“Not every skilled trade has the same available labour pool. This is why the report identifies the need for boilermakers, licensed asbestos insulators, and workers with tunnelling expertise.”
I mean those do sound like prrrretty niche trades so it’s not surprising?
There's a bunch of these little niches that people know very little about. For example, installing a banking ATM requires some special skills. There's maybe a handful of people in Ontario who know how to do it and they struggle to find people who want to learn it.
This was the original purpose of the TFW program: it was meant to facilitate Canadian businesses to access highly niche skillsets, which often means looking internationally because the skills are rare and often involve years of decades of training.
Kind of a bitter irony that now its used to import hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers
My family owns a massive farm outside Windsor.
Those TFW keep costs down big time. They fly in, work and then go home
Our food is cheap compared to what it could be
What?! You DONT have experience building nuclear plants?! Pfft
Identifying a need ahead of a planned project sounds like they’re doing ok so far.
Now you just let private industry fill in the blanks.
They always complain about lack of skilled workers yet no one is hiring apprentices to be trained the old boomers keep gatekeeping the trades especially in the unions
Gave up trying to get into a trade, went to a trade school, 10 years back finished it no one wanted me they were like it's like training a dog old trick they passed on me. While working main job i've been doing tempt agency on the side labor in construction start from bottom doing 3-5 days a week. I lost count on two hands over the years of boomers and guys in their 40's to after months of seeing me grinding they come like want to become an apprentice you've been working hard blah blah I said yea I would love the chance. They are all full of shit, don't come threw or just fuck off or months go by in the end their like I don't take on apprentices i'm like why the fuck did you waste my time then I turn down other jobs because you said you were getting me in. Plumbers, electricians, drywallers they are all the same. Yea pay X amount get into the union but that doesn't mean shit if no one is taking you on as an apprentice. I was working 40-60 hours a week at my general manager job at A&W, construction 7-3 then A&W from 4-1am. I was grinding for two years trying to get on everyone full of shit these days.
To be fair the trades they need here are incredibly specific. I think the labour pool would be pretty small regardless when it comes to asbestos installers...
It’s not just trades. Basically any skilled profession has been crutching on old timers and refusing to take in new grads. This was especially true during the Great Recession.
When I was graduating engineering school (2011/2012) we had a joke: “how do apply for an internship at OPG? Ask your dad’s boss while the two of you are out golfing.”
Hilarious because I got an internship at OPG in 2012 (and didn’t know anyone). They were just finishing up a hiring freeze then started to hire hundreds of engineers really quickly in the following handful of years!
Gate keeping is a issues yes I learned plumbing and they don’t take people out of school unless your 3rd or 4th year apprentices while how will I even get there if there not hiring
Cool - are they licensed to install asbestos? Are they licensed for tunnel work? This is not just "trades" it is hyper specific needs.
Wish people read the article...
It pays very well and many people in the field pick up and move from one project to another. The labour pool is small because there’s only so much work.
What're these people going on about in the comments about lack of pay? These jobs pay insanely well.
This is a matter of people actually trained to do the jobs, it would be beneficial for a the Province to come in and offer the training at a reduced cost/free like they did with ECEs and PSWs sometime ago. Could be life-changing to our people who have been struggling to find meaningful work.
If they can't fill the niche with local labor, we're getting more imported labor, which I'm sure everyone would absolutely love and wholeheartedly support.
So I have a Redseal in both mechanics and welding, I have been offered probably 5 or so jobs that would pay ~$2300 every 2 weeks but I would have to pay $2.5k/mo for a nearby place and would never be able to save for a future with food, insurance, etc.
In this case, the timeline for this is from about 2025 and going forward several years from that. The lack of skilled labour is being identified now as a potential risk when the work starts. It’s a massive project, starting at the same time as the new SMR project in Darlington, and the tail end of the Darlington refurbishment. There is sufficient lead time for people who want a solid career to train. But, these are jobs where hands get dirty. They’re not clean “tech” jobs. Reality is that they do pay far above average, and with a proposed Bruce C plant that will potentially be under construction as the Pickering refurbishment wraps up, there will be no shortage of very high paid jobs going forward in the same industry.
I think your knowledge is a few years stale. Drug testing has been put on pause as it has been deemed illegal. Yeah, LOL, even nuclear Operators are no longer subjected to routine and ad-hoc testing to confirm they are fit for duty.
