Wealth makes people better ?

Old stupid thing over here from my youth in the rural area. " I can't read n write, but I can drive a tractor " My father could fix it with cardboard and balestring. I moved on and use duct tape. Tee hee !

acotrel said:

My brother is a boilermaker by trade. He was lucky - when he did his apprenticeship the guy who employed him actually taught him his trade. That is pretty rare in Australia - most apprentices are simply cheap labour. - Have a look at him, the bikes he builds are lovely :

Click to expand...

You’re right, his bikes look lovely... not very good at mounting sidecar wheels plumb tho is he...

I work at a Tec College (TAFE) for over 31 years just as a T/A to the maintenance Fitters and then last 10 years as a General Hand when they closed down the maintenance workshop I seen a lot off good apprentices come and go but I also seen a lot that should have never got their trade papers, same with the trade teachers some great tradesmen and also some who should have never become a teacher because they were so bad at their trade, my boss of the maintenance workshop was a tradesman fitter who had never used a milling machine in his whole 45 years in the trade and his machining skills where very bad, as the T/A I did all the milling jobs after doing TAFE machining courses in my own time as well welding courses at night classes.
Working for TAFE in that time I seen a lot of things and changes that were not good for training, I seen a lot of corruption in how things were done by managememt, I seen a lot of waste happening and because it was a Government run Tec College I was sworn to secreticey with the fear of being sacked, for every Teacher there was about 5 staff members and even more managers on top of them and most managers had big egoes to boot and they were always right when they were not, then each Goverments that were voted in also made big changes and most were not right, but there was big money at stake, tax payers money and the last 10 years working for TAFE things were being run down and running TAFE as a business instead of a training college and every course had to make a profit at the expense of the students, once they started to run the college like private enterprise and to compete with the private sector thing start to go down hill very quickly, then the GOV at the time decided to get rid of all non important jobs and bring in private contractors to do the jobs, I took a redundancy and the ones who didn't were gone 2 month later without any benefits of the redundancies that were offered and then TAFE nearly went belly up, now a new GOV gets voted in and they gone back to the old ways because it worked, but I retired that was over 6 years ago now and the last 10 year working there I seen so many bad decisions made that nearly destroyed TAFE and apprentices training and job skill going down the tube.

Ashley

4 out of 6 of my tutors were ex Rolls Royce employees with vast knowledge, but I was in heavy industry at the time, so the tolerances weren't quite the same. When I moved on, that learning curve came back and proved very useful.

I was very fortunate to have apprenticed as a carpenter under some very wise and sharing master carpenters who seemed to know everything about that trade and much about all others. Being taught a wide-range of sub-trade techniques, I was later able to pick my field. In later days, all the employers wanted a specialist, not a well-rounded person versed in many phases of the trade. Problem with that is then you're "just a dumbass framer" or "a dumbass floorcoverer" or a "dumbass drywaller" I chose interior systems (drywall, metal framing, suspended ceilings, metal trusses etc.) because of the plethora of hours involved and the fact that you get rained out very seldom working under a roof. But I always felt insulted being called "drywaller". I could build whole buildings, do finish woodwork and stairs, lay out or any other phase of the carpenter trade. Had there been enough hours in it, I would have spent my time building hardwood staircases and backbars. When my wife would complain when I came home covered in white dust, I'd tell her, "Woman, that's the color of money!"

I worked as Chemist at Ordnance Factory Maribyrnong for 13 years. Most of what we did was heavy engineering. Our Apprentice Training Section produced about 30 trades people each year. However we never kept many of them. Most got jobs elsewhere, as machinery sales-people or in businesses selling engineering consumables.

later in life, I had a job as Quality Manager/ Technical Writer in an engineering company. I went back to night school to get a welding inspector's ticket. I found the trade teacher to be excellent. However what he thought was low alloy steel, I thought to be mild steel. In Australia, we did not make much which required high strength steel, except in defence manufacturing.

You are only poor when you are denied a quality education.

acotrel said:

My brother Doug really disgusted my mother when he said to her 'you know, I have never read a book in my life'. The only books he has ever read have been motorcycle maintenance manuals

Click to expand...

And you cannot quite learn all the tricks of the trade from a book!

Re; “My brother is a boilermaker by trade. He was lucky - when he did his apprenticeship the guy who employed him actually taught him his trade. That is pretty rare in Australia - most apprentices are simply cheap labour. “

Not always true they are cheap labour, some people have absolutely no appetite for the job of engineering, and I was on “block release “ i.e. one day a week, during term time I went to technical college which had to be paid for, so it didn’t always pay for the firms to employ young inexperienced people.