Young guy on our street been learning to weld for the last couple of years. He told me that there are a lot of jobs available, and on good money. He also told me that most don’t even stay on the course for more than a few weeks, or even days. Those who leave say its because it’s often cold or it’s hard, heavy work.
Could become a problem in the near future.
Tecforce are a great company. Anyone around Derby looking for a solid trade, I recommend looking into this.
Fibre Laser Welder – once these become mainstream in a couple of years anyone with five minutes experience will be able to do the job better than most experienced mig/ tig welders today
The only skill will be ability to read drawings
It doesnāt help that apprenticeships are still chaotic. You simply donāt know if the training you get from one company will make you employable by another.
Whatever happened to “AI will take all the jobs” in news Today?
I guess we’re assuming robots will do all the trade skills and with no tea breaks.
It’s the same problem as every other industry. Companies want experienced people only and they’re unwilling to take people who can weld but don’t have two years experience.
Just to highlight the ludicrousness, I did a welding night class for three months, mig, tig and mma welding. I also have verbal agreement that a local community development fund are willing to pay my entire wage at a welding job for some amount of time. But the companies I’ve contacted with help from someone at Enable are yet to take us up on this offer of a free welder.
Scotland btw.
If it’s needed, wages will rise until the jobs can be filled. More people will train and it’ll balance out.
I work in the welding industry. The vast majority of fabricator shops are abysmal, freezing cold, absolute garbage air quality, miserably dirty work and overall crap working conditions. As a man in my 30s I’d rather stack shelves in asda for half the wage than work in a fab shop. Nobody will do the job until conditions improve.
Unfortunately a lot of bigger companies gave next to no opportunities to people for a decade or two. Despite being warned the management done nothing and are now playing catch up for skills and experience depletion that’s happening to their work forces
My nephew just got a job in this- lucrative. Heās not going to be far off higher tax band as a teenager
I hope in the future more companies offer shorter weeks, I found it really physically demanding full time plus companies always want you to do overtime and work Saturdayās which is just depressing, donāt think I would go back into it unless it was part time, the amount of hazards you are exposed to aswell, is it really worth it?
if schools didn’t push UNI so much then people would go to trades , being told apprenticeship aren’t worth it and UNI is the best option constantly doesn’t help
It’s easy to see this as being the problem of a “soft” generation, but the job is inherently dangerous, physically demanding, and the wages at the entry level are pitiful if not insulting – nowhere near enough to be liveable.
> A welding firm in Derby has launched an in-house training facility in an attempt tackle a declining and ageing workforce.
This is the way it was up until the 90s.
Employers needed staff, they trained them up to do their job and many jobs were for life.
If you went back in time no one would believe that in the future it would be a revolutionary idea.
I work in this field and our production manager was complaining about not being able to hire apprentices or young, qualified welders,
I put it like this – you could get into welding but even in a decent fab shop itās cold in winter, roasting in summer, noisy, dirty, loud and full of fume (even with good LEV system thereāll be residual fume despite what people think) or you could work in a call centre on better money, AC in the summer, heating in the winter, no H&S issues (not in comparison anyways).
The only way we can get younger people into the industry is more pay (overtime is a necessity to get decent money), better work life balance and overall better conditions.
Just go slinging and lifting,it’s the same money and much easier to learn.
Was a welder, 5 year pipe fitting apentiship, I looked my instructors , middle age men coughing up there lungs , and realised there are no old Welders , good ones yes , but no old ones ..so I swapped over to domestic central heating service, repairs…fiberglass is as bad
Indeed have the average salary for welders at Ā£18.37 in the UK and Ā£22.90 in London. I wouldnāt be falling over myself to work for that much in a physical job likely to shave years of my life
My brother in law was a welder. Earned good money, but shit working conditions. Also repeatedly made redundant and rehired as needs of business kept changing. Heās now a part time janitor and much happier, even though much poorer.
From my perspective a lot of the problem is this country is thereās people out there willing to do the work but employers are extremely selective for no real reason and opportunities to start from the ground up are limited. Whenever a vacancy crops up they expect a perfect candidate with decades of experience who can work at lightning pace.
