should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for money?

[Bernie2]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

Hmm!

All this 4 years hard work to justify being a Plumber is silly. If it goes on length of time and hard work in the game then 65 year olds should be on at least £1000 an hour.
Nearly every construction or engineering job requires hard work Plumbing is no exception.
And good or bad trades people seem to come from all the age groups.

And yes there are those who would like the game to be exclusive, but when you ask why, it's usually a case of trying to look after themselves or fear of competition. The thing is competition keeps you sharp and determine to be good at the game, so you can attract business.

All this makes keeping gas fitting sales exclusive only to registered fitters silly as well, that is unless you can absorb the complete production run of many hundreds of thousands of fittings made each year by the likes of IMI, Yorkshire and the likes.

What do you do with their production workers if they can not sell those goods on the open market, fire them?

It is already against the law for unregistered people to do gas work for cash. That is enough. It is also against the law to installe a dangerous system. Do so and find out what the HSE do?

So the law is already there.

I am not a Maggie Thatcher fan by any means but she said "Easy profit is bad for companies!" and that was from a Tory. What she meant by that, is that companies become lazy and don't look for faster, more economical and efficient ways to do things, so when competition does occur they can't match the other company's on cost so go out of business.

Unfortunately the Japanese did that to the Brit motorcycle industry in the sixties and the low pay countries have been doing it to the UK for many years. We simply do not invest enough in our people, we can not afford to perhaps huddle and protect ourselves. We simply have to learn to compete.

Lets be honest, the Polish Plumbers were good enough to take loads of work off the Brits, perhaps basically on price, but they got it we did not. We have to meet that sort of challenge by being better at the job, more efficient and cost effective. If we don't somebody else will.

 

[WaterTight]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

Hi Fuzzy - you seem to be the right person to ask this:

All I have in terms of quals is the Tech Cert Level 2. Achieved 2 years ago. Worked alongside several gas safe guys doing plumbing and heating since then and now do part sub work for a jobbing plumber and part my own jobbing plumbing. I've never really been taught anything on the heating side of things, just bits observed and general basic understanding.

At the moment it's mission-making-ends-meet. In the future when some spare cash might come along, I had dreamed of adding gas work to my box of slowly expanding tricks. To be perefectly honest as much out of interest in the subject and feeling "incomplete" without it as it is for the extra work and money.

With the new qualifications now being rolled out what route do you think I'd have to take and what would it involve? And would my qualification make my route any quicker or be of no relevance whatsoever?

Thanks.

 

[Reg Man]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

Its sad that there are not the good oppotunities for proper apprenticeships which there were 35 to 40 years ago. There are so many people who wish to enter this industry. Good news is, my son has just started a proper apprenticeship, College on day release and four days hands on at work.

 

[jase158]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

All this 4 years hard work justifying being a Plumber is silly. If it goes on length of time and hard work in the game then 65 year olds should be on at least £1000 an hour.

so your saying it is ok for these untrained handymen to leave this 65 year old man out of work. My point is that if you have trained to be a qualified person or had many years experience in your role, why should somebody else be allowed to come and take your work. You wouldnt do a doctors work on your friend or do surgery on your friends so why is it that anybody can do plumbing. My point is not that i want to keep the work to myself or that it will be a closed industry. simply it will mean that people who do the work are either experienced or qualified.

What i am talking about is somebody charging stupidly low prices as they live in shared accomadation with 5 of them living in a one bedroom flat. so they do not need to feed there wife and children. These people are stealing my work. so they can afford to charge £5 per hour and are happy living off this, does this mean that i should move my wife and children into a one bedroom flat and get the children to work. so i can charge £5 per hour. After all i am only doing 4 years training thats all i deserve.

Simply put i went to college because i enjoy construction and i enjoy plumbing. i want to be able to support my children and wife and i want to be a good respectable person in the community. So i feel that as a qualified plumber it is your right to be able to charge a fair price to the customer and a fair price to myself.

you have a fair point about new technologies and doing the work faster, But this is another point altogether.

 

[jase158]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

But then there is the other point, which nobody has brought up yet. If the customers are willing to pay these cowboys, then they are not the customers we are looking for, these sort of people dont pay, take ages to pay and complain about none existing problems to get the price reduced

 

[jase158]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

the other point you brought up bernie 2 is that yorkshire fittings and the like will have to sack staff, well no, because if all plumbers fitted BS standard fittings instead of cheap remakes then yorkshire would actually benefit.

I do believe that fittings should be only sold to gas engineers, as why would anybody else need a boiler if they are not gas safe registered, are you going to use it as an ornament in the garden or use it as a foot rest??????
only problem with this is the amount plumbers will add ontop of the sale price?

have you seen this video, [video=youtube;EPSMBDQ5XwU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPSMBDQ5XwU[/video]

 

[Bernie2]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

Hi! jase158,

Why do some people suppose just because they have done a college course they have worked hard and can then sit back and make a good living?