There is no “pre-conception decontamination program”, I’m not sure where that was coming from. In fact females are no longer obligated to report their pregnancy, it’s recommended but not required.
The background check is not specific to Nuclear. It’s the same CSIS process you go through before you are allowed to work many government jobs or work on any government projects and facilities. It’s not insanely invasive, I’ve seen some private shit anal probing that was harsher than that.
Everyone is forgetting that trades in ON on nuclear projects are all unionized. All employment, training and such is really up to union halls who have been doing a pretty shitty job at managing future demand, they truly can’t see past their nose.
Nobody has experience building nuclear plants because nobody has built any lately...at some point someone has to just go ahead and build one and restart the industry! I hate it when people use this as a reason against pursuing nuclear
Yes. A complete overhaul of the provincial program is necessary. They talk a big game about attracting people to the trades, but they need to actually support the apprenticeship program, start to finish.
Yes, but the bigger issue is lack of people taking on apprentices. Even with shitty pay, if people were actually hiring apprentices there would be far less of a shortage.
The “incentive” is supposed to be a productive and profitable worker.
If you’ve been out there witnessing various recruitment processes,!you realize the talent pool is lacking.
Not sure what caused it, education, entertainment or … something else entirely but today’s workforce is….. something else
It hasn't actually changed much at all. Unemployment is just very, very low across the first world right now. Which means that the people who show up for interviews right now are mostly the people who still have trouble finding work in a red-hot labor market...
Today’s workforce has changed quite a bit…. Gone are the barriers to entry.
With senior staff either retiring, moving or otherwise moving up…. There’s been a vacuum at the bottom of most employers.
Training and education hasn’t kept up… today’s new employees are not the “job-ready” candidates we used to have available.
If it seems as though quality has dipped across multiple sectors……it has,the difference is subtle…. But you can notice it.
I think if there's a staff shortage you attract more people with money. Even if they're pulling 200k a year with overtime and there's not enough supply to meet the demand then the salary is too low.
There isn’t actually a shortage of workers yet. The reports all indicate that there is a potential. The problem is not the salary. The problem is with the total number of qualified people in the entire country. Previous projects of this scale attracted workers from the east coast, and briefly from Alberta during an oil downturn. There are other competing projects at the moment that could impact the ability to attract sufficient numbers, though, and you can’t just poach workers from other projects. Training more, who will replace the older retirees, and stay on permanently once the project is complete, is key.
The cooperation of the various trade unions is important. The most important thing, though, is to convince young people that there is a bright future in a lot of the trades. They need to seek out the training and find an apprenticeship. That’s where the government should focus its efforts to support young workers. Apprentices need to be supported right to their certification, at all stages. Employers need to be incentivized to hire and retain these trainees, and ensure they become certified. A strong program will benefit everyone.
I was in the trades. I know lots of people in the trades. I also know lots of people who left the trades. They (we) all say the same thing. They don't pay enough for what's involved and required. Yes there's an old school mentality to narrow down the green guys to those who are actually worth training for years and years. Nobody wants to waste all that time and money on someone who isn't in it for the long haul. Young people aren't getting into the trades for many reasons these days which I could get into but old timers have been telling the youth for a long time that it isn't worth it, better to get a desk job, and guess what they're listening. Everyone has a price though, throw enough money at them and their morals go with it. Ad campaigns don't have the same effect. It's ok though they'll just contract it out to Americans for the big bucks. Either way the job will get done.
Some trades pay a surprisingly low wage, I agree. That needs to change. The old school mentality also needs to change. The emphasis should be more on ensuring an apprentice survives the process, and not discouraging them with a harsh sink or swim experience. Not all people respond the same way. Proper mentorship needs to be encouraged. I’m honestly not sure how that could be accomplished, though.
The way you do it is pay the old timer handsomely to train an apprentice for 3+ years so they aren't angry and salty that the new guy is slowing them down. Training an apprentice should have been a lucrative deal for a journeyman 10 years ago but it wasn't, it was production, production, production, we need to get this job done at a profit. Now it's even harder. You can't teach apprentices en masse it has to be 1 on 1, even 2 is difficult. An apprentice can be unprofitable for YEARS, even worse they can cause damage if not properly supervised. It's no surprise this is what is unfolding. But this isn't grandmas clogged toilet, it's a nuclear power plant. Their pockets are deep enough to outsource the labour.
