Whats happening with youngsters

[DPG]

I remember, as a kid, working on a social club extension in Sheffield in the 70's during the builders strike. There were about a half dozen builders with us and the plumbers on site. A couple of union blokes turned up and instructed to down tools. It was a private firm so everyone just carried on but the day after a couple of hundred nutters turned up and roughed up the lad in charge and threatened big damage to the site.....proper bullying on a very large scale.
As it turned out, us and the plumbers were allowed to carry on.

Some of the old union stuff from the 70s and 80s sounds shocking to be honest.

 

[Pete999]

Some of the old union stuff from the 70s and 80s sounds shocking to be honest.

Depends really, on the Mentor, and the youngster, in my experience, if you keep the Youngster, Apprentice or Lad or Lass with the same Mentor as long as possible, providing the Mentor is a good egg the student will turn out a good un, it's continual changes in their training regime that screws many an Apprentice up, trouble is there is so much pressure on Tradesmen of all disciplines to produce as much profit as possible, there seems to be very little attention paid to training for the future, too much emphasis on fast track BS, someone please bring back the old Apprentice route for building trades, electricians included, how many times do we hear of 24 30 year olds looking for Apprenticeships? on a loser to start with at that age because of the social economic pressure on them.
How many of you have heard of reasonably established Electrical contractors employing a Youngster straight from School, and as soon as they can connect a CU up with a degree of safety and competence, chuck them out on site to run it themselves, it happened to me, but I luckily saw the writing on the wall and got out for a long while to retake Quals, and take more notice of what was available to me, there are many past and present forum members who can attest to this method, one in particular, but he has sadly not posted for a long while, he has his reasons I'm sure, and he is one of the good ones.

 

[DPG]

Depends really, on the Mentor, and the youngster, in my experience, if you keep the Youngster, Apprentice or Lad or Lass with the same Mentor as long as possible, providing the Mentor is a good egg the student will turn out a good un, it's continual changes in their training regime that screws many an Apprentice up, trouble is there is so much pressure on Tradesmen of all disciplines to produce as much profit as possible, there seems to be very little attention paid to training for the future, too much emphasis on fast track BS, someone please bring back the old Apprentice route for building trades, electricians included, how many times do we hear of 24 30 year olds looking for Apprenticeships? on a loser to start with at that age because of the social economic pressure on them.
How many of you have heard of reasonably established Electrical contractors employing a Youngster straight from School, and as soon as they can connect a CU up with a degree of safety and competence, chuck them out on site to run it themselves, it happened to me, but I luckily saw the writing on the wall and got out for a long while to retake Quals, and take more notice of what was available to me, there are many past and present forum members who can attest to this method, one in particular, but he has sadly not posted for a long while, he has his reasons I'm sure, and he is one of the good ones.

I'm not on about apprenticeships Pete. I'm on about union practices.

 

[Pete999]

I'm not on about apprenticeships Pete. I'm on about union practices.

Those were bad days Mate TUs have changed dramatically theses days, do you not5 think?

 

[DPG]

Those were bad days Mate TUs have changed dramatically theses days, do you not5 think?

Hopefully so yes.

 

[Pete999]

Hopefully so yes.

Well from my experience within the TU anybody who is a member of a Union, who was or gas been subjected to bullying in any form would be looked after very well, and I have experienced this duing my time as a TU Rep.

 

[KennyKen]

I’m a union member I believe especially on bigger sites they are better. A voice for the boys.

Pete is right about being with One mentor. I was put with one sparks and eventually worked well as a team. As an apprentice I had to think like him, anticipate what tool he would require and he would just stick his hand out lol.