Problems and issues this industry faces and how to deal with them.

[Mick Dempsey]

20 minutes ago, Retired Climber said:

An excellent point. The world of veterinary care suffers in the same way. Vets, and even more so nurses, are paid very poorly as so many people want to do the job. 

As a kid I loved nothing more than battling my way through undergrowth and climbing trees, then people paid me to battle through undergrowth and climb their trees. What a perfect job. 

Yes, this is a factor.

 

[trigger_andy]

44 minutes ago, Retired Climber said:

Do you think the 'rationale' may have anything to do with what they perceive an arb to be worth, per day, per hour etc? 

 

You know what I'm getting at. I can't believe you still think I'm wrong, having had a chance to have a ponder about it, but you still seem to just dance around the points, rather than moving towards an actual answer. 

 

Anyway ,maybe us discussing it is pointless, so I'll simply summarise my point. 

In a nutshell, one of the reasons that arb ( especially as an employee) is very poorly paid, is because the general public think it's a fairly basic, manual labour kind of occupation, and would struggle with the cognitive dissonance created by thinking they were paying their arb more than (what they would term) 'professionals'. 

Surely in any industry costing is based on supply and demand? In Arb there seems to be far more supply than demand and jobs are priced, or more accurately won on this basis. Same goes for an individuals wage, thats based on how hard you are to replace. If you're in an industry where thats fairly easy then you'll be paid accordingly. The only way to mitigate this would be to price fix, but thats never going to work in such an envoronment.

[Retired Climber]

22 minutes ago, Mick Dempsey said:

Why is Arb poorly paid? 

You weren’t completely wrong, just putting too much store in your theory.

Better now:)?
 

Ok, so give us a little glimpse of the magic, throw us a bone so that we can understand a bit better the psychology of it.

 

 

 

It's not my theory. Anything I mention will be very well documented if you do a bit of searching around. Humans are very predictable, and make decisions based on certain sets of rules. You can stack the odds in your favour by understanding these and using what they tell us. Some of the applications I use are my own, and I do have a decent portfolio of original research, however, anything I've said on this thread could be confirmed by any half competent economist. There is nothing here that's ground breaking. 

 

I've already suggested a few psychological principles, in passing. Have a read up on cognitive dissonance, and see if you finding it in any way useful or relevant. 

[AHPP]

How could Mick have won the deodar job for €5000?

[Retired Climber]

11 minutes ago, trigger_andy said:

Surely in any industry costing is based on supply and demand? In Arb there seems to be far more supply than demand and jobs are priced, or more accurately won on this basis. Same goes for an individuals wage, thats based on how hard you are to replace. If you're in an industry where thats fairly easy then you'll be paid accordingly. The only way to mitigate this would be to price fix, but thats never going to work in such an envoronment.

Yep, supply and demand is critical to understanding pay. However, if you take one step back and look at how the demand is generated, everything I have said on this thread fits nicely into the supply and demand model. 

 

Just to be clear, I gave an example of one problem in the industry, and gave one explanation for it. Contrary to Mick's belief, that explanation is right 100%. It is though, just one contributing factor, to one part of one problem. I'm not suggesting that I'm some kind of Guru with all the answers. 

[Retired Climber]

1 minute ago, AHPP said:

How could Mick have won the deodar job for €5000?

Priced it at 600 euro. 

[trigger_andy]

Just now, Retired Climber said:

Yep, supply and demand is critical to understanding pay. However, if you take one step back and look at how the demand is generated, everything I have said on this thread fits nicely into the supply and demand model. 

 

Just to be clear, I gave an example of one problem in the industry, and gave one explanation for it. Contrary to Mick's belief, that explanation is right 100%. It is though, just one contributing factor, to one part of one problem. I'm not suggesting that I'm some kind of Guru with all the answers. 

In the industry I work pay is based on supply and demand, how difficult you are to replace and train but most importantly unionisation.

 

The wages for the Drilling crews would be significantly lower if it where not for union laws as Drilling is very much affected by the market. There is a short lull in Drilling activity coming up for the next 8 months and Drilling operators will be dumping workers. These workers will receive full pay for a full 12 months from NAV. If it was not for wages based on a union matrix the guys out of work might be desperate enough to accept a far lower wage when the market picks up again. 

Another thing the Norgies has right is Social Dumping is illegal's. They can hire people from any nationality they feel like, most likely from the EU but they are not allowed to pay them less than a Norwegian and that is a wage based on the Matrix. So although there is a number of Europeans working in Norway they are paid the same as a Norwegian making the hiring in of foreign labour generally unattractive and generally only done so to fill a technical shortfall. 

Personally Im out of the Matrix and on 'individual' pay meaning that the Unions no longer fight for my wage rises but Im still unionised. I fight for my own pay increase and that comes back to how hard I would be to replace if I left. 

 

The Arb industry will never be unionised and will always have a supply of 'man and saw' far outweighing the demand. With such a supply of 'man and saw' working for himself and happy to make a small profit on each job the wages and true worth of the work carried out in Arb will never be realised. Someone mentioned earlier in the thread about having genuine vocational qualifications and that is something that could work. Would certainly balance out the crux of the issue which is supply and demand. 

[KateH]

22 hours ago, Mick Dempsey said:

All I can say to this is….so what?

 

Who is frowning on us? Why should I care? 

When I work for people like barristers or people with high paying, powerful jobs, I’m not after their respect, I am after their money, it’s a transaction. 
If I was emptying their cesspit I’d feel the same way.

 

It is nice if they show an interest or compliment me, but it’s nicer when the chèque clears and/or they call me back next year.

 

I think this is an issue. The general lack of respect for the skilled and dangerous job climbers do blows my mind. I feel that this may be partly a lack of education; people just don't see the job in their daily lives so don't know about it. It's deeper than that though I think. Which is why I wrote in my recent article that climbers should 'have respect for themselves and their fellow arborists and hold each other up'. That probably shouldn't come from a desk worker and I know it's not everyone (the Canopy Climbing Collective for example seem to do just that) but the negativity that often seems to surround the role frustrates me. Kate

[Mick Dempsey]

1 minute ago, KateH said:

I think this is an issue. The general lack of respect for the skilled and dangerous job climbers do blows my mind. I feel that this may be partly a lack of education; people just don't see the job in their daily lives so don't know about it. It's deeper than that though I think. Which is why I wrote in my recent article that climbers should 'have respect for themselves and their fellow arborists and hold each other up'. That probably shouldn't come from a desk worker and I know it's not everyone (the Canopy Climbing Collective for example seem to do just that) but the negativity that often seems to surround the role frustrates me. Kate

 

Where is this lack of respect you talk about?

 

As for the ‘holding each other up and respecting our fellow arborists’ well that’s just New Age touchy feely nonsense.

 

Anyway, give it ten years and everyone will be in Mewps or using remote control lorry grab things.

[AHPP]

Ironically, considering my earlier posts in this thread about the non-financial pleasures of the job, I couldn’t care less if my client or their client thinks I’m in the league below child molesters. As long as they pay and aren’t actually calling me scum through a bullhorn while I’m trying to hear a hinge.