Another example. Private sector pays more than public. Are you saying that private sector works harder? If you are it’s bollocks
Truth is there’s equalities across the board and as usual it’s not as clear cut or as black and white as you’d think.
Care to explain why shuttering carpenters earned shed loads more than I did as a graduate engineer and higher for that matter? I have an honours degree, they don’t.
As usual you offer no evidence to support your thinking.
HaHa… can agree with that whole heartedly.
They just don’t know the practicalities of the work sometimes. A bit like the referees not knowing how to interpret the laws of the game…
There has to be a common sense element to things, sadly most H&S guys I have had to deal with are impractical when it comes to the nuts and bolts of certain industries…
Because they were actually smarter than you? My wife has an honours degree and at times and on certain subjects she’s thick as pig shit.
The trouble is that their is a culture within things like this of deferring responsibility because everyone is shit scared of getting sued. Nobody want to risk using their brains.
How exactly were they smarter?
Really want to hear this one.
My dad would always say to me if I came home and if I ever moaned about being tired after work… “Don’t tell me how hard you have worked son, tell me how much you have earned”
Value of ones worth now is so hard to determine.
Give a manager £200k per year and put him in charge of a factory. He makes f*** up after f*** up and loses the company £2million a year in lost revenue… The company may as well say they are paying that manager £2.2million per year…
There are good and bad scenarios in all walks of working life… those that are academically qualified via university learnings, and there are those who studied in the university of life.
Either way, both types still need the right amount of grit and determination to get the best out of the hand they were dealt me thinks…
Exactly this… but I was on a site when fatalities occurred with a number of workers. At the inquest the H&S guy was partially held accountable amongst other factors because, and I quote… “He made the work permits that had to be signed by these people, too complicated for an average person to fully comprehend”
University speak on these forms instead of ABC type common sense instructions.
In the bedlam of shut-down works, everything got lost in translation.
As well as preventing the company from being sued left right and centre, it is about adopting the best manner possible to keep people safe, but also to keep them alive.
For those specific jobs, yes, you are correct, but they are specialized jobs.
Plumbers and electricians also make massive salaries, but majority have very little in formal education. Most will drop out of school at 15/16 and start working as a tradies apprentise and if they are lucky, may go to college for a trade certificate but more often than not, it will be on the job experience and learning and then comes down to if they are actually good at the job and willing to put in the hard graft. Meet a fair number of plumbers and sparkies through work, and even the cowboys still manage to make decent coin, the good ones though are raking in the dough
Erm, they earn more than you?
A huge percentage of HSE advisors in my industry are either failed/useless in another discipline, or see the job as a route to an easy life.
You can virtually see their boner through their overalls when there’s an incident to investigate.
You realise that you said earlier that more qualifications earns more money?
Fantastic watching you tie yourself in knots sometimes and contradict yourself. It honestly is.
I’m sure H&S is taken pretty seriously where you work but I find (not that you do) but being cavalier about H&S worries me. The H&SW act is scariest piece of legislation in the UK as far as I’m concerned. I guess it might be nice for them if they think they’re free of the burden should anything go wrong. Personally I’d be shit scared of being dragged into that vortex.
For context, anyone remember the boiler house collapse at Didcot? That is still rumbling on and is actually in the hands of the police as a criminal investigation. That was 7 years ago almost to the day.
I do something similar ,days then nights in the same week .The problem with those nights is it can take a couple of days to get yourself right again,which means if you’ve done 3 12hr nights,you sleep all day when you come off the last one and it becomes difficult to get back into a rhythm when your next lot of shifts are days.
Been doing it for over 20yrs and by the time you hit the 50,s it takes it’s toll .
I work nights and need 3 days rest. 1st day sleep second do a daytime 3rd get back to night life by sleeping all day (well the necessary 8 hours). If I only get 1 day it’s a complete waste of time, in fact I get really tense and have real social difficulties. 2 days is ok for a few weeks then gets like just having 1 day.
3 days allows me to have one day time day and get daytime stuff done and I feel really relaxed and on form for the nights both socially and physically.
I feel sorry for you guys.
Shift working, especially nights, has been shown to have a detrimental effect on health. There’s loads of research available online; here’s one such article:
I know it isn’t easy, but my advice would be to try to find a job with fixed hours, preferably during the day.
