Trades Use Front Door

Years ago some of the finer homes in up-scale neighbourhoods used to post a sign on the gate that said “Trades Use Back”. The implication being that tradesmen should go around to the rear of the house so they would not be seen entering the front door. Doctors, lawyers, accountants and the local politician could use the front entrance. Nowadays, doctors no longer call, solicitors and accountants have office hours downtown and the politicians are used to slipping around to the back entrance.

If you are lucky enough to find a tradesperson to solve your latest home dilemma you would be happy to greet them at the front door. It used to be that working in the trades did not pay a high wage, but it was respectable work. With higher wages came social respectability. A skilled mechanic, electrician or plumber could live quite comfortably and any person who owned a trades business was included in the social register, albeit at the bottom of the listing.

Young men, and the occasional young woman, who took the ‘shop’ route for their education were generally thought not capable of getting the high marks to continue through the regular curriculum. Even in our class-less society, the guys in Shop would not be encouraged to complete their high school, but to get out into the world and get a job. They could earn a decent living being mechanics, plumbers, electricians and carpenters. Doctoring, Soliciting and Accounting were positions reserved for those who would go on to college and university.

The old stigma of being a tradesperson has long gone, but there is a growing need for people who want to make a career from the trades. Trades people are in high demand for construction of new facilities where the rush to bring new projects to life often encourages overtime work and the related high paycheques. Those who work in the maintenance end of the trades, fixing broken devices or repairing older structures are guaranteed enough work to keep them gainfully employed.

But here in the north there is a growing alarm in some trades over the lack of new workers coming online to replace the retirees. Because of our climate, many construction projects are deferred to the months when a person can work efficiently out of doors. As a result, workers had to be laid off during the winter if the business could not afford to carry them while they did ‘busy’ work around the shop. These laid-off trades people are mobile and once they followed the work south, they often stayed there.

For a while a trades company could hire summer students to fill in, doing the less skilled jobs, but these students usually went on to other careers as doctors, lawyers and accountants. The core workers in these northern trades could supervisor a number of students but as these old-timers retire there is a big gap in the experience needed to run the businesses.

I know of one roofing company that is going to close when its oldest employee retires next year. This is one of the few companies in the area that has the skills needed to replace and repair flat asphalt roofing. It seems there is more to fixing a flat roof than piping burning hot tar onto a roof (without starting a fire), swabbing the tar onto the felt liner and sprinkling some stones on the cooling tar. New membranes require special installation if they are to remain leak-less for more than a few years, new binding agents need proper application and these skills are now very portable to the busy south.

How does a company keep its window installers, cabinet and kitchen workers and carpet installers over the winter months when there is little or no work for them? Are we all going to have to learn to hang our own doors? Sure I can do it myself following the instructions from a How-To book from the Public Library, but the running commentary from my mate about chipping the door frame and marring the paint, not to mention the tear in the wallpaper is just not worth it. Besides, a door sweep only stops so much of winter’s blast.

Anyone who has ended up on the far side of a room with a scorched screwdriver in their hand will want to call the tradesperson listed under Electrician in the yellow pages the next time. Even Dagwood Bumstead has to call the plumber once in a while when a simple washer change turns into a job requiring soldering in places where only one hand will fit.

Do we need some kind of subsidy program for the trades to keep them viable during our winter months or are we going to have start paying higher rates to the trades so they can keep employees? We all shudder when we see the plumber write down his $70 per hour, minimum one hour per call, but is he or his boss just trying to keep the business afloat? Should there be, for instance, some extra tax relief for owners who send their workers to school or on courses during the winter?

Most of us who grew up in the north are fairly self-reliant, but as the world around us becomes more technically sophisticated we are going to have to call in a trained tradesperson for help. In the smaller towns and villages these people are getting harder to find, so it soon becomes a case of if the Mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed will have to move to the city or worse still, follow our trades people down to the smoggy south.

It is bad enough to not have a doctor to look after you in your golden years, but what happens when the gas furnace fails and there is no tradesperson available to keep you from freezing? The Geeks with their little green Volkswagens might be able to reboot your computer and coerce Windows XP into running again, but can they replace that broken crank on your bedroom window so the draft is subdued to a breeze instead of the gale that has been adding huge dollars to your electrical bill?

Maybe we will just have to rely on the old laws of supply and demand, hoping that there will be somebody around to help us when we need them. In the meantime I am going to make sure the coffee pot is on for the plumber or electrician when next they come to my front door.