Construction should be a career that you can build a life on | Construction industry

Re your editorial (The Guardian view on Bouwarbeiders: The country needs more of them, rap, August 13), or brick with decade of experience, I see the skill deficiency in the building sector as the result of years of neglect. The problem does not attract new people, but keep them in trade when they see the reality of working conditions.

Most site bricks are self-employed subcontractors. We do not receive pensions, holiday pay, or ill pay. If you are ill or injured you just don't deserve. That insecurity plucks many skill people out build altogether.

In addition, wages barely moved in the years – in fact, the rates are made a lot of brick today for four years ago. Great house builders often pay good rates to main name, but through the time it filters to the brick, they can end with much less.

If the UK is serious about meeting its domestic goals, we need more than training schemes. We need to make build a job that can build a life on – fair pay directly to the trades, proper benefits, and conditions that match the skills and physical demands of work.

Until changes, we will like to lose good people faster than we can train them, no matter how much money is thrown on recruitment.
Matthew Ord
PetyLee, County Durham

Great building companies regularly depends on multiple levels of subcontraction, involving an ecosystem of small and medium-sized companies that workout by a myriad of various routes. Those who do the work are often uncertain of their own employment status. People who work next to each other often have several terms, or indeed, no written conditions and conditions. Career paths exist but only in sheltered pockets.

The fractured character of the employment model brings that these behavior products “employers” are in terms of low overheards. But training is always seen as the problem of someone else. Many small companies would like to invest a lot of import in direct employments, but such investment is not possibilities that gave the competitive dynamics of the market. This is the endpoint of the 40-year of the Industry of modernization of modernization. Simple solutions are little and far between. But the first step for polyk- it is very fissed nature of the context for construction employment.
Stuart Green
Professor Building Management, University of Read

There are a lot of decent trades to it and, of course, some not so good. Yes we have to bring in more for the future to bring in, and I do not have a problem with them with formal qualifications. But that doesn't make traders.

I got my city and guiled in carpentry in 1997. As I understand, if my construction certificate is notified, unless I make a major spending to get a nvq. I have been in the trade over 30 years in the trade, and I have my skill basis that only significant past diverse, all learned on the job.

Currently I have no problem to get work because I is quite adept at most building rades. A hurry to have only the formal qualified to have work on site will be counterproductive. As a self-employed trader personager, if my work is not after standard I can't work. I'm 51, not fit. As Labor will reach his goals, people like I are vital.
Mark Stringer
King's Lynn, Norfolk