I worked on the darlington refurbishment as a millwright and my best year there I made $192,000. We had first year apprentices 19 years old making $100k. The problem is two-fold. 1) darlington refurb is not complete yet, the smr is scheduled (but that should not take too much other than civil trades), Bruce refurb is ongoing and Bruce expansion is in planning so there is just a ton of work all hapening at once. 2) aecon screwed over a lot of people at the darlington rufurb. They were bringing people in from other provinces to help, giving them onboarding training and then telling them to sit and wait until execution started, sometimes up to 3 weeks with no pay. Out of province boilermakers, millwrights and pipefitters now have a really bad taste in their mouth about coming to Ontario to work in nukes.
“Not every skilled trade has the same available labour pool. This is why the report identifies the need for boilermakers, licensed asbestos insulators, and workers with tunnelling expertise.” I mean those do sound like prrrretty niche trades so it’s not surprising?
There's a bunch of these little niches that people know very little about. For example, installing a banking ATM requires some special skills. There's maybe a handful of people in Ontario who know how to do it and they struggle to find people who want to learn it.
Elevator technician is one of those impossible trades
Even harder to get into that trade… unless you have friends/family in it.
It has its ups and its downs.
With the number of towers being built in the GTA, it’s probably a great trade to get into
Elevator union purposely limits new workers so all their old/current workers load of extra work and overtime.
This was the original purpose of the TFW program: it was meant to facilitate Canadian businesses to access highly niche skillsets, which often means looking internationally because the skills are rare and often involve years of decades of training. Kind of a bitter irony that now its used to import hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers
It’s one the the reasons our food is cheap. If you think inflation was bad in the last 2 years, stop the TFW program on farms
Our food isn't cheap though. You're getting suckered with this as an excuse
My family owns a massive farm outside Windsor. Those TFW keep costs down big time. They fly in, work and then go home Our food is cheap compared to what it could be
They keep profits up for processors and retailers you mean.
I’m all for farmers having an income. The fact that it helps keep costs down for us is a bonus
Having traveled the world for years, our food is nowhere close to cheap.
You missed the point entirely Congrats
Our food is the price that it is because of the TFW. Without it, it'd be much higher.
everyone wants to be electricians and plumbers, to get people into those trades. you have to promote it and/or pay better to get people in the door.
We can also import people
Or you know train those who are already here...
That would be ideal but it does take longer
What?! You DONT have experience building nuclear plants?! Pfft Identifying a need ahead of a planned project sounds like they’re doing ok so far. Now you just let private industry fill in the blanks.
They always complain about lack of skilled workers yet no one is hiring apprentices to be trained the old boomers keep gatekeeping the trades especially in the unions
the gatekeepers is one of the main issues. v
They like having a monopoly on available contracts
Gave up trying to get into a trade, went to a trade school, 10 years back finished it no one wanted me they were like it's like training a dog old trick they passed on me. While working main job i've been doing tempt agency on the side labor in construction start from bottom doing 3-5 days a week. I lost count on two hands over the years of boomers and guys in their 40's to after months of seeing me grinding they come like want to become an apprentice you've been working hard blah blah I said yea I would love the chance. They are all full of shit, don't come threw or just fuck off or months go by in the end their like I don't take on apprentices i'm like why the fuck did you waste my time then I turn down other jobs because you said you were getting me in. Plumbers, electricians, drywallers they are all the same. Yea pay X amount get into the union but that doesn't mean shit if no one is taking you on as an apprentice. I was working 40-60 hours a week at my general manager job at A&W, construction 7-3 then A&W from 4-1am. I was grinding for two years trying to get on everyone full of shit these days.
Sad reality 😢
It's billionaire speak for "I didn't train enough workers."
who knew that in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars a year they'd need to invest in the future?
To be fair the trades they need here are incredibly specific. I think the labour pool would be pretty small regardless when it comes to asbestos installers...
It’s not just trades. Basically any skilled profession has been crutching on old timers and refusing to take in new grads. This was especially true during the Great Recession. When I was graduating engineering school (2011/2012) we had a joke: “how do apply for an internship at OPG? Ask your dad’s boss while the two of you are out golfing.”
Hilarious because I got an internship at OPG in 2012 (and didn’t know anyone). They were just finishing up a hiring freeze then started to hire hundreds of engineers really quickly in the following handful of years!
Literally not how it works there but ok!
There is so so so so so much nepotism in the unions, but it's not impossible to apply through an intake and get a spot.
