The Fiatization of My Job
I am an electrician, broadly speaking. Four years ago, I was an apprentice. Today, I am a foreman. For a few years in between, I was just a standard-issue journeyman. That I was promoted to foreman after just a few short years could optimistically be interpreted as proof of my superior intelligence, or just as well as a sign of the increasingly scant quality human resources in the skilled trades. There weren't many options to choose from when the 30 year vet they had lined up pulled out, and they had to take whatever they could get, even if it wasn't ideal. I sure didn't feel ready to run a crew of 20, wiring a 100-unit apartment building as my first project in charge (what experience I have has largely been in concrete commercial construction; wood frame residential is an entirely different ballgame).
Before my recent promotion into the dismal ranks of middle management, I had ideas about how I would run things when I got here. Notions of improved professionalism, quality-of-workmanship, efficiency, and education for apprentices. Like so many of the recently promoted (or elected, I would imagine), I have now had the full weight of my naivité impressed upon me by the human-logistical constraints of the job market, and a race to the bottom for competitive bids.
The tradition of apprenticeship in the trades, or craftsmanship generally, is one that goes back for centuries, even millenia. Divine origins notwithstanding, someone had to teach young Jesus the art of carpentry. And long before him, uncountable generations of of elder masters have been handing down the techniques of shaping and assembling the useful materials of our world; wood, bronze, iron, all the way back to the crude stone hand axes at the dawn of proto-humanity. Education in the material arts is inherently physical, and can be accomplished only by doing; poorly at first, then a bit better, and a bit better, and so on. There is only so much armchair philosophizing one can do about smithery; sooner or later you need to go hammer on a piece of steel and see how it reacts.
The role of the apprentice is, and has always been, two-fold. The apprentice is:
1. A student.
2. A source of cheap labour.
The two are inseparable. The cheap labour is how the apprentice pays for their education, and frees up the older, experienced master to do the more complex aspects of the job. Contrary to some journeymans' opinions, it's not about "earning the right to not do hard labour anymore." It is merely an economic calculus. The boy cannot yet be trusted to terminate the high voltage connections, but he can haul in the heavy cables, and perhaps faster than the older man by benefit of his youth. But if the boy is not there that day, the man will haul in the cables. No one is above the hard physical work. There are many on modern jobsites who seem to have forgotten this.
From my vantage point working for a particular company in a particular trade, it seems that these two aspects are very frequently out of balance. Namely, I feel that we (I speak now for my company, specifically, but it's a problem in the industry broadly) are failing to give our apprentices a proper education and leaning on them too much for their cheap labour. This ultimately leads to poorer quality journeymen in the future, who do poorer work and give the next generation of apprentices an even poorer education than they received. It is a recursive spiral of degradation, created by the delusion that competent journeymen can simply be produced by fiat, without proof-of-work.
This is a yet another example of enshittification brought on by high time preference. On any given day, an apprentice is more economically profitable to a company as cheap labour, with the absolute minimum amount of training being given to them to do the task at hand acceptably. An hour spent learning is an hour spent not pulling wire and installing lights. At their lower rate of pay, there is also an incentive to make the crew as "bottom heavy" (that is, more apprentices and less journeymen) as possible, with only the minimum number of journeymen necessary to do the really critical stuff (distribution, live work, etc).
What this amounts to is a few overworked journeymen doing all the complex work with little opportunity to pass on their knowledge, and an army of unruly youngsters hacking and slashing their way through the building, screwing things up as they go because they don't have the guidance and mentorship they need to consistently do it right the first time. The time spent redoing and repairing things, and how much of it could be avoided through better training, is difficult to quantify and thus gets too easily ignored.
There exist laws that aim to put a limit on this in regulated trades: journeyman-to-apprentice ratios. In my trade, in my jurisdiction, the limit is 2 apprentices to 1 journeyman. That is the bare minimum level of supervision allowed by law.
We consistently run 4:1 on my site.
My father tells me that when he was laying brick back in the '80's, his ratio was 2:1 but inversed: 2 journeymen to 1 apprentice.
The free market libertarian in me is conflicted on these laws. They're well intentioned, and they probably make work more pleasant (when they're followed), but they are nonetheless an infringement on a company's freedom to run itself poorly.
I have informed upper management (who determine the composition of my crew) that we are in violation of the law. I will do what I can with what I have available to me for the time being. I will not go tattle to the government. But I will not take any shit about the project being behind schedule.
Perhaps it is time to find a new job. There will come a day when it is time to strike out on my own, but that time is not yet. Electrical work is not something you learn in 4 years and then just apply for the rest of your life. The physics never change, but the technology is constantly in flux. The most recent edition of the Canadian Electrical Code (part 1 of 3) is about 1000 pages long. Provincial and municipal regulations on top of that. Building code and fire code to contend with as well. Running a business, liasing with engineers, building clientelle... A more free and noble career awaits, but there is so much to learn, so much to learn...
If you need to hire a contractor (electrical or otherwise), I would implore you not to just go with the lowest bid. High prices do not automatically mean high quality, but the inverse is almost always true; low prices usually mean low quality. You simply cannot do good work for bargain-bin prices for long without going out of business. Do some due diligence on the people you hire, and try to support quality workmanship.
Lord knows, we could use a bit more of that these days.
