Artisans

Alternatively...instead of pay and training do what SA did in the 70's...bring a Million Polish, English, German and Dutch etc Artisans to come and settle in SA. Worked then...should work now. If our young pople are not willing to work so be it.
 
BTech said:
Alternatively...instead of pay and training do what SA did in the 70's...bring a Million Polish, English, German and Dutch etc Artisans to come and settle in SA. Worked then...should work now. If our young pople are not willing to work so be it.
Click to expand...

:D might just work :D you suppose to promise them free houses and stuff oh ... they must get the right to vote !!
 
Why are they ignoring the forces of supply and demand?

IanC said:
I would value the insight this forum could provide on what Andrew Kenny is saying:

http://www.citizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=32544,1,22
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Andrew Kenny wrote:

"Artisans have little chance of career advancement. The few who beat the odds do well. My senior engineer at a big mill was a former fitter. If you advertised now for a qualified refrigeration mechanic you would be lucky if you got one suitable applicant. If you advertised for a personnel manager, you would get a flood of applicants.

The demand for artisans is greater than for personnel managers. In that case, artisans should earn more than managers and get better perks. But companies do not allow this to happen. They deliberately keep down the pay and status of artisans."

I am generally in agreement with the thinking of Andrew Kenny on this topic. I would like to know how those people who claim that our economy gets driven by the market force of supply and demand will argue around this point.

Recently I heard that the average age of an artisan in South Africa was calculated to be around 57 years. It was explained to me that the average age of artisans increased dramatically over the past ten to twenty years as a result of the failure to train enough artisans.

If artisans are so highly in demand now, why are they not being paid more? Or are we ignoring the forces of supply and demand in this instance?
 
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How true... Artisans have always been looked down upon as "lower class" citizens. The trade has been so stigmatised that even today, youngsters are not prepared to take up a career as a tradesman.
IMO there are only three reasons - the first already mentioned as class and the 2nd being pure lazyness or the "I don't want to get my hands dirty" attitude.
As for career advancement - someone who qualifies as a tradesperson does it for the love of the job and should be remunerated accordingly.
Poor remuneration leads to slipshod work. (...well, so does mass production with underqualified staff!)
I remember having a woodwork teacher at school who used to take pride in his workmanship, always telling the students to never settle for second best.
He became a director in a large, well known furniture manufacturing company.
Gone was pride in workmanship! Mass production took first place and needless to say, the company doesn't exist anymore!
The third and maybe the single biggest reason for young people not wanting to qualify is that there are no more mentors left in the form of good teachers.
How many technical schools still have teachers that care about their students, or even better - have qualified teachers!
Looks like they will have to import artisans after all... :rolleyes:
 
I trained as an artisan, from a technical high school right through to an apprentice and qualified with a dept of manpower trade test. Artisans are treated like dirt, we get looked down at, get paid badly and usually we die at our machines having been worked as skivvies. If I had had to do it all over I would never have done a trade but would have gone to work in a bank or similar, at least by now I would be something.
Many of the people I encounter in my job are artisans, or should I say ex artisans. Most have dropped their trades and are doing other things, and the pool of qualified people gets smaller each year as more go on pension, split the country or get ousted by AA. Its not really worth taking a trade anymore, and as was rightly pointed out, youngsters dont want to do that sort of work, how many appies drive expensive cars?
I am afraid we will have to bring in people from outside one of these days, and I bet those people will get treated better (and paid better too) than any of us were and neither will they be messed around by AA.
 
Train as an artisan then open your own bussiness its the only way to go, but, school leavers these days dont want to go through those first 5 years of having to live on the breadline. They want to qualify and walk into a high paying job.
 
I have done two Apprentice trades in Germany, 1951 first as Fitter&Turner afterwards in Electronics, since I could not get one in Electronics at this time.
I worked there 15 years in the industry and believe me not in one industry people are looking down on you, if you are a qualified Artisan you are respected. In 1966 I arrived here with many others most of them are still here.
Some returned around 10 to 15 Years ago. Also here I worked for 30 Years
and ended as IT Manager in a large Corporation. We had many seminars here
to advance ourselfs. I was also for 20 Years head of the electronices skills Department. We had a total of 150 to 200 Appis and Technicians . All went well, but at the age of 60 I retired with 45 Years of experience in Industry.
Our Training facility had a passrate at the trade test centre avg 98%
I think a total of 150000 Artisans were at the time trained in SA.
After qualifying many here started their own business succesfully. But since
1994 not much happened any more. And by the way I was 14 years old when
I started my Apprentice time and qualified at the age of 17 . Today the System in Germany still works in the same way.
 
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