pobod

Canada has the highest rate of post secondary grads on Earth, not the highest university rate, last time I looked at that we were behind Japan, Ireland, USA one other I forget.

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/the-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html?page=all

Therefore to be #1 our CAAT system is the big back up.

So why are there skilled trades shortages. I attended a gov’t conference on this where construction employers complained bitterly about the shortage. A leader of the plumbers union spoke next and asked, “I have been asking around while others spoke and the employers seem to want to pay $20-30 per hour and still get a certified plumber. Well good luck with that but the employers without shortages are paying $40 minimum. Many higher.

Employers demand skilled labour AT THE RATE THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO PAY. Good luck with that.

Canada is an immigrant nation. Many immigrants came half way around the world and took jobs in restaurants, security guards and so forth not so their children should become carpenters and plumbers but so they could become doctors and lawyers.

I thought you people believed in the free market? The free market is telling you if you can’t attract plumbers, clearly you are not paying enough or your conditions are not good enough because the plumbers we do have are working somewhere?

Mature nations in northern Europe, Germany would be the prototype, pay their labour excellent wages with excellent pensions holidays spas and so on. Almost everybody is unionized and everybody is happy. The jobs at Mercedez-Benz, BMW, Siemens, Krupp are highly skilled and highly paid. Workers are happy to work for them. China now buys more Benz that the rest of the world put together.

I sometimes hear this “everybody should not aim for university” stuff even from teachers. My first question is ‘aren’t YOUR kids headed to university? Why didn’t your tell YOUR kids to become plumbers if the job is so good? Ohhhh, you mean somebody ELSE should not sent their kids to university just you?

You want skilled labour, show your appreciation in the pay, benefits, pensions and working conditions. The employer who pays the most in any town usually has no problems.

Doug is reinforcing the old narratives to look after the best interests of the unions, and by extension the traditional class divisions of society to protect the professional class.

He also omits information such as Germany’s apprenticeship program that begins at the secondary level. However, it is highly selective and based on the grades of the students. Germany is now experiencing shortages of trade skills as in other European countries with strong unions. The strong unions strive to maintain a shortage in journeymen and masters, by keeping the vast majority at the apprenticeship stage. Between employers and unions - they do a great job at blocking people entering the trades.

However that is only one part of the picture - the K to 12 education system begins starting in grade 1, to prepare students in not being prepared for post-secondary, work and everyday life. The students no longer have the basic life and essential skills to become self-sufficient and able to learn new knowledge. There has been a few essays and papers since the beginning of 2013, discussing the lack of self-sufficiency among the citizens, and how the economic/government policies, the education practices/policies of the social institutes and the globalization of markets have work together in their separate silos to reduced the common sets of knowledge, skills and essential skills that all people should have.

So instead of repairing the door lock, the locksmith is called. Instead of installing the dishwasher, the plumber/electrician is brought it. Instead of mending the clothing, the clothing is sent out to a tailor (which is a rare find in 2013).  The point is very few people have the skills to install a light switch to repairing the washer/dryer to fixing the electronic toy that has a loose connection. It is the lack of skills and essential knowledge that is lacking in our grade 12 graduates that is giving rise to the shortages in the trades and across the spectrum.

In the comment section: A stat is cited, that surprises many people. It does represent fact, but the public education system and the post-secondary will denied it until the cows come home. The comment - “I believe that the drop-out rate in Canadian apprenticeship training is somewhere around 40-50%. A big part of this is because most of the kids entering this field are completely unprepared academically for this type of training which is much more than “just hammering nails”.

An auto-service tech must be able to understand electrical circuits.

A welder must be able to understand the metallurgy of steels.

A machinist must be able to program using CAD/CAM software.

A plumber must have a thorough knowledge of the applicable codes.

etc. etc., etc.

Our high-schools just don’t get it.”

Probably the best comment - “Where did it go wrong? A good place to start is with the educational theorists. Until somewhere around 1975, Canada had a British Liberal Arts education system where by everyone was exposed to a wide base of expertise. And yes that included shop classes, music, art, language etc. Canada had some of the best most well trained and educated people in the. World. Then, our governments began hiring American educational theorists…...”

The educational theorists that decided no one beneath the professional class should have common sets of knowledge and skills. It is why the standard algorithm, grammar and spelling went the way of the do-do bird to begin the skills shortage….........the only trouble is the professional class don’t know how to fixed the leaky tap or installing a simple pencil sharpener. The latter requires a unionized worker, charging $165 for two screws and the former, ditto but at a cost of $600.

POBOD, you’ve twisted the facts:  you imply that there are skilled tradesmen, but they are turning their noses up at poor wages.  This is not the case.  There are not enough skilled tradesmen to fill the required positions; yet there are people with degrees in the soft sciences and arts who can’t find work.  If things don’t change, economists are predicting that this will get worse.