I went back to college and got qualifications in joinery in my 20ās whilst working with my mate whoās a joiner during that time. He couldnāt keep me in work forever but he enabled me to gain some practical experience whilst gaining the relevant qualifications. After gaining those qualifications I spent three years getting knocked back from god knows how many jobs before eventually moving to Australia and within a couple of days Iād secured a job working as a metal fabricator. I did that for 9 months, picked up a lot of new skills and felt my experience in joinery helped in that job. My employer was all for sponsoring me but unfortunately covid arrived and I had to return home. After coming home I applied for joinery and metal fabrication jobs and didnāt get a single interview. I now work as an engineers assistant for a large company in warehousing, it pays fairly well and itās not a bad job but I donāt make much use of the skills Iāve acquired and the āengineeringā aspect of it is very limited. Every now and again Iāll apply for something closer to what Iām qualified in and never even get an interview.
Iāve said this for years now but one of the best things this country could do would be to set up something similar to Rooseveltās Civilian Conservation Corps in America back in the day. Employ people on a low to reasonable wage, provide training in key trades this country needs and use said workforce for infrastructure projects and house building. A double edged sword that could help fix infrastructure issues whilst also upskilling the nations workforce. It wonāt happen though because the political class of this country are short-termist, vision-less morons.
40 years ago, when I was studying electrical and electronic engineering, the old guy who ran the program recommended we choose a career in high voltage systems: transformers, power grid… that sort of thing… as, he said, although microelectronics was the popular choice, the country needed high voltage engineers to replace the old guys.
I wonder if that’s still the case…
Welding pays somewhat decently but damn if it isn’t a job I’d ever do – too easy to break yourself from burns to inhaling gas, to metal shavings. Too dangerous.
I work in construction and there is a huge disparity in native welder quality compared to import. Part of this is becuase construction wages are not the same as nuclear, offshore etc, but the majority of the welders on my site (70 or so at peak) have been and will be foreign sourced.
We’re a few years a way from reaping the reward for going the American route of companies not training. Until they do then there’s nothing that’s going to help
Aircraft industry is the same we are struggling to find young people with good hand skills ( except their thumbs of course) Schools need to go back to teaching basic skills. There are loads of educated idiots out there with a degree and no basic hand skills.
I work in health and safety consulting. I have many different clients. I work predominantly in workplace monitoring which includes steel fabricators. Iāll go in and monitor operators exposure to welding fumes by affixing monitors to them. Results can be pretty high compared to their WELs especially if there are little controls in place. Fumes are tiny particles containing many different metals plus ozone. The best way to minimise the risk to health from inhalation is using a combo of RPE (PAPR) and local ventilation extraction (LEV). Also admin controls will help.
My neighbor has been a fabricator / welder since leaving school ( 50 now). I hear him every morning coughing his lungs up. I asked him once if he regretted his career path. Guess the answer ?
I’d love to learn to weld, however I can’t financially justify leaving my current job to trade up. Prison officer on Ā£40k with a family, dying to leave to earn a trade and live a happier life.
Maybe we should see this coming and expand training before it happens.
Companies used to have in house training where new hires could learn from the existing pros, and (if they picked it up which most did) they’d have a job at the end of it. This scheme sounds great, but it’s problematic that it’s newsworthy, not the norm.
I work in this industry. Two things to add to the discourse.
1) the HSE require ventilated air fed masks now when welding steel. So if you work for someone who isnāt providing that then you can push to have it provided.
2) The Welding Institute allows ātime servedā welders to complete the European Welding Engineer course meaning you can (for a fair cost) switch to an office based Engineer job mid career without doing a degree. Welding engineering is a role that really likes to see practical experience more than,say, civil eng.
Nice one
I got out of welding when still young a time served welder warned my Dad about the health effects he suffered. Typically at the end of a shift even if you were wearing a protective mask and using fume extraction the inside of the protective gauss was lined with a brown sludge. Many welders never reached retirement suffering dehabiltating respiratory problems leading to early death.
Cause honestly it’s not a great jobĀ youre spending your health to make good money and even then you need to be a really really good welder if you want the really good money. You need to be able to grt x out of y welds perfect according to x ray machines for a lot of the high end welding jobs and honestly its not ducking easy as someone who’s only had some tangential education in engineering.
Not easy, not great conditions and as someone else mentioned theres a lot of hazardous materials involved that take years off your life.
This was starting to happen many many years ago.
My ex’s grandfather, who was called Percy, was a trained welder, he worked his whole life at Ransomes in Ipswich, helping make lawnmowers.
The time came for Ransomes to downsize, so they needed to make some workers redundant. Percy went to the management and demanded that he be among those made redundant, since he was near the age of retirement and he wanted to save a younger worker’s job. It apparently took him quite a bit of pushing to be allowed to do this, because Ransomes didn’t want to lose a welder.
