we end up with skill shortages.”

But no matter what kind of work anyone faces, there are going to be challenges and problems and ups and downs. Melanson adds, “if you’re a woman looking for a better paying job, going for something non-traditional is probably the way to go.”

It’s popular to speak of “these dire times” (or whatever) and fall in line with all the news of economic worries. There are many positive stories, in the skilled trades no less which have proven just as vulnerable as professional employment with financial insitutions. Maybe you just have to read between the lines.

We heard of a program in Canada instituted by Beverley Oda, Minister of International Cooperation. The government of Canada launched a new Skills for Employment initiative that will help developing countries build a skilled workforce necessary for economic growth. The initiative will strengthen local training institutions in partnership with Canadian community colleges and enable students to acquire the quality vocational and technical skills needed for productive employment.<Read more>

Hundreds show up to News 10NBC career fair  says the report from MSNBC . But one staffing agency scouting out potential candidates for new hires was disappointed. They “had a need for skilled trades people but they weren’t seeing them at this career fair.”<See the original article>

There’s an employment problem across Canada’s north. I said “employment problem”: not enough people to employ in skilled trades across a spectrum of high paying industries including mining, forestry and the oil industry. <Read this editorial from Timmins>.

The average wage for oil patch workers is over $75,000 per year (source: www.1-oil-job.com/). The median wage in forestry is $46, 316and for a mining engineer, it’s $87,000 (source: salary.com). Search tradeschoolworld.com for more skilled trades wage information.

In spite of the supposedly weakened economy, a number of skilled trades in Canada are doing just fine, thanks.

More here

A couple recent stories highlight how trade schools offer hope to people, perhaps especially at “times like these.”

The Food Network reality show “The Chef Jeff Project” recently featured former crack dealer Alonzo Adams. Adams won a scholarship to the International Culinary School, after completing the show. Chef Jeff himself did time, ten years for various drug offences. After his feature, Chef Jeff chronicled Henderson’s attempts to go back to East LA and transform the lives of young adults through his newfound Los Angeles-based catering company. The full story is here. Find out more about cooking and culinary schools.

Meanwhile, a Tallahassee Florida program is providing the opportunity for recently laid off workers to return to school for trades training. Read more here.

So this is the time of year when high school seniors and their parents are filling out applications for colleges and universities. So my question to everyone of them is, how are you going to afford it? Seriously? I know that I was once a young kid applying for university because I thought – as everyone told me – that university was the place to go. University was your ticket to an easier, better life. Well, it has been – but it was not a cheap ticket and it was probably not the only way to get there.

Granted, I chose Arts and that’s always a hard sell. But even if you choose one of the more ‘practical’ tracks such as engineering or computer science, these still don’t teach you much if any in the way of hands-on knowledge. Universities continue to focus on theory and continue to say things like “we teach people to think.” Fortunately, I eventually wound up at a university that had some co-op courses but even after that I had to work – and I’ll admit, worry – my a** off to acquire marketable skills in things like web code (html, php, etc.), search marketing and otehr more practical skills.

In these days, it’s an increasingly viable choice to choose trade school. Why? Not because trades are anything new, certainly. Precisely the opposite. Many, many people are choosing sexier careers in new fields like technology and computer related fields but trades are tried and true. Are we going to stop using plumbing any time soon? Stop needing new houses or fixes to old ones?

Trade schools still cost money but the money is a much shorter term, smaller commitment – and they are simply not as big a risk. Because fewer people are going into them, the demand and shortage of workers is well documented.

If you are one of those people who has skills that could lead to university or trade school and you are not sure which career track to pick, I know which one I’d pick. And I’m not sure which one I’d pick if I had the choice to do over again, either. Paying off those wicked ‘higher education” loans and taking so freaking long to break into a career that actually works for me and in which I can actually make a good living took too long and was too much of an uphill climb compared to people I know who jumped into their own business three years out of high school.

Got a choice? Choose a trade, I would say. It may be ‘practical’ in more ways than one.

November 3rd to 7th is a week set aside to honour skilled trades, with special events in cities and towns across Canada.

The launch will be held November 3rd in Ottawa at Les Jardins de la Cité, Pavillon H, La Cité Collégiale, in Ottawa. Students from the Ottawa area are invited to join Annie Beauregard, a Team Canada 2007 World Skills bronze medalist, Stacy DuBois of Team Canada 2009, along with representatives from the Canadian Hospitality and Service Industry.

Events from across the country will include “Skills at the Park” in Queens Park, Toronto, which will honour seven Ontario entrants in World Skills 2009.

November 3-7, events will be held at colleges and trade schools across Ontario. These will include two events in Burlington, Ontario, where The Centre for Skills Development & Training is holding two open house events. There is an open invitation to all interested parties (especially trade school students, other youth and their parents) to drop by the centre November 6th from 5:30 to 7:30 pm to find out more about the skilled trades. On Friday November 7, from 12:30-2:30 p. m., teams will battle in a friendly trades competition.

November 3rd, in Edmonton, Alberta, a Cardboard Road race will be held at NAIT. On November 4th, members of the Alberta World Skills team will be introduced in the Alberta Legislature.

November 6th in Newfoundland, a skilled trades luncheon will be held at the College of the North Atlantic’s “College Day”.

November 3rd in PEI, at the UPEI Field House, there will be a hands-on event called Career Options PEI.

November 3rd in Manitoba, there will be a Model Wind Turbine Competition at Red River College in Winnipeg.

These are just a few of the events and times. Check your local news for more events or see skillscanada.com.