These degrees in the arts and soft sciences (psychology, socialogy) are not skills; they are degrees which simply give the student knowledge which they will greatly appreciate over time.  There’s a big difference between a marketable skill and aesthetic knowledge—one gets you hired, the latter means you either go to teachers’ college or get a skill to become gainfully employed.

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/08/26/is_canadas_great_skill_shortage_a_mirage_goar.html

Never listen to Harper or any Tory, their agenda is to drive Canadians to lower wages so that their bosses can make more money.

Bill Gates often does the same thing, He keeps demanding more H1 visas for Asian computer people to work in the USA. Congress keeps telling him everything they see is the USA has enough tech people in all of these areas. He wants more skilled workers to increase supply and as a result drive down wages. Everybody knows the game.

Employers want schools to produce more trades people, not because there are not enough workers with the skills but not enough workers that will work at the wages that employers want to pay.

Bev, reminded me of some data streams - from the federal government files - http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/2008110/article/10710-eng.htm

I also neglected to mentioned another major problem, that impacts Canadians, the foreign worker program. Employers have also found another reason not to have employees who are apprentices, and/or be a conduit for the apprenticeship programs.  Not only are Canadians just entering the trades faced with far fewer employers willing to take on apprentices, the Canadians must also complete with the foreign workers who are hailing from countries that have established trades skills and apprenticeships in the respective education ministries/departments of the government. All start at the high school level.  Not so in Canada…......and neither does the Canadian colleges aid the students in their trade courses, to locate apprenticeships for their students. They are on their own, just like the grade 12 students, leaving the K to 12 system as soon as they turned the age of 18. No help there in aiding students to fill out college/university applications, the programs being offered by the college/university level - locally or nationally, and no help in aiding the students for student loan applications. The parents and the students are left high and dry by the K to 12 education system…..............it continues in the post-secondary level.

The latter, is a conversation that one will find in the chat forums and social media…...of their adult children paying $15,000 to $20,000 for a high skilled trade, and can’t find a job. No Canadian employer wants to hire a Canadian journeyman, when one can hire a foreign journeyman at reduced labour costs. And yes, Ireland is a favourite haunt of the Canadian employers, and as well as other European places.

As Bev has stated, “.  There are not enough skilled tradesmen to fill the required positions; yet there are people with degrees in the soft sciences and arts who can’t find work.  If things don’t change, economists are predicting that this will get worse.”

Between unions - employers - government, the employers’ ability not to hire Canadians is further enhanced when the K to 12 education system has withdrawn and/or are not longer providing education services that leads to the pathways of the trade skills. Ergo, there is a 50 % drop-out rate in the apprenticeships and college trade courses…..........due mainly to lower mathematical skills and the lack of knowledge in the sciences.

As for the big trades unions - picture this. An employer on a big project located in one province in Canada, is forced to hired the tradesman in another province or a foreign tradesman, while the local tradesmen are not hired because the union will not let them join. The locals end up working in another province, or in another part of the world, while their families remained in their home province, wondering why their husband/partner/father/mother cannot work at the big processing or hydro project or mining outfit closer to the family home. The only reason is, the local tradesmen can’t get into the local union, but can in another province. On the other side of the coin, provinces like Alberta has a serious shortage of skilled trades people because of the unions controlling who will or will not join the unions. The reason being, the vast majority if not all, are the big work projects are unionized work places. 

If things don’t change, the economists predictions will be a reality….........we need wholesale change throughout the systems of the K to 12 to post-secondary to the unions to the workplaces.

Drummond, is merely presenting the narratives of the union heads. What will not be told, the big unions controlling the strings of who will and who will not be a member of the union. It is an old boys’ club, with the legally required number of minorities and women sprinkled into the mix.

In many cases across the country, in order to get a job on an unionized work place, an employer won’t even look at the job application, if the person does not have membership in the union. The reverse is true, employers willing to hire non-union workers but the next hat trick, is to join the local union. Easier said, than doing it….....when the union heads says no.

Moving unto the lower wages….....it is a combination of factors of governments, unions, employers and the education systems in the globalized developed countries that are driving the wages down, and keeping minimum wage jobs below the cost of living. Certainly, there is shortages, but certainly their is over supply of workers across the span in differed sectors. A main factor that has brought the narrative of the mismatch between skills and jobs -  “He hasn’t found a shred of credible evidence that Canada has a serious mismatch between skills and jobs. In fact, most economic indicators point in the opposite direction.” - is the lack of job mobility in Canada.

