I'm in Alberta, and we actually got a pair of 10% reductions to builders pay rates in 2018, meaning we're earning 20% less now. Add in the sporadic work the last few years, and I'm having trouble keeping the build paid. We need a general strike.
PaganDude
joined 1 year ago
Cam, no one here wants to hear about your conspiracy nonsense.Please go away.
Funny, because as someone who builds houses for a living, this year has been really slow and pathetic at getting work building new houses. A bunch of places just announced cancelling bigger projects, due to costs from interest rates. We need way more houses, and we're slowing down building. It's insane.
Who's getting raises to match costs though? I'm in construction and they're "desperate" for people, but haven't raised rates for years. We actually went through two rounds of pay rates reduced by 10% in 2016-17. I'm earning 20% less than a did a decade ago, and they're "desperate" for me to give them all sorts of freebies, while I barely get half time for hours. The economy is a mess.
That's Neoliberalism for you. Which at this point is basically all the major parties. They all govern from the position that a free market is ideal, and regulation only happens when it "must", which requires a lot of proof, Rather than a more sensible system that assumes a market needs regulation to function, and demands proof before deregulation.
But we function on a ratchet & brake system. The Cons ratchet things better for the rich, the Libs hold the line while making performative actions that don't affect the fundamental power structure.
Shit sucks.
As one of those folks myself, thanks for thinking of us. The worst of it for me is our city is short on concrete workers & framers, they moved to Ontario in 2020 when things shut down. So now us downstream trades like sheetrock, electrical, & carpenters end up working part time, because projects are trickling out. I haven't worked in 2 weeks. August is usually so busy I can't even consider booking vacation. Now it's dead.
So then we exit that job, move to another industry, and the entire building capacity has shrunk when we need it to grow. So at least pay us well, so we can survive this push-pull supply chain nonsense.
I keep hearing about this labour crunch, and yet as someone who builds houses as a job (carpenter) this is the slowest summer since 2020 for building houses in Alberta. The builders only seem to want to build pre-purchashed houses and have limited the "spec" houses they build and sell later. It's the same for a lot of friends we have in the industry, people are scrambling to find work, not workers.
And I've been putting out resumes to nearby industries & not getting much attention. So really, how much is there a real labour shortage, and where? Because the 4th & 5th biggest cities in the country aren't doing so well.
It's not driving the crisis, but it's making it a lot worse.
So a 1% annualized growth rate, while our growth from immigration is 3% a year (1.2M/40M). That's a recession pretending to be growth, and they're still raising interest rates.
As a construction worker who's been working 1/3 time, or less due to housing slowing down, how are we supposed to sustain this influx of people without massive public housing projects? Without refunding the CMHC and actually building affordable housing, instead of "luxury condos" everywhere.
That's circular logic, which isn't a sign of intelligence, but rather...