Gate keeping is a issues yes I learned plumbing and they don’t take people out of school unless your 3rd or 4th year apprentices while how will I even get there if there not hiring
This is the main reason why I’m against unions lol
If there were ever a job where skilled workers are essential, then this is it.
Need someone who can accurately assess if something is not great or not terrible.
They just laid a bunch of Ironworkers off from the Pickering plant lol
That's something else they don't mention the layoffs
Cool - are they licensed to install asbestos? Are they licensed for tunnel work? This is not just "trades" it is hyper specific needs. Wish people read the article...
They’ll be back for the next planned outage, and when the refurbishment project starts, I expect they’ll have many years of work.
i love how we have shortage of every skilled labour, stagnation in salaries and sky high import of "skilled" workers
Nuclear actually pays very well don’t think that’s the case here
It pays very well and many people in the field pick up and move from one project to another. The labour pool is small because there’s only so much work.
Gotta keep filling the pipeline with "future business professionals" so the diploma mills can exist instead.
Alot of available first year apprentices waiting for for work, the real problem is nobody is willing to invest training apprenrices.
What're these people going on about in the comments about lack of pay? These jobs pay insanely well. This is a matter of people actually trained to do the jobs, it would be beneficial for a the Province to come in and offer the training at a reduced cost/free like they did with ECEs and PSWs sometime ago. Could be life-changing to our people who have been struggling to find meaningful work. If they can't fill the niche with local labor, we're getting more imported labor, which I'm sure everyone would absolutely love and wholeheartedly support.
So I have a Redseal in both mechanics and welding, I have been offered probably 5 or so jobs that would pay ~$2300 every 2 weeks but I would have to pay $2.5k/mo for a nearby place and would never be able to save for a future with food, insurance, etc.
In this case, the timeline for this is from about 2025 and going forward several years from that. The lack of skilled labour is being identified now as a potential risk when the work starts. It’s a massive project, starting at the same time as the new SMR project in Darlington, and the tail end of the Darlington refurbishment. There is sufficient lead time for people who want a solid career to train. But, these are jobs where hands get dirty. They’re not clean “tech” jobs. Reality is that they do pay far above average, and with a proposed Bruce C plant that will potentially be under construction as the Pickering refurbishment wraps up, there will be no shortage of very high paid jobs going forward in the same industry.
Don’t forget that Bruce Power are also not sitting idle with their Major Component Replacement program….
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I think your knowledge is a few years stale. Drug testing has been put on pause as it has been deemed illegal. Yeah, LOL, even nuclear Operators are no longer subjected to routine and ad-hoc testing to confirm they are fit for duty. There is no “pre-conception decontamination program”, I’m not sure where that was coming from. In fact females are no longer obligated to report their pregnancy, it’s recommended but not required. The background check is not specific to Nuclear. It’s the same CSIS process you go through before you are allowed to work many government jobs or work on any government projects and facilities. It’s not insanely invasive, I’ve seen some private shit anal probing that was harsher than that. Everyone is forgetting that trades in ON on nuclear projects are all unionized. All employment, training and such is really up to union halls who have been doing a pretty shitty job at managing future demand, they truly can’t see past their nose.
So are we saying all the Uber eats cyclists we imported from India are not skilled?
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No racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, dehumanizing speech, or other negative generalizations.
Doh!
Nobody has experience building nuclear plants because nobody has built any lately...at some point someone has to just go ahead and build one and restart the industry! I hate it when people use this as a reason against pursuing nuclear
Let’s just bring in another million students studying hospitality then! -Canadian Government
Training an apprentice should be much better compensated. Otherwise there is little incentive to do it.
Yes. A complete overhaul of the provincial program is necessary. They talk a big game about attracting people to the trades, but they need to actually support the apprenticeship program, start to finish.
Yes, but the bigger issue is lack of people taking on apprentices. Even with shitty pay, if people were actually hiring apprentices there would be far less of a shortage.
The “incentive” is supposed to be a productive and profitable worker. If you’ve been out there witnessing various recruitment processes,!you realize the talent pool is lacking. Not sure what caused it, education, entertainment or … something else entirely but today’s workforce is….. something else
It hasn't actually changed much at all. Unemployment is just very, very low across the first world right now. Which means that the people who show up for interviews right now are mostly the people who still have trouble finding work in a red-hot labor market...
Today’s workforce has changed quite a bit…. Gone are the barriers to entry. With senior staff either retiring, moving or otherwise moving up…. There’s been a vacuum at the bottom of most employers. Training and education hasn’t kept up… today’s new employees are not the “job-ready” candidates we used to have available. If it seems as though quality has dipped across multiple sectors……it has,the difference is subtle…. But you can notice it.
