Good morning and welcome to the Wisdom and Wrenches podcast. I'm your host Willie Sheriff and today we're going to talk about apprentices in shops, but it covers the blue collar trades too. So one of the things that i keep hearing about is you know there's no nobody has faith in humanity or the future and the the next generation you know they're lazy and all this negative stuff they have to say yeah i agree there's there's some less than motivated people in the next generation of people coming up but i think that existed in all the generations before us too And so, but part of the problem is how the new generation is treated compared to older generations and the way they respond to things versus the way the rest of us older people were raised and were raised. Expected to respond to things and there's way more distractions for the new generation too that we didn't have in the older generations that people don't take into consideration and so connecting with the new generation is harder now than it has ever been because all of us including them and especially them. Their attention span is consumed by so many distractions, social media, a job home can't afford to get their own home because housing is so horrendous and so you know this is going to lead to some uncomfortableness for some business owners because well quite frankly somebody's going to spit their coffee out because the other thing that's also happening is you do get younger people in the trades and the diesel shops that are pretty good employees that do want to learn and do have the aptitude and then you have quite frankly you have s****y owners that treat them terribly and then they just leave the industry just give up on working because they're treated so poorly and so you know one of the things that's been a huge thing is pay nobody wants to pay the apprentices because you know it's it's hard on a business It's hard on a shop because an apprentice, a good apprentice is really like three to one when they're starting out, which means they're going to work about three hours to bill out an hour. I mean, if you, and that they're going to have jobs better than that, they're going to have jobs worse than that. But when you average it out, they start out, they're about three to one. And then a couple of years in, if you, the owner is doing a good job, then they're going to get down to like two to one. You know, by three or three, they're going to be 60, 70, 80% is what you're shooting for. And when I, when I say being a good owner, if you, if you have an apprentice in your shop, he's doing a good job and he's been in the shop for a year and you haven't gave him a pay raise, you're being a s****y owner because one of two things is happening. You're pissed off at the apprentice because he doesn't know enough, which means it's your fault because you're not training him enough. Or two, he doesn't have the aptitude and he's not worth keeping in the shop. And so you're not training him, which makes you a s****y owner because you should get rid of him and go find a better one. So either way, it's going to be your fault. Either you should be giving them a raise or you should be training them. But either way, it's going to fall on you as the owner. And if you have that many employees under you and it's not happening and you're going to blame your shop foreman or your shop manager, then it's still your fault, the owner, because that means that you have the wrong manager, the wrong shop foreman, or the wrong training program in the shop. And this is not just shops. This is not just diesel shops. This goes automotive shops, electricians, plumbers, dealerships. Whatever, feed stores, subway, whatever. They're all apprentices. They're all learning how to work. They're all learning processes. They're all learning procedures. They're all learning all of that stuff. And you as an owner and as a company have to have the processes to train these people. And either they're a good enough employee to keep around and you need to pour the training into them and give them pay raises as they increase their value and skills to the company, or you need to get rid of them. And you have to pick a road and you have to look in the mirror at some point, and you're going to have to say, I got to do better or this guy is not getting it. We've taught this guy 12 times to do a wheel seal and it still takes him six hours and there's no improvement. So at that point, you still have to look in the mirror and say, okay, is it our training process that's the problem or is it the person that we're trying to raise the problem and then make a choice from there. But either way, you have to make a choice instead of smashing your head against the wall for somebody that you now have in the building that you don't even want to pour 10 minutes into training them, because it's just easy to have a warm body there and be pissed off at them and then pay them nothing and they don't really even want to work because they don't feel like they're valued. It's a lose-lose deal if you don't make a choice. And quite frankly, a good apprentice is going to get a pay raise every six or eight months because here's what's happened. Here's what happens. We'll give you a little math formula. So let's say most trades, most journeyman's are going to top out in four years ish. It changes, depends on the whatever, but we're going to use four, four years, the baseline and we're going to use 120,000 as a journeyman top out number just for simple math. Everybody can argue based on what your trade is, but for basic math's sake. So let's say you start this apprentice out at $20 an hour. 18-year-old kid, did a little bit of school. Well, honestly, that kid coming out of school is going to be more like 25. Quite honestly, I've heard that some of these municipalities are trying to pay guys 30 just to try to get them in the building regardless of their skills. But anyways, let's say they start at 25, you put them in the building and they work for a year and you, you don't give them a raise. So why didn't you give them a raise? They should have had one or two by then, probably one, probably somewhere around eight months they should have had a raise and not 50 cents, not your JIPO one dollar. Oh, here's a dollar an hour. You've improved a dollar an hour. Like, no, like a legit raise. Because that person's going to be about 60, 50, 60% of what your journeyman is. And so to get where he needs to go, you're going to be like 5, 10% increases here along the way. And so let's say you don't give them a raise because you're, you, for whatever reason, well, we're just going to call it what it is. You're being a s****y owner. You have an apprentice in the building. You did not give them a raise after a year. You're being a s****y owner. You should either give them a raise or you should have fired them. One of the two. And so now let's say you get to year two and your cheap ass still has not give that person a raise. So you have a person in the building, $25 an hour. That's 50 grand a year. basic math 2,000 hours a year working 50 grand a year roughly to work okay so now you're two years in to four years to becoming a journeyman okay the clock's ticking if you get to two years and you haven't gave that guy like 10 20 by now you're really really being a dirtbag owner like you're really doing that person a disservice because a you really don't like him and b you're holding them back or you're just being a cheap ass and you don't want your employees to succeed and buy houses and move on in life so either way that all circles back to the boss so now you're two years in you got two years left on the clock until that guy's a journey okay so you're telling me because you're such a great owner in two years you're going to increase his you're going to increase that guy's take-home pay or pay from $25 an hour to $60 an hour in two years. You didn't give him a raise for two. For two years, you didn't give him a raise. You gave him a dollar a year or some cheap-ass whatever thing you somehow thought is okay in your head. Right? So you gave him a dollar an hour, you gave him a $2,000 an hour raise. And now here you are staring, you are staring down the road to this apprentice. They are two years away from getting, being a journeyman. And you're telling me now you're going to instantly now overnight, you're going to give them $45 an hour pay raise. How are you going to get there? I'll tell you how it's going to happen is they're going to get there you're going to try to pay them $35 an hour, and that person's going to leave your company because you didn't pay them enough, and then you're going to be mad that they left you because you didn't pay them enough and they found a job that will pay them the $60 an hour that they should be, not the $40 an hour because you didn't give them pay raises along the way. So the way that should look is if he's at 60%, we'll use percentages. If he's at 60% of scale on year one, by year three, they should be 90, 85, 90% of scale. So then the last year, you're 10% the last year to get there. Maybe it's a year and a half. They're a late bloomer and you're down to 10, 15%. They're not going to leave you over the 10 or 15% about the journeyman, how far along they are in the journeyman life. That's not they're not going to leave for that they're going to leave the guy that is not paying them what they're worth the whole entire way and then tries to give them five dollars an hour year four or year three year three oh well you know you're finally kind of figuring it out so i'll get you up to 30 bucks an hour now but what are you going to do are you going to give him a 30 dollar an hour pay raise next year when he's a journeyman are you going to give him a you know he's not a full-fledged journeyman in a year are you going to give him 20 next year No. No, you're going to kick rocks, hiss and moan because he left you. They left because y
