Apprentice cabinet maker fourth year wages

Damobr32

Hello was just wondering does any1 know how much a fourth year apprentice cabinet should be making these days? Thanks

One shot on kill

Depends on how much he is willing to work for.

If you can't earn your wages every day in a days work then your to expensive.

1chippy

I had a lad i was giving 375 take home a while back, good lad but for the workshop only. he went on final phase and some ejit within fas told him he should be getting 675 per week. i wouldnt be able to justify paying that sort of money so he decided to leave. realistically its all down to what you can afford to pay and the abilities of the apprentice. not all fourth years can earn enough to justify any sort of respectable wage. Just remember there are plenty of experienced lads out there at the moment that would probably be better value.

Damobr32

Alri so that's grand thanks

woodturner

€675???? Flippning heck, 13 years with a company and I never saw the colour of that. I was a cabinet maker for 13 years since i finished secondary school and can't get a job anywhere remotely like what i used to do now. I'd give anything to be back working.

1chippy wrote: »

I had a lad i was giving 375 take home a while back, good lad but for the workshop only. he went on final phase and some ejit within fas told him he should be getting 675 per week. i wouldnt be able to justify paying that sort of money so he decided to leave. realistically its all down to what you can afford to pay and the abilities of the apprentice. not all fourth years can earn enough to justify any sort of respectable wage. Just remember there are plenty of experienced lads out there at the moment that would probably be better value.

Carra23

I was a Cabinet Maker in a past life and to be honest, as said previously, it depends on what you think you are worth and also who you are working for etc. At the end of the day, be thankful you have a job !

If you want real money in the trade, follow the money and unfortunately that means next flight out of Ireland ! Sad to say but true I reckon.

JoeB-

The problem with high wages of course is that the employer has to pass them on to the customer. This makes the employers prices to the customer seem expensive.

How much would a person have to produce to deserve a wage of 675?

Employers PRSI is on top of that I'd imagine, so add 12% on top.



It's possible to employ non-qualified cabinet makers for 10 per hour or thereabouts.

I don't believe that 'cabinet maker' is a protected term.. in other words, anyone can call themselves a cabinet maker in this country. So what's in it for an employer?



I reckon employers are as happy to pay 10 per hour to unqualified people who nevertheless have some skills,, rather than paying full rates of 20 or more, to qualified people. After all, large parts of cabinet making are routine.

One shot on kill

JoeBallantine wrote: »

The problem with high wages of course is that the employer has to pass them on to the customer. This makes the employers prices to the customer seem expensive.

How much would a person have to produce to deserve a wage of 675?

Employers PRSI is on top of that I'd imagine, so add 12% on top.



It's possible to employ non-qualified cabinet makers for 10 per hour or thereabouts.

I don't believe that 'cabinet maker' is a protected term.. in other words, anyone can call themselves a cabinet maker in this country. So what's in it for an employer



I reckon employers are as happy to pay 10 per hour to unqualified people who nevertheless have some skills,, rather than paying full rates of 20 or more, to qualified people. After all, large parts of cabinet making are routine.

From this post I have a fair impression that you know very little about cabinet making. Cabinet making is not as simple as every one thinks.

Any one can call them selves a mecanhic aswell but does that mean they are as good as the rest or even the qualified ones. Because people that qualify as cabinet makers and actually succeed it there trade can be truly craftsmen.
Not all are craftsmen safe in every trade I'd say.

1chippy

JoeBallantine wrote: »

The problem with high wages of course is that the employer has to pass them on to the customer. This makes the employers prices to the customer seem expensive.

How much would a person have to produce to deserve a wage of 675?

Employers PRSI is on top of that I'd imagine, so add 12% on top.



It's possible to employ non-qualified cabinet makers for 10 per hour or thereabouts.

I don't believe that 'cabinet maker' is a protected term.. in other words, anyone can call themselves a cabinet maker in this country. So what's in it for an employer?



I reckon employers are as happy to pay 10 per hour to unqualified people who nevertheless have some skills,, rather than paying full rates of 20 or more, to qualified people. After all, large parts of cabinet making are routine.

to pay out 675 by the time all the bells and whistles are accounted for the employee needs to be generating a minimum of 1200 per week just to break even. thats to include sick, holiday, prsi and all the other muck that goes along with it.

JoeB-

I did run a cabinet making company for several years, with employees. I am temporarily taking a break due to the disastrous management of our economy, but when it improves I will likely be back. Unless I'm doing something else.


I do accept that there are brilliant cabinet makers out there, who can do fantastic work. But does a person need to be qualified in order to assemble flatpack kitchen cabinets?


I stand by what I said. I have employed excellent workers at close to 11 per hour, who have no qualifications. However, they have relevant experience and do excellent work. They also take instructions well.

I have also had work experience people, including some who had qualified from cabinet making courses in Letterfrack... these could not do the work required in the workshop,.. either to the required standard, or quickly enough. The unqualified lads put them to shame,.. including on work ethic alone.


Making cabinet doors on a spindle moulder is routine in my view. We made a lot of Shaker style doors, with flat center panels. The work can be time consuming but I don't consider it highly skilled. Nor do I consider it unskilled. My unqualified worker was fantastic at making doors, and cabinets.



