The demise of skilled traditional manufacturing – What are you willing to pay?
Manolo Blahnik, Trickers, Trippen, Brooks Saddle….All these brands suffer from the same problem. Their prices are undercut by companies like Primark and Deichmann, drawing the customers to cheap products with a short lifetime.
This is an issue that appeals mainly to the customer's shopping ethics. Am I willing to pay a bit more to keep a British company going? Do I value handcrafted goods and the effort involved in the making process? Do I try to decrease my carbon footprint by avoiding long shipping distances? Do I want to be sure the working conditions of the manufacturers follow British regulations considering health and safety? Would I rather own a pair of shoes for 6 years instead of for 9 months, increasing the piles of landfill? And am I willing to pay £200 instead of £20? And that’s where it gets tricky.
I am an aware shopper, trying to consider most of these issues. I buy second hand, fair trade and mostly dairy free and vegetarian food, feeling that these small choices add up. But the price difference is much smaller. Second Hand and Vegetarian food is usually even cheaper than new clothes or meat. A win-win situation, especially for me as a student. I would struggle to pay £200 for shoes, even when considering the problems involved.
Well, could a solution be to buy traditional manufactured goods second-hand on e-bay? Does this actually still support the company and brand? I would say, yes! A second life time for a product, with a second owner paying for the product a second time, lowers the overall cost for the first purchase. With this in mind more people could afford a new product, selling it after a while for lower price. By allowing this kind of second-hand market, brands can open up their market to customers, who would usually not be in their target group. Like students like me.
But there is another issue, these companies face. There is not enough work force to cover the demand.
On the website ‘makeitbritish’ Kate Hills phrases the issue,
‘Several of the manufacturing units that I spoke to said that they can’t take on any more new clients as they don’t even have enough machinists for the work that their current customers are giving them.’
In the last decade was a shift towards academic education promoted by society, universities and government. School leaver are expected to go to Uni - if acceptable grades were achieved. The image of manual workers and apprenticeships suffered from this shift. Going into a more manual work environment was not anymore a choice towards a stable job and income, but the consequence of low grades in school. But what if a person is creative and prefers working with their hands, – Is their best choice to study an academic subject instead? No, but lots of pupils still decide to go the academic path anyway because society expects it and rewards it with more acknowledgement. You could argue, a society can only gain from a higher educated population. But does the society gain from a tax loss from going to University instead of start working? Do we gain from a higher unemployment rate, because there are not enough academic jobs and University leavers don’t want to sell themselves under ‘their price’? Do we gain from not having enough skilled manufacturers?
Personally, I think we should work on recovering the image of manual work.
Another issue raised is the payment during an apprenticeship. With under £4 an hour, it is drastically underneath the minimum wage, making waitressing and working in a call centre more attractive to an unqualified person. But really? I am a student working 40+ hours a week for University. Should I not be earning money? No, because it is my education. I am still learning, gaining experience and skills. I do this, because I am interested in the topic and because I am working towards a job, that pays me after my education. Students qualifying for SAAS have the same problem. They are taking a loan, which has to be paid back, to support them through their education. They are not getting paid at all!
An apprentice is still in their education. They are gaining experience and skills and getting paid. Little, but more than nothing. And their payment is not a loan, but a salary. Enough to live, pay the rent and eat. Not a lot, not enough to save money, but enough to not be in debt when they start a job after their education. In a perfect world, it would be nice if apprentices would earn more, but it has to be considered that companies need an incentive to teach someone their skills. This is given by offering the possibility of a cheaper work force. To offer both career paths equal chances, it has to be guarenteed that the apprentice does not have worse living conditions than a university student. If the salary of an apprentice would be regulated to match at least the amount of SAAS a student would get, both career options would be equally attractive and supported.
This topic could be discussed further, analysing manual labour with regard to the development in robotics, but that can be another entry…