I am an electrician, broadly speaking. Four years ago, I was an apprentice. Today, I am a foreman. For a few years in between, I was just a standard-issue journeyman. That I was promoted to foreman after just a few short years could optimistically be interpreted as proof of my superior intelligence, or just as well as a sign of the increasingly scant quality human resources in the skilled trades. There weren't many options to choose from when the 30 year vet they had lined up pulled out, and they had to take whatever they could get, even if it wasn't ideal. I sure didn't feel ready to run a crew of 20, wiring a 100-unit apartment building as my first project in charge (what experience I have has largely been in concrete commercial construction; wood frame residential is an entirely different ballgame).
Before my recent promotion into the dismal ranks of middle management, I had ideas about how I would run things when I got here. Notions of improved professionalism, quality-of-workmanship, efficiency, and education for apprentices. Like so many of the recently promoted (or elected, I would imagine), I have now had the full weight of my naivité impressed upon me by the human-logistical constraints of the job market, and a race to the bottom for competitive bids.
The tradition of apprenticeship in the trades, or craftsmanship generally, is one that goes back for centuries, even millenia. Divine origins notwithstanding, someone had to teach young Jesus the art of carpentry. And long before him, uncountable generations of of elder masters have been handing down the techniques of shaping and assembling the useful materials of our world; wood, bronze, iron, all the way back to the crude stone hand axes at the dawn of proto-humanity. Education in the material arts is inherently physical, and can be accomplished only by doing; poorly at first, then a bit better, and a bit better, and so on. There is only so much armchair philosophizing one can do about smithery; sooner or later you need to go hammer on a piece of steel and see how it reacts.
The role of the apprentice is, and has always been, two-fold. The apprentice is:
1. A student.
2. A source of cheap labour.
The two are inseparable. The cheap labour is how the apprentice pays for their education, and frees up the older, experienced master to do the more complex aspects of the job. Contrary to some journeymans' opinions, it's not about "earning the right to not do hard labour anymore." It is merely an economic calculus. The boy cannot yet be trusted to terminate the high voltage connections, but he can haul in the heavy cables, and perhaps faster than the older man by benefit of his youth. But if the boy is not there that day, the man will haul in the cables. No one is above the hard physical work. There are many on modern jobsites who seem to have forgotten this.
From my vantage point working for a particular company in a particular trade, it seems that these two aspects are very frequently out of balance. Namely, I feel that we (I speak now for my company, specifically, but it's a problem in the industry broadly) are failing to give our apprentices a proper education and leaning on them too much for their cheap labour. This ultimately leads to poorer quality journeymen in the future, who do poorer work and give the next generation of apprentices an even poorer education than they received. It is a recursive spiral of degradation, created by the delusion that competent journeymen can simply be produced by fiat, without proof-of-work.
This is a yet another example of enshittification brought on by high time preference. On any given day, an apprentice is more economically profitable to a company as cheap labour, with the absolute minimum amount of training being given to them to do the task at hand acceptably. An hour spent learning is an hour spent not pulling wire and installing lights. At their lower rate of pay, there is also an incentive to make the crew as "bottom heavy" (that is, more apprentices and less journeymen) as possible, with only the minimum number of journeymen necessary to do the really critical stuff (distribution, live work, etc).
What this amounts to is a few overworked journeymen doing all the complex work with little opportunity to pass on their knowledge, and an army of unruly youngsters hacking and slashing their way through the building, screwing things up as they go because they don't have the guidance and mentorship they need to consistently do it right the first time. The time spent redoing and repairing things, and how much of it could be avoided through better training, is difficult to quantify and thus gets too easily ignored.
There exist laws that aim to put a limit on this in regulated trades: journeyman-to-apprentice ratios. In my trade, in my jurisdiction, the limit is 2 apprentices to 1 journeyman. That is the bare minimum level of supervision allowed by law.
We consistently run 4:1 on my site.
My father tells me that when he was laying brick back in the '80's, his ratio was 2:1 but inversed: 2 journeymen to 1 apprentice.
The free market libertarian in me is conflicted on these laws. They're well intentioned, and they probably make work more pleasant (when they're followed), but they are nonetheless an infringement on a company's freedom to run itself poorly.
I have informed upper management (who determine the composition of my crew) that we are in violation of the law. I will do what I can with what I have available to me for the time being. I will not go tattle to the government. But I will not take any shit about the project being behind schedule.
Perhaps it is time to find a new job. There will come a day when it is time to strike out on my own, but that time is not yet. Electrical work is not something you learn in 4 years and then just apply for the rest of your life. The physics never change, but the technology is constantly in flux. The most recent edition of the Canadian Electrical Code (part 1 of 3) is about 1000 pages long. Provincial and municipal regulations on top of that. Building code and fire code to contend with as well. Running a business, liasing with engineers, building clientelle... A more free and noble career awaits, but there is so much to learn, so much to learn...
If you need to hire a contractor (electrical or otherwise), I would implore you not to just go with the lowest bid. High prices do not automatically mean high quality, but the inverse is almost always true; low prices usually mean low quality. You simply cannot do good work for bargain-bin prices for long without going out of business. Do some due diligence on the people you hire, and try to support quality workmanship.
Lord knows, we could use a bit more of that these days.
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