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Comment by asmithmd1 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the people in skilled trades really want congress to fix the skill gap problem. Just about every state sets incredibly high bars to be licensed. To be a licensed plumber in Massachusetts you have to pass a test (with only 70% correct!) and then work for 4 years before you can apply for a license. Plumbers around Boston get $100/hr and are hard to find. If Congress wants to allow more people to do skilled work they could mandate lower requirements. Kansas and Pennsylvania, for example, do not require plumbing licenses and I can personally vouch that toilets in those states do in fact work.

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A few years ago, we had some remodeling work done on our house. A union plumber came in on a Saturday to do the plumbing portion for cash. He told me that his most recent union-sponsored continuing education class was a call-to-action on the shortage of young plumbers. The union was worried that it could not find enough young people interested in the trade! I had always regarded the unions as exclusionary, but they're now worried about their own survival due to attrition (well, at least the Cleveland-area plumbers union).

This same guy noted that the real concern wasn't residential plumbing. This work is fairly low-skilled. The issue is that large commercial buildings require much skill and experience. Perhaps a solution would be to stratify the definition of "plumber" to allow those with a lower-level license to do easy work. Those with the upper-level licenses could do the more complicated stuff.

The union is worried about the flux on new plumbers but your individual plumber would be happy to be the last plumber alive in Cleveland as he could name whatever rate he wanted.

I think you are exactly right about the need for two tiers in the trades. The wiring in a house is vastly different from even the local supermarket that has three phase power to the lights controlled by contactors.

Maybe by adding a category of "professional" plumbers and electricians you could solve the prestige problem. Currently, if someone says they are a plumber you don't know if they clean out drains or maintain a hospital's systems.

> The union is worried about the flux on new plumbers but your individual plumber would be happy to be the last plumber alive in Cleveland as he could name whatever rate he wanted.

This is one of those classic economics/free market sayings that shows who wrong the theory can be. That's like saying I would be happy if I was the only guitarist or only web developer in the world, which is patently untrue. Maybe the plumber enjoys what he does, finds value in it, and wants to teach others how to do it. Maybe, god forbid, he doesn't want to make as much money as possible at the expense of others. Crazy, right? I'm glad there are other musicians and web developers, not only is the world better for it, I am better at both for it. Looking at things your way leaves so much out of the equation and ultimately leads to a conclusion that is bizarre, detached from reality, and incorrect.

>That's like saying I would be happy if I was the only guitarist or only web developer in the world, which is patently untrue.

I actually think yo would be pretty happy. You would automatically be a rock star. Sure, some needs would be unfulfilled, but overall the benefit of being the only one is incredible.

Maybe. Or if you were the only one, maybe the world would decide to listen to something other than rock music and you'd have nothing.

Similarly, if the number of plumbers drops too low, people will concentrate on buying cheap/disposable/replaceable substitutes for what they fix.

True. I'm assuming other things are equal.

> The wiring in a house is vastly different from even the local supermarket that has three phase power to the lights controlled by contactors.

The difference being, when a plumber screws up, the house floods. When an electrician screws up it burns down, possibly with you and your children inside.

I'll take my overqualified electricians, thanks.

I don't think anyone's talking about allowing ineptitude at either the basic or advanced level of licensing. My uncle is a 60-something plumber who primarily performs minor residential repairs. Every year, he has to go to continuing education on building code changes. He hasn't done new construction work in years, and most of the building codes have to do with commercial structures anyway. He would gladly forgo his ability to work on new construction and large structures if it meant that he didn't have to attend such extensive training sessions. Surely, one could learn a subset of all plumbing/electrical/etc. knowledge and still be competent for a subset of all work in the genre.

Perhaps union management is concerned that, if there were too few plumbers, the union would no longer be deemed necessary by its members? Also, are union pension plans fully-funded, or do they rely upon contributions from current members? I have no idea.

Enterprise plumbers?

Nah, that would just be a residential plumber that you have to buy through a VAR for 100x the normal price...

> Perhaps a solution would be to stratify the definition of "plumber"

It already has been. The really skilled people are called pipefitters and hate being called plumbers. Most industrial work is done by pipefitters, and plumbers do residential/commercial work.

The electrical trade splits the same way. I don't know that there's a specific name, but there is a de facto split between residential/light commercial and industrial wiring.

The codes are quite different (more complex, more exacting) for one thing, in the industrial setting.

Ah the merits of off-the-books weekend work. I had a badly rutted moderately long driveway with drainage problems. One Saturday a Caltrans operator brought his grader over and for $1200, including a couple of truck loads of crushed rock, I got a driveway worthy of a public road.

I was planning to learn to design septic systems until I learned that you had to apprentice for four years (and they wouldn't acknowledge the ten years I'd been working for my dad off and on) or possess a Bachelor's degree (or have a plumber's license)... There's only a handful of these guys left in the state of Arkansas... most of them in their fifties and about to retire...

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