RISING WAGES HOW MUCH ARE TO PAY YOUR

I was shown an advert from a Facebook forum by a friend of mine the other night. It was advertising a fitter’s position at a company. The wage was £50,000 per year, with van and labourer supplied.

That’s a hell of a generous deal and perhaps signals an effort to obtain a new fitter no matter the costs. Such is the lack of available talented tradespeople.

So that got me to thinking, how much would you be prepared to pay your fitters?

Rising wages

Even in the wealthier south of the country, fifty grand a year, with van and labourer supplied is a very generous offer. It’s not one I have seen often, but perhaps it is a sign that the company putting forward that offer is in an acute need to find the skilled people they need.

Perhaps it is a sign of changing times. We all know that along with material price inflation, wage inflation has been going up as well. In an effort to attract the best people, businesses have been putting up wages over the last couple of years to tempt installers away from their current employers.

This is a double-edged sword. It’s good news if you’re a talented installer in fenestration as you know your skills are very much in demand and you have a certain amount of bargaining power when it comes to negotiating what you’re going to be paid. But the other side to that sword is the company paying the higher wages will have to pass those higher rates on to consumers to help cover their costs, which only pushes up retail prices to homeowners. We’re in a death spiral when it comes to prices and attracting the right talent.

Raising wages to attract the right people is a pretty powerful tool. A rising tide lifts all ships, as the saying goes, which means general levels of pay across the board begin to go up. This feeds into general inflation. But what is happening is rather than the sector introducing a new wave of thousands of new recruits into the industry, we’re all pinching from each other.

The same people are simply being recycled across the sector, going where the money or perks are a bit better each time. We’re not solving the problem, we’re putting a sticking plaster on the problem each time. And each year the shortage becomes worse and wages are spiralling faster and faster to persuade installers to move.