My experience is that customers will not pay for exceptional quality work if it's going to cost the moon and the stars. That's why IKEA does so well, along with Cash and Carry Kitchens and the like. Of course some people will pay for high quality work, but what percentage of all cabinet making is this highest end work? I'd suggest a small percentage, and that the vast majority of cabinet making and woodwork as carried out in this country is routine, or mass produced.


I have seen the beautiful pieces on the back of Fine Woodworking for example. They are beautiful but the hobbyists who make them admit that a small table can take hundreds of hours to make. Not everyone has thousands of euros to spend on the highest quality work.


What percentage of companies making cabinets use man made materials? I'd say only a tiny few companies routinely work in hardwoods, using what would be considered traditional cabinet making skills. How many companies use hand cut dovetails for drawers?


Very interesting to get other peoples opinions.

One shot on kill

Well the company I work for is one of very few then. I have often cut hand dovetails into drawers work tops and a lot of other stuff.

Granted we do do some standard work aswell but 95% of our work is all hand made gear. We have gone through a lot of guys to try and get someone that is capable of making what we do but were unable to find.

It's very easy to put a unqualified person on a saw and on a spindle moulder and say run that stuff don't worry what it is and what its for there's a list work away. Every work shop could do with a lad like that.

But getting a guy that can look at drawings and take a project through all the stages to a fully fitted piece of quality hand made furniture. Is a different ball game altogether.

I would hazard a guess to say the guys that tryed to mass produce furniture closed with the fall of the economy. Reason for this i can see is because the good guy they had On the saw and cnc lacked in craftmans ship it took to satay in the market. ( I do understand Some company were unlucky aswell )
That's why quality furniture will always have its place in the market place. Because now people want quality for money. A lot of high end furniture company's are still going because of there qualified staff and the craftmanship they put into every piece they make.

JoeB-

I fully agree that there are some excellent cabinet makers out there and that work of the highest quality is often worth paying for, if you have money. However, I'd compare cabinet making to tailoring or making clothes,.. in that most people are happy with mass produced items if they're cheaper.

How many people would now pay a tailor to make a suit for them from scratch? I have no doubt that customers would expect a tailor to make a suit for a similar price to a mass produced suit,.. i.e 150 euros or so, or only slightly more. I can't imagine a tailor making that work. A tailor would likely have to charge 600 to 1,000 for a suit made from scratch from rolls of fabric (or more, I just don't know). Up to five or ten times the cost of an equivalent mass produced item. I'd imagine that none or very few suits are made in Ireland from scratch nowadays.


As a cabinet maker I routinely got an equivalent request for cabinets. People would come to me with a picture,.. of a very complex set of bunk beds from Argos or IKEA for example (100 euro), or a mass produced set of table and chairs (1,200 includes 6 complex chairs), or a sleigh bed (250, includes curved and carved headboard and footboard!).... and ask could those items be custom made for only slightly more than the Argos price. Clearly they couldn't, and the customers often couldn't understand why.

Have they never heard that Ireland is a high cost economy and that furniture is routinely mass produced in countries where the daily rate of pay might be 15 to 20 euros or less? I'm aware of some items in Argos where the materials and hardware cannot be purchased in Ireland for less than the cabinet price in Argos. That's economies of scale. (i.e. small CD cabinets, with toughened glass doors and associated hardware on sale for 40 euros which includes VAT)


My point is that customers often have unrealistic expectations as to what is possible or what it should cost. Of course high end cabinet making companies who have high end customers need high end cabinet makers. But I reckon that only a tiny part of the entire furniture market is high end stuff... the rest is mass produced stuff like Argos or IKEA... the same way that 99% or whatever of clothes sold are also mass produced.


So my only point really is that of the entire clothes making industry only about 1% as a guess of the employees would be qualified tailors or seamstresses,.. the rest are likely skilled operatives, operating mass production type machines. It's the same with furniture and kitchen making in my opinion.. only a tiny percentage of the employed workforce need be qualified cabinet makers,.. the rest could be skilled general operatives. But I'm counting Argos and IKEA (and the kitchen mass producers) as part of the cabinet industry in Ireland... many cabinet makers probably don't consider them as competitors.


I'd also mention that the techniques of mass production are often designed to mimic traditional cabinet making techniques. So traditionally doors were made in five pieces as rail and stile doors. This allowed the center panel to be smaller than the full door and as a result less likely to warp, .. also the center panel is left loose in a groove and so can expand and contract. The door itself should not expand and contract and so won't get stuck.
That type of door was copied by mass producers. They simulated a five piece door even though it was unnecessary as they were using man made materials like MDF and so expansion and contraction wasn't an issue. But customers expected to see doors with center panels and so that was simulated.
My point being that mass producers deliberately try to make their offerings indistinguishable from the 'proper' stuff,.. because they know that the average customer cannot tell the difference, and so the average customer will choose on price, especially when the proper traditionally made stuff can be much more expensive.


My final point is that it's very hard for a cabinet maker to make work of such quality that it's clearly not mass produced. What I mean by this is that if a cabinet maker produced something of such quality that everyone who saw it said 'My god, that's amazing, I must have one' then the mass producers will copy the design and produce an object which is virtually indistinguishable from the original as far as the average person is concerned and at only a fifth of the original price. (i.e. Apple products perhaps)
Another way of phrasing this is that modern mass produced items are often more perfect (i.e more consistent) than hand made items. Some customer actually prefer that.