i think thats a little harsh, less to do with competition and more to do with lack of work. There have been many many more people do basic plumbing courses over the last few years who now want their nvq, so it stands to reason the industry couldnt provide the experience to all of them, this has been pointed out 100,s of times but newbies dont want to hear it. apparently its negative!
The current situation is down to macro-economic strategies. Skill comparisons with Europe and the need for the UK to increase its intermediate skills base (which means working class people getting qualifications, they did not get from school)
Government are turning a blind eye here - its obvious. There are no national statistics for people on plumbing courses - I would take an educated guess at around 100,000 people training for plumbing and gas. The government's own research via summitskills reports a need for around 3,000 plumbers per year. Now, this is not just a situation where there are around thirty times the number of entrants each year, than required, this statistic is ***ulative, its been going on since about 2004.
If people don't get jobs, the government are not really bothered, because they have qualifications they didn't have - e.g. qualifications are economic capital.
If people set up in business and go bust every three years, this is great for the econonomy, because professionals providing services to businesses like accountants, lawyers, bankers, still get paid...vans get bought, tools get bought, more courses get bought, insurance gets bought and then bust. But there are plenty more willing to re-mortgage, borrow, beg or steal to get into an industry...where a blind eye is being turned by government.
The plumbing industry is a victim of predatory capital (e.g. Gas Safe).
It is understandable that engineers might not want to take on apprentices, because a situation arose from the 1980s where unions were smashed and operatives fragmented into self employed economic units. If one-man-band takes an apprentice, this is competition and competition on a local level, does not play out like the competition of big business. We also have the problem of government paying large businesses like British Gas, money to take more apprentices than they need - which means those who qualify may have to go it alone following apprenticeship, which further over-supplies the market.
Apprenticeship is a concept, which is sustainable, one-out-one-in. There is no difference from ancient times, with regard to business - you can't have ten blacksmiths in a small village.
The existing training arrangements mean that employers are no longer needed to train apprentices (although I accept in reality this is not satisfactory), they can do a course. So the naturally sustainable concept of apprenticeship becomes meaningless.
There is no collective opposition, to education policies nor challenges from our industry (because those in power are doing very nicely out of this - blind eye syndrome again). And there seems to be an growing demand for operatives to enter the sector, due to the continual marketing of 'skill shortages' - which are really a red herring because economic strategies work on the mono-causal assumption that more skills mean more capital growth (I thought making and selling things brought capital growth) - hence we can never have too many skills, because we can never have enough growth - thus we are always in a position of a skills shortage.
I feel sorry for those entering the industry, because we as installers, have failed to sort our own industry out, and left it to the 'City' to run. We know what happened in banking, the next big bust will be the training sector, which is not really geared for training experienced technicians, but designed to help new entrants become bankrupt.