In Canada, job mobility is only on paper but on the ground - workers are faced with the barriers erected by the governments, employers, unions and the globalized factors such as the foreign worker programs. Drummond is presenting the union’s heads’ narratives that best protects the unionized professional class of workers such as teachers, nurses, doctors, police or firefighters. For example, one of Drummond’s reason is, “There are no wage spikes in the skilled trades, information technology or scientific, professional and technical services. If Canada had skill shortages, employers would be paying a premium for workers in those fields.”

No wage spikes in the private sector, but huge wage increases in the public sector with golden pensions.  Lots on the web, showing it in colourful visual charts who are the winners and losers.

Doug, should get out of Toronto and take a tour. He soon find out the pipefitter flying into Alberta doing the three weeks on and one week off, but the pipefitter can’t get a job in his home province, because the local union won’t let him join the union, even though the employer would hire him instead of the foreign worker. The foreign worker gets in, but not the local pipefitter with years of experience. Another narrative that is common, is the new journeyman, who can’t find work because the unions will not allow him to join nor will the employer hire him.

In short, and a simple way of looking at it - there is no political will to change, nor is there any stomach for change because the old system is the best one to look after the best interests and political agendas of the political and economic powers with the big unions and professional associations playing bat boys for the political and economic powers.

By the way, the other narrative of employers wanting schools to produced more trades people - rather a false one because there is seating caps imposed by the education establishment. Ergo, in some highly skilled trades - only 30 graduates per year in any given province. In some cases, there is only one Canadian college, who has the program,,,,,,,,,,,,,The only people who get in, are the people who are living in the province.

“Ideally, the solution is to market ourselves to kids when they’re at the high school level but, unfortunately, Canadian colleges have shut down their plastics and mold, tool and die trade programs, so it’s becoming very hard to reach them.”

There are still college-level apprenticeship programs out there — Conestoga College, in Kitchener, Ont., offers a two-year tool and die maker apprenticeship course, for example — but they’re not producing enough graduates to plug the manpower leak. What else can the industry do to recruit fresh faces?”
http://www.canadianmetalworking.com/top-stories/the-road-ahead-mold-tool-and-die-making-a-comeback-95935.html

The post-secondary institutes working in sync with their K to 12 education counterparts - closed down the programs - all in the name to protect their political and legal authority who will or will not obtain an education. It starts in grade 1…...........and continues right throughout the post-secondary level. I am glad my father is no longer living to see what has happened to the trade skills, nor the second rate education being received in the K to 12 education system, but he was right back in the 1980s when he predicted a shortage of skilled trade workers based on the policies of the Ontario education system.

pobod

Nancy has just proven my point and opposed Bev’s point. There ARE enough skilled labourers. Business is hunting for skilled labour ‘that will work for lower wages’. Ireland, TFW program, and so on.

The entire program of Harper and Hudak is based on lowering wages whereever and whenever possible.

On the contrary Doug, I proved the premise of mismatch between skills and jobs. The shortages in skilled trades sector and other shortage. The key player is none other then the very public K to 12 education working together with the post-secondary institutes to protect the best interests of the public education system, and steady growth in teacher jobs looking after the fall-out of students after 12 years of education without the correct set of skills and knowledge sets who now will have to pay on their own dime, skills and knowledge that should have been taught and mastered in the years of K to 12.

The other starring roles are the trades unions, the governments and their political agendas. The real story lies with the outcomes and the little known data outcome, the percentage of apprentices dropping out of the apprenticeship programs,  the percentage of students on the waiting lists of college trades programs, the restrictions of the number of seats available in the individual college trades programs, the number of apprenticeships that employers are willing to sponsor, and the number of new union members that the union heads are willing to admit in the hallowed halls of the trades union.

Not to mentioned but should be, the active creaming that takes place every year, where the students graduating from the college trade programs, only the best with the highest averages have access not only to the trade union of their trade, but have all the job offers by employers. The students making a C average or so, either have to know someone to get a job, if they do settle for being an apprentice for the rest of their lives, or move on to do something else. And for some newly graduates of college trades program, there is an over-supply of that particular trade in the province, and must moved to another province or across the globe. The trick in this situation, will the trades certificate be accepted in another province or another country.

I shall repeat from my last post - “The post-secondary institutes working in sync with their K to 12 education counterparts - closed down the programs - all in the name to protect their political and legal authority who will or will not obtain an education. It starts in grade 1…...........and continues right throughout the post-secondary level.”

I supported Bev’s point and additional weight to her conclusions that Doug is twisting facts once again.

pobod

There is no skills shortage, it is a myth. Drummond asked industry and government to prove it. They’ve got nothing.

Right, pobod!  Just keep turning a deaf ear to the tax base—the ones who generate revenue.  Also, I love it when the civil servants tell the private sector to ‘prove it’.