Are our tradies getting paid too much

I just wish I was earning that sort of dough!
Mid 30's is as much as I've heard fridgies getting, and I'm certainly not on that! Added to which, my current employment has all but ZERO o/t opportunities. A supermarket Fridgie would generally expect to double their basic with o/t. In my experience, air con guys often earn less, due to refrigeration being essential to supermarkets, while air con is usually only comfort & clients will generally wait rather than pay the o/t rate.

Edit: oh yeah, then you have the 'interesting' issue that Aussie firms all say they struggle to get good tech's. But almost none are willing to invest in you. All expect you to provide most of your own equipment, pay for our licences etc. yourself, and so forth. Sorry to sound like a whinging POM here, but I was used to the UK system of firms paying your licences etc. as part of the cost of doing business. Only one was willing to try & help me get the local licences etc. when I was looking for work, and that was a regional company.
Another Brit Fridgie & I once worked out that the only reason to be employed at our last firm was for the pension & company ute.
All firms expect you to provide our own hand tools. Ok, fine. So do Brit firms. However, Oz firms call specialist gear like service manifolds hand tools. So more expense for the employee.
And then they genuinely seem to be surprised that it's hard to get willing, committed, skilled staff?
Ok, enough rant for tonight.

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Originally Posted by rovercare

Get good people and its worth every bit, so at 2200 the take home $1300ish and work 6 days, how much are their house repayments? bills? food? its not really alot of money these days

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Don't know who you get to do your tax or to provide you with tax advice but 37c in the dollar is only applicable to earnings over $80k and 45c only for that over $180k, at $2200/wk it comes to something like $114k p.a. the first $80k only attracts $17.55k. I think you might be understating what the weekly after tax earnings would be for this example. But that is not unusual as people normally claim that they get paid too little and pay too much tax.

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Originally Posted by rovercare

Get good people and its worth every bit, so at 2200 the take home $1300ish and work 6 days, how much are their house repayments? bills? food? its not really alot of money these days

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If they don't live the lifestyle of a South American playboy or have a huge tribe of ankle biters (which beget a huge amount of Family Allowances anyhow) they should be able to save several hundred dollars a week on that, and get a tax refund of most of what they lost on Payg.

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Originally Posted by slug_burner

Don't know who you get to do your tax or to provide you with tax advice but 37c in the dollar is only applicable to earnings over $80k and 45c only for that over $180k, at $2200/wk it comes to something like $114k p.a. the first $80k only attracts $17.55k. I think you might be understating what the weekly after tax earnings would be for this example. But that is not unusual as people normally claim that they get paid too little and pay too much tax.

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Just looked at a pay slip which has 2658.21 gross and 1853 net, I did the math wrong, you are correct

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Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

If they don't live the lifestyle of a South American playboy or have a huge tribe of ankle biters (which beget a huge amount of Family Allowances anyhow) they should be able to save several hundred dollars a week on that, and get a tax refund of most of what they lost on Payg.

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What's the median house price in Brisbane? I have friends who get by on 1k a week, but they live in 30 year old small houses in average places where housing is mid 100's value, it can be done, no doubt, but I'm selfish and want to retire before I'm 100:D

Saving several hundred will see a few luxury items, but not alot

I do it all on 1 income, my partner is a dedicated housewife/caveman carer, I put the hard yards in and so does she, will it pay off in time? Who knows

Best advice I've heard when talking to a dude about the best way to make financial headway was..live a long time, haha

Sheesh Dave, you've opened a can of worms here, mate! :D

Question for you all, a bit off topic but I hope not too far:
Given that I'm a service technician, which obviously means a certain amount of travel from site to site. Why do employers want you to live next door to the sites before they'll consider hiring you? Honestly, Qld is 7 times the size of the UK, yet I do less than half the km's here than I did there in the same trade. Again, if you're the bloke or lass the co. wants to hire, it doesn't matter too much where you live. I lived in Oxford but covered the NW & W London regions for one firm. Another, my office covered all of southern England below a line drawn roughly half way up Wales to half way up East Anglia (the eastwards bulge above London in case you are wondering) & we all worked all over that region. I averaged between 55000 & 60000 MILES per year. Here, I cover the Gold Coast. That's it. My last firm, ditto except they did send me to Northen Rivers a few times, and I did cover a callout at Caboolture once. No firm has yet offered me a job working in Brisbane despite my pretty decent qualifications & CV, in almost every case the reason given is because I live on the Gold Coast.

Eh? :wallbash:

Easy, OH+S

when it comes to fatique managment they are supposed to take into account your travelling time to and from work, Work care pays out on your trip to and from the worksite.

never judge a book by its cover........

It's all about supply and demand, brickies where earning before 1995-98 about 350-500 per thousand bricks laid around NSW, because of the building rush with the olympics and the housing boom that shot up to $1000+ per thousand bricks laid otherwise you got no walls:D
Same thing has happened around sydney with mechanics/fitters etc a in-law relo i know owns a mid sized workshop and was complaining of the hourly rate non relatives where asking for as the coal mines and service companies where all offering 40+ for good mechanics +shift and weekend allowances and as one of his sons had left for another job he had to pay them all real wages:D

Rovercare....you got it in a nutshell where you say you have to work 80+ hrs per week to make the dollars. I hear a lot of "flak" from uninformed people complaining about the money that mineworkers up this way are earning. "we" all work that 80+ hours/week up here.....the comment makers either dont realise or dont know. Facts are no one will earn $150k working a 38hr week. Its a choice one makes. For those wishing to earn this money there are plenty of openings in central qld in all trades.