When it comes down to it, it’s really about the stigma.
For high schoolers with any ambition, a career as a blue-collar worker seems like settling for something less. It seems like selling yourself short, or giving up on your dreams – or, to be honest, it seems like admitting you’re not smart enough for an office job.
But if the true measure of success in a career is financial stability, not to mention job stability, then training in the trades is becoming a nearly surefire path to that success for young Canadians.
With the retirement of thousands of baby boomers who make up a majority of tradespeople, Canada, and the construction industry in particular, is facing a looming crisis. The industry is becoming more and more desperate for skilled tradespeople.
Rory Kulmala, chief executive of the Vancouver Island Construction Association, expects B.C. to be short about 15,000 skilled tradespeople by 2025.
So how do we fix this? How can we encourage more young people to pursue the plethora of well-subsidized training programs designed to funnel them into stable, well-paid trades that will always be in demand?
Daniel Greenhalgh, ENM’s co-founder, says the problem is simple – these are jobs that not many people want to do.
“There’s no doubt that these jobs are hard, dirty work. You’re carrying 105 pound batteries, you’re covered in grease, you’ve got to start from the bottom and really work your way up. But the fact is, in a lot of trades, you can get a six-figure job right out of college or a training program in a career that’ll last you for the rest of your life. You can set yourself up for an early retirement, have plenty of savings and raise a family fairly comfortably as a worker in one of the Red Seal trades.”
Daniel says it’s hard to believe that at ENM, he can pay someone who’s essentially a broom pusher a higher salary than most sociologists with Master’s degrees can get in their careers. “It’s a lot harder to make six figures as, say, an IT guy than it is as a mechanic or a plumber. But it’s about supply and demand – there’ll never be a shortage of IT guys, or lawyers, or programmers that want to make video games. But there’s a huge need for Red Seal Tradespeople. And there are tons of programs and grants that make it financially and logistically easy to get the training you’d need. You can check out the Employment Program of B.C., the B.C. Access Grant for Labour Market Priorities through Student Aid B.C. – they have grants or programs to funnel people into the trades. But until that stigma is lifted, the shortage is going to continue. And it’s going to hurt the quality of worksmanship for the entire construction industry, not to mention other skilled trades, for the coming generation.”