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Young guy on our street been learning to weld for the last couple of years. He told me that there are a lot of jobs available, and on good money. He also told me that most don’t even stay on the course for more than a few weeks, or even days. Those who leave say its because it’s often cold or it’s hard, heavy work.
Could become a problem in the near future.
Tecforce are a great company. Anyone around Derby looking for a solid trade, I recommend looking into this.
Fibre Laser Welder – once these become mainstream in a couple of years anyone with five minutes experience will be able to do the job better than most experienced mig/ tig welders today
The only skill will be ability to read drawings
It doesnāt help that apprenticeships are still chaotic. You simply donāt know if the training you get from one company will make you employable by another.
Whatever happened to “AI will take all the jobs” in news Today?
I guess we’re assuming robots will do all the trade skills and with no tea breaks.
It’s the same problem as every other industry. Companies want experienced people only and they’re unwilling to take people who can weld but don’t have two years experience.
Just to highlight the ludicrousness, I did a welding night class for three months, mig, tig and mma welding. I also have verbal agreement that a local community development fund are willing to pay my entire wage at a welding job for some amount of time. But the companies I’ve contacted with help from someone at Enable are yet to take us up on this offer of a free welder.
Scotland btw.
If it’s needed, wages will rise until the jobs can be filled. More people will train and it’ll balance out.
I work in the welding industry. The vast majority of fabricator shops are abysmal, freezing cold, absolute garbage air quality, miserably dirty work and overall crap working conditions. As a man in my 30s I’d rather stack shelves in asda for half the wage than work in a fab shop. Nobody will do the job until conditions improve.
Unfortunately a lot of bigger companies gave next to no opportunities to people for a decade or two. Despite being warned the management done nothing and are now playing catch up for skills and experience depletion that’s happening to their work forces
My nephew just got a job in this- lucrative. Heās not going to be far off higher tax band as a teenager
I hope in the future more companies offer shorter weeks, I found it really physically demanding full time plus companies always want you to do overtime and work Saturdayās which is just depressing, donāt think I would go back into it unless it was part time, the amount of hazards you are exposed to aswell, is it really worth it?
if schools didn’t push UNI so much then people would go to trades , being told apprenticeship aren’t worth it and UNI is the best option constantly doesn’t help
It’s easy to see this as being the problem of a “soft” generation, but the job is inherently dangerous, physically demanding, and the wages at the entry level are pitiful if not insulting – nowhere near enough to be liveable.
> A welding firm in Derby has launched an in-house training facility in an attempt tackle a declining and ageing workforce.
This is the way it was up until the 90s.
Employers needed staff, they trained them up to do their job and many jobs were for life.
If you went back in time no one would believe that in the future it would be a revolutionary idea.
I work in this field and our production manager was complaining about not being able to hire apprentices or young, qualified welders,
I put it like this – you could get into welding but even in a decent fab shop itās cold in winter, roasting in summer, noisy, dirty, loud and full of fume (even with good LEV system thereāll be residual fume despite what people think) or you could work in a call centre on better money, AC in the summer, heating in the winter, no H&S issues (not in comparison anyways).
The only way we can get younger people into the industry is more pay (overtime is a necessity to get decent money), better work life balance and overall better conditions.
Just go slinging and lifting,it’s the same money and much easier to learn.
Was a welder, 5 year pipe fitting apentiship, I looked my instructors , middle age men coughing up there lungs , and realised there are no old Welders , good ones yes , but no old ones ..so I swapped over to domestic central heating service, repairs…fiberglass is as bad
Indeed have the average salary for welders at Ā£18.37 in the UK and Ā£22.90 in London. I wouldnāt be falling over myself to work for that much in a physical job likely to shave years of my life
My brother in law was a welder. Earned good money, but shit working conditions. Also repeatedly made redundant and rehired as needs of business kept changing. Heās now a part time janitor and much happier, even though much poorer.
From my perspective a lot of the problem is this country is thereās people out there willing to do the work but employers are extremely selective for no real reason and opportunities to start from the ground up are limited. Whenever a vacancy crops up they expect a perfect candidate with decades of experience who can work at lightning pace.