I currently work 21 consecutive 12 hour night shifts, then go home for 21 days.
Way I deal with it is 2 beers while travelling home, stay awake as long as possible and sleep for a good 10 hours.
Turned around in one day.
I do know people who take almost a week to get turned around though, so everyone is different.
I’ve got many of those illnesses, not due to working nights though. Ironically because doctors refused to diagnose and treat a bacterial infection, fuckwits!!!
I used to work permanent nights (5 x 8hr shifts), 10PM-6AM. My way of dealing with it was to sleep from 6.30AM-1.00PM, then an hour from 7-8PM. I know it’s not the recommended 8hrs sleep but I was in my early to mid 30s, fit and could handle it. It gave me the whole afternoon and early evening to have time to myself and prepare tea for myself and my lad. I was a single parent at the time and my lad lived with me. He slept at his Mum’s while I was at work.
Permament nights worked for me better due to the circumstances of my domestic set up. The alternative where I worked at the time was a 6-2 and 2-10 alternating rota. I even managed to get my TA weekends and camp in thanks to being on good terms with my ex. 
Yes, the knots are huge pointing out that intelligence and effort tend to lead to higher wages.
When I was a lot younger I worked down in Devon with some guys from Liverpool. There was an old soldier amongst us that was sent along to make the tea, keep the cabin tidy etc… He fought in the second world war with Montgomery, and he was what used to be known affectionately as a Desert Rat. He was very proud every time one of us mentioned this fact when talking to the locals about his exploits. He was a nice old guy and always had a story or two to tell… the thing was… he was always asleep.
Walk into the cabin at brew time… no tea ready - he was asleep.
Look for a spare pair of hands as an extra man… can’t be found - he was asleep somewhere
Waiting for him to come and take the dinner order - no show - again, he was asleep somewhere
Need something collecting off-site - Take him hours - he stopped somewhere for a sleep in the cab of the wagon
You name anything or any place and he could find a way to have a sleep there… under the canopy on the back of the flat bed wagon – no problem… on the 6inch wide steelwork support girders under the weighbridge – piece of cake to him… nestled between the oxygen bottles in a standing-up position - he could have done it standing on his head…!
Anyway, after weeks of this, guys weren’t too bothered about it, everyone saw it as a bit of banter… except, EVERY single night when work was finished, we had to send out search parties to look for him before the minibus could set off back to the digs… now this did wind the guys a fair bit, especially when most of them were on some sort of promise with the local girls…
It was decided the foreman guy had to give him a serious talk, and this he would do in the cabin when all the guys were there. We didn’t want the mood to darken and we weren’t bothered, but he had to promise he would not sneak off somewhere for a sleep when it got to within one hour of going home time… In fact, as he was the driver of the minibus, he was asked to be first on it in readiness for any early darts we could grab.
Thing is, as these talks are happening… he answers back and states he can’t promise to abide what was requested from him because he had become so accustomed to this trait of his… it wasn’t something he could guarantee to do. He offered to be sent back home and have him swopped over with someone else if we must…
Obviously no one wants to see him sent home and lose money, and he was quizzed a bit deeper about his ‘rip-van-winkle’ habits…
It transpires and he tells us, when he was in the North African Desert fighting non-stop in the war effort, and the dire situation his regiment faced battling Rommel and the might of the German army, his commander had told them… “Remember boys, when you have 2mins, have a rest, When you have 5mins, have a sit down. When you have 10mins, have a lay down and close your eyes…”
He said that advice given to them was what had kept him alive, and many more of his regiment that had since become his lifelong friends…
He doesn’t know if it became so habit forming that he can’t break that habit… or he actually continues to follow that guidance up to that present day as a symbol of the camaraderie he still feels…
Well. you can imagine the stunned silence from all the guys listening to this with him in the cabin… not easy watching grown men built like outhouses welling-up with trails of tears running down their face as they look at this once fine soldier, that had been withered down by age and life in general…
The lads said f*** it… let him sleep where he wants when he wants… who cares if we get back to the digs after midnight every night :0)
Now that is what you call a guy who lost his sleep pattern a very long time ago… probably never again in his lifetime to get it back.