"This is fine..."
I suspect what the article meant to say was, ‘Lack of skilled workers who will work for the shit money we’re offering.’
Pay more
The jobs in question pay very well.
Yup. Money isn’t the issue.
Nobody works with asbestos for fun.
Then they need to pay even more. Supply and demand. If it means 400k to fill in roles so be it. They will come.
Even if they paid that much, if people keep refusing to hire the apprentices then you still have a shortage of those skilled workers.
Sorta like house prices in Ontario?
Not enough 🧐
Not really, it's 6 figures. It's just very few people specialise in asbestos installation...
Found the manager
I’m curious what your perception of these jobs is? What do you think they pay?
I think if there's a staff shortage you attract more people with money. Even if they're pulling 200k a year with overtime and there's not enough supply to meet the demand then the salary is too low.
There isn’t actually a shortage of workers yet. The reports all indicate that there is a potential. The problem is not the salary. The problem is with the total number of qualified people in the entire country. Previous projects of this scale attracted workers from the east coast, and briefly from Alberta during an oil downturn. There are other competing projects at the moment that could impact the ability to attract sufficient numbers, though, and you can’t just poach workers from other projects. Training more, who will replace the older retirees, and stay on permanently once the project is complete, is key. The cooperation of the various trade unions is important. The most important thing, though, is to convince young people that there is a bright future in a lot of the trades. They need to seek out the training and find an apprenticeship. That’s where the government should focus its efforts to support young workers. Apprentices need to be supported right to their certification, at all stages. Employers need to be incentivized to hire and retain these trainees, and ensure they become certified. A strong program will benefit everyone.
I was in the trades. I know lots of people in the trades. I also know lots of people who left the trades. They (we) all say the same thing. They don't pay enough for what's involved and required. Yes there's an old school mentality to narrow down the green guys to those who are actually worth training for years and years. Nobody wants to waste all that time and money on someone who isn't in it for the long haul. Young people aren't getting into the trades for many reasons these days which I could get into but old timers have been telling the youth for a long time that it isn't worth it, better to get a desk job, and guess what they're listening. Everyone has a price though, throw enough money at them and their morals go with it. Ad campaigns don't have the same effect. It's ok though they'll just contract it out to Americans for the big bucks. Either way the job will get done.
Some trades pay a surprisingly low wage, I agree. That needs to change. The old school mentality also needs to change. The emphasis should be more on ensuring an apprentice survives the process, and not discouraging them with a harsh sink or swim experience. Not all people respond the same way. Proper mentorship needs to be encouraged. I’m honestly not sure how that could be accomplished, though.
The way you do it is pay the old timer handsomely to train an apprentice for 3+ years so they aren't angry and salty that the new guy is slowing them down. Training an apprentice should have been a lucrative deal for a journeyman 10 years ago but it wasn't, it was production, production, production, we need to get this job done at a profit. Now it's even harder. You can't teach apprentices en masse it has to be 1 on 1, even 2 is difficult. An apprentice can be unprofitable for YEARS, even worse they can cause damage if not properly supervised. It's no surprise this is what is unfolding. But this isn't grandmas clogged toilet, it's a nuclear power plant. Their pockets are deep enough to outsource the labour.
Agreed, and well put.
No skilled workers for a job that pays pennies! How weird!
I worked on the darlington refurbishment as a millwright and my best year there I made $192,000. We had first year apprentices 19 years old making $100k. The problem is two-fold. 1) darlington refurb is not complete yet, the smr is scheduled (but that should not take too much other than civil trades), Bruce refurb is ongoing and Bruce expansion is in planning so there is just a ton of work all hapening at once. 2) aecon screwed over a lot of people at the darlington rufurb. They were bringing people in from other provinces to help, giving them onboarding training and then telling them to sit and wait until execution started, sometimes up to 3 weeks with no pay. Out of province boilermakers, millwrights and pipefitters now have a really bad taste in their mouth about coming to Ontario to work in nukes.
Pennies? Haha. Try a solid 6 figures
No such thing as a lack of skilled workers. The economy ALWAYS produces the exact amount it was meant too.
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No racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, dehumanizing speech, or other negative generalizations.
OPG is a cesspool of nepotism, the skilled workers are here, they just want to hire popular people instead of skilled ones.