I went back to college and got qualifications in joinery in my 20ās whilst working with my mate whoās a joiner during that time. He couldnāt keep me in work forever but he enabled me to gain some practical experience whilst gaining the relevant qualifications. After gaining those qualifications I spent three years getting knocked back from god knows how many jobs before eventually moving to Australia and within a couple of days Iād secured a job working as a metal fabricator. I did that for 9 months, picked up a lot of new skills and felt my experience in joinery helped in that job. My employer was all for sponsoring me but unfortunately covid arrived and I had to return home. After coming home I applied for joinery and metal fabrication jobs and didnāt get a single interview. I now work as an engineers assistant for a large company in warehousing, it pays fairly well and itās not a bad job but I donāt make much use of the skills Iāve acquired and the āengineeringā aspect of it is very limited. Every now and again Iāll apply for something closer to what Iām qualified in and never even get an interview.
Iāve said this for years now but one of the best things this country could do would be to set up something similar to Rooseveltās Civilian Conservation Corps in America back in the day. Employ people on a low to reasonable wage, provide training in key trades this country needs and use said workforce for infrastructure projects and house building. A double edged sword that could help fix infrastructure issues whilst also upskilling the nations workforce. It wonāt happen though because the political class of this country are short-termist, vision-less morons.
40 years ago, when I was studying electrical and electronic engineering, the old guy who ran the program recommended we choose a career in high voltage systems: transformers, power grid… that sort of thing… as, he said, although microelectronics was the popular choice, the country needed high voltage engineers to replace the old guys.
I wonder if that’s still the case…
Welding pays somewhat decently but damn if it isn’t a job I’d ever do – too easy to break yourself from burns to inhaling gas, to metal shavings. Too dangerous.
I work in construction and there is a huge disparity in native welder quality compared to import. Part of this is becuase construction wages are not the same as nuclear, offshore etc, but the majority of the welders on my site (70 or so at peak) have been and will be foreign sourced.
We’re a few years a way from reaping the reward for going the American route of companies not training. Until they do then there’s nothing that’s going to help
Aircraft industry is the same we are struggling to find young people with good hand skills ( except their thumbs of course) Schools need to go back to teaching basic skills. There are loads of educated idiots out there with a degree and no basic hand skills.
I work in health and safety consulting. I have many different clients. I work predominantly in workplace monitoring which includes steel fabricators. Iāll go in and monitor operators exposure to welding fumes by affixing monitors to them. Results can be pretty high compared to their WELs especially if there are little controls in place. Fumes are tiny particles containing many different metals plus ozone. The best way to minimise the risk to health from inhalation is using a combo of RPE (PAPR) and local ventilation extraction (LEV). Also admin controls will help.
My neighbor has been a fabricator / welder since leaving school ( 50 now). I hear him every morning coughing his lungs up. I asked him once if he regretted his career path. Guess the answer ?
I’d love to learn to weld, however I can’t financially justify leaving my current job to trade up. Prison officer on Ā£40k with a family, dying to leave to earn a trade and live a happier life.
Maybe we should see this coming and expand training before it happens.
Companies used to have in house training where new hires could learn from the existing pros, and (if they picked it up which most did) they’d have a job at the end of it. This scheme sounds great, but it’s problematic that it’s newsworthy, not the norm.
I work in this industry. Two things to add to the discourse.
1) the HSE require ventilated air fed masks now when welding steel. So if you work for someone who isnāt providing that then you can push to have it provided.
2) The Welding Institute allows ātime servedā welders to complete the European Welding Engineer course meaning you can (for a fair cost) switch to an office based Engineer job mid career without doing a degree. Welding engineering is a role that really likes to see practical experience more than,say, civil eng.
Nice one
I got out of welding when still young a time served welder warned my Dad about the health effects he suffered. Typically at the end of a shift even if you were wearing a protective mask and using fume extraction the inside of the protective gauss was lined with a brown sludge. Many welders never reached retirement suffering dehabiltating respiratory problems leading to early death.
Cause honestly it’s not a great jobĀ youre spending your health to make good money and even then you need to be a really really good welder if you want the really good money. You need to be able to grt x out of y welds perfect according to x ray machines for a lot of the high end welding jobs and honestly its not ducking easy as someone who’s only had some tangential education in engineering.
Not easy, not great conditions and as someone else mentioned theres a lot of hazardous materials involved that take years off your life.
This was starting to happen many many years ago.
My ex’s grandfather, who was called Percy, was a trained welder, he worked his whole life at Ransomes in Ipswich, helping make lawnmowers.
The time came for Ransomes to downsize, so they needed to make some workers redundant. Percy went to the management and demanded that he be among those made redundant, since he was near the age of retirement and he wanted to save a younger worker’s job. It apparently took him quite a bit of pushing to be allowed to do this, because Ransomes didn’t want to lose a welder.
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