Many Plumbers spent years at the game and never had a decent wage.

It was in the past extremely difficult to become a Plumber if you had not served your time as a teenager.
The older person was usually condemned to be a labourer on low pay for the rest of their working life, despite the fact they may very well have worked just as hard at their job as any teenager and perhaps for longer. It seems unfair to deny thenm the chance to make a living in Plumbing.

Polish Plumbers may be rough, but it seems, it was Brit company's that hired them instead of our own Plumbers, because we charged to much. I don't think the idea that all Polish Plumber are no good is correct either. The company's who bid for contracts usually know certain standards of workmanship have to be observed, so unless they are silly they are hardly likely to take on people they thought where incompetent.

If you restrict the sale of gas fittings to just Gas Safe people then the cost to company's of making limited runs of what would become specialist fittings would be fantastically high. Then their selling on price to the specialists would be fantastic as well. And eventually the customer would have to pay. That is not fair.

As I have said the laws already exist to stop cowboys if you want more inspectors then we should pay Gas Safe to supply them.

And as you probably know most gas fittings swap over with Plumbing fittings anyway, so it would be hard to restrict supply and people could simply import them off the internet anyway.

Incidentally its not against the gas regs to do your own gas work in your own home if it meets the required standards and your competent to do so. So the DIY market is still big.

But if you are talking restricting appliances to Gas Safe people only, then that would be acceptable if Gas Safe registered people are not allowed to add any mark up and the customer could choose from the manufactures price's.

In short the customer gets to choose what they want at the price they want to pay.

 

[plumbster3456]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

Hi! jase158,

Why do some people suppose just because they have done a college course they have worked hard and can then sit back and make a good living?

Many Plumbers spent years at the game and never had a decent wage.

It was in the past extremely difficult to become a Plumber if you had not served your time as a teenager.
The older person was usually condemned to be a labourer on low pay for the rest of their working life, despite the fact they may very well have worked just as hard at their job as any teenager and perhaps for longer. It seems unfair to deny thenm the chance to make a living in Plumbing.

Polish Plumbers may be rough, but it seems, it was Brit company's that hired them instead of our own Plumbers, because we charged to much. I don't think the idea that all Polish Plumber are no good is correct either. The company's who bid for contracts usually know certain standards of workmanship have to be observed, so unless they are silly they are hardly likely to take on people they thought where incompetent.

If you restrict the sale of gas fittings to just Gas Safe people then the cost to company's of making limited runs of what would become specialist fittings would be fantastically high. Then their selling on price to the specialists would be fantastic as well. And eventually the customer would have to pay. That is not fair.

As I have said the laws already exist to stop cowboys if you want more inspectors then we should pay Gas Safe to supply them.

And as you probably know most gas fittings swap over with Plumbing fittings anyway, so it would be hard to restrict supply and people could simply import them off the internet anyway.

Incidentally its not against the gas regs to do your own gas work in your own home if it meets the required standards and your competent to do so. So the DIY market is still big.

But if you are talking restricting appliances to Gas Safe people only, then that would be acceptable if Gas Safe registered people are not allowed to add any mark up and the customer could choose from the manufactures price's.

In short the customer gets to choose what they want at the price they want to pay.

give yourself a rest please the customer this the customer that blah blah blah ssssshhhhhhhh.
I get everything from the merchants ,part centre etc less than half the price a customer would pay so even if I double the price I have paid I am still making a healthy profit and they are not paying more so there mr know it all.
I think bernie has slept with a plumber now he thinks he is one 3 week course and all it is ripping right out you bernie

 

[fuzzy]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

Hi Fuzzy - you seem to be the right person to ask this:

All I have in terms of quals is the Tech Cert Level 2. Achieved 2 years ago. Worked alongside several gas safe guys doing plumbing and heating since then and now do part sub work for a jobbing plumber and part my own jobbing plumbing. I've never really been taught anything on the heating side of things, just bits observed and general basic understanding.

At the moment it's mission-making-ends-meet. In the future when some spare cash might come along, I had dreamed of adding gas work to my box of slowly expanding tricks. To be perefectly honest as much out of interest in the subject and feeling "incomplete" without it as it is for the extra work and money.

With the new qualifications now being rolled out what route do you think I'd have to take and what would it involve? And would my qualification make my route any quicker or be of no relevance whatsoever?

Thanks.

You should be able to still upgrade tour tech certs to the new diploma but there may be some cross over that needs completing, you may find yourself in a stronger position than those who have already got their NVQs. As for gas safe you need to wait or find an opportunity to work with GSRinstallers and build up evidence, take it from there and good luck

 

[fuzzy]

Re: should government make it law to be qualified plumber to do plumbing work for mon

why shouldnt the trade require 4 year apprenticeships to be qualified?