Ireland needs fewer graduates and more pay for manual workers

We need to properly value and compensate low paid but very essential manual workers rather than trying to ‘educate’ them out of their financial quandary, says Dr Tom O’Connor

'Right now, the biggest skills shortages in Ireland are in manual work, most of which are neither a trade nor a degree.'

There are two big drivers of skills shortages in Ireland: The first is the imbalance within the Irish education and training system which is turning out graduates at a rate that is 41% higher than the EU average (at age 25-34), while the Government can’t reach its target of 10,000 new apprentice tradespeople per year.

Cultural snobbery towards education over manual work is a big factor here and bound up with others; the second driver, and one which has been receiving scant attention, is the failure to value and adequately pay manual occupations, which are very essential and among the most valuable in society, yet do not conform to the neat distinction between a trade or a college degree.

In Ireland, there is an under-developed vocational, educational, and training system, which would offer a different career pathway than going straight to third level after the Leaving Cert. In contrast, in Germany, students can choose either college/university or structured career programmes, geared towards specific occupations.

The German dual vocational and training system offers a balanced alternative to university for a large proportion of students. This system is based on education at colleges for part of the week and training in workplaces for the remainder.

Education and training are very specific and clearly geared towards real occupations. Those pursuing technical skills form part of this system, as do professions such as doctors, accountants, and lawyers. This system is not possessed of snobbish views on trades and professions, which is the case in Ireland.

The building blocks for a German model in Ireland are there with the further education colleges, Education and Training Boards, Solas and other agencies. It is good also that Simon Harris is established a group to propose more unified pathways between further education and higher education.

There are hundreds of daily advertisements for truck drivers in Ireland but the pay is poor.

However, too many people pursue further education courses as a stepping stone to higher education for FE courses which are generally of short duration.

Too many students enroll in a PLC course because of not getting sufficient CAO points for their chosen occupation. PLC courses are generally short and not sufficient in themselves for specific occupations, requiring a transfer to a university, which is by no means certain.

Simon Harris’s main focus is on expanding these pathways, not a new era in Vocational Education and Training.

This does not recognise that a separate, well-developed further education and training system needs to provide vocational education and training as an alternative to third level, and where these qualifications are gained over a longer period, while being sufficient in themselves to fully satisfy all the specific education and training needs of the various occupations and professions. In Germany, courses in the VET system can last up to four years.

I n Ireland, a new VET structure should form part of an autonomous and unified vocational and education system, separate to universities, and offer an alternative training and education pathway for students after they complete formal secondary education. This qualification would be sufficient as a qualification in its own right for their chosen occupation.

But there is a second driver of skills shortages. Right now, the biggest skills shortages in Ireland are in manual work, most of which are neither a trade nor a degree. The national training agency Solas in a report this summer, noted the top 10 areas where job advertisements for workers have grown most between the first nine months of 2019 and the same period in 2021, which were, going from the highest to the lowest: delivery driver, electrician, truck driver, nursing assistant, labourer/warehouse worker, manufacturing machine operator, restaurant/food service supervisor, retail sales associate, production worker, data engineer. The report notes that these occupations are good bets for jobseekers.

There are hundreds of daily advertisements for truck drivers at present in Ireland. The typical hourly pay rate is €15 to €17 per hour. The CSO estimate the average salary in Ireland is €880 per week.

So, a typical truck driver, being paid €16 an hour would need to work 55 hours a week to make the average salary. Yet, the average working week in Ireland is 39 hours.

Typical hourly earnings for an electrician are €21-24 per hour, reflecting the years of training. However, the typical hourly pay for a nursing assistant is between €10.40 and €12, while warehouse workers average around €13 per hour. In terms of retail sales, it is most common to find baristas in coffee shops being paid €10.50 an hour, the minimum wage.

Economists have developed a distinction between what is termed an External Labour Market and an Internal Labour Market. The latter enjoys better pay, more job security, often a greater likelihood of paid sick leave, cleaner work environments and a large degree of trust between the employer and employee, rather than continuous surveillance-type supervision. The opposite is true of external labour markets, which are characterised by less job security, lower pay, less trust from the employer to employees and generally poorer working conditions.

If we look at the current skills shortages noted above, almost all would be considered to exist in external labour markets. So, parents of children want their children to be at less risk of unemployment and send them to pursue a degree instead, which is more likely to lead to a job within an internal labour market, such as a public service job, a sought-after multinational with strong career-building structures or other professional jobs.

85,000 CAO applications

People are rational economic actors and know this. People want better pay and conditions. That is why there are nearly 85,000 CAO applicants right now, while there is a shortage of apprentices and manual workers in the ten occupations which are listed above.

There is a clear need to value ALL manual work, the work of tradespeople and manual workers, and manual occupations such as those listed above, which may not require the same level of education training, but which is still skilled and very valuable work.

The greatest fallacy of our time is the ‘Differential Rewards’ worldview popularised since the 1960s which says that massive inequalities in pay between different occupations is based on the value which society puts on each.

Some of this thinking still exists. The assumption is that if you have a very large income, then society most judge your work contribution to be more valuable than somebody on low pay. The falseness of this view is proven by the fact that hedge fund operators and vulture funds, which extract unearned income from the economic system, without producing a tangible good or service in their own right, can be rewarded in terms of millions per annum in profit, while a nursing or care assistant typically receives €11 per hour.

Most people would likely agree that the care assistant offers positive value to society, while the vulture fund does not.

Ratchetting up more education and training for many manual jobs, where it is not immediately necessary is only leading to over-qualification, while the core problems of low pay, poor job security and poorer working conditions will still exist.

Continuous skills development will be necessary and this is needed, but trading up to higher education and training, when a worker is already doing skilled and valuable work, in the mistaken belief that this is the cause of somebody’s low pay and poor working conditions is wrong and is merely a stick used to beat a valuable but low paid worker.

Dr Tom O’Connor is an economist & sociologist and head of the Department of Applied Social Studies at Munster Technological University (Cork)