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subcontracting, no vacancies were supposed to have existed. There were said at the time to have been 724 working scaffolders. Of these, 4 (all employed by 1 firm) had received education up to Secondary School Form Five; 160 had craft certificates (they were employed in 19 different firms); and 519 (employed in 45 different firms) had received education up to Secondary School Form Three or below.16 Still today, many of the older scaffolders have frequently only received a few years of Primary education, as was not uncommon until up to the 1960s. Many were young when they started learning the trade.
Employment figures vary considerably depending on the state of the economy. During a building recession, scaffolders sometimes move into other forms of employment, such as hawking or driving a taxi.
A shortage of scaffolders and the danger factor in the trade results in higher wages being paid. Wages for scaffolders are in the region of 10 per cent more than other principal trades, such as carpenters and bricklayers, in the building industry. If a group of scaffolders decide to 'take work' for a price, they can usually earn even more. In October 1997, the going rate for a scaffolder, at HK$890.00 a day, could not attract workers. It was necessary to pay HK$1,000.00 a day.
A shortage of scaffolders is brought about, too, partly because the work is of a casual nature, depending on the number of jobs available, with employees working somewhere between 20 to (but seldom more than) 25 days a month. Once erected, the scaffolding is 'hired out' at a set rate, depending on the time it is left standing before being dismantled.
Erecting bamboo scaffolding is normally seen, naturally, as a man's job, although, since the Construction Industry Training Centre opened in 1976, it has trained two girls (Plate 4). One of those later took over the managing of her father's scaffolding firm. With running the business in mind, that was why she undertook the course in the first place. However, although scaffolding is normally seen as a man's job, of the trainee-places on the Training Authority's course, only nine were taken up in the 1997-98 intake. Seventy per cent of the graduates from the course, which has been running for about 20 years, still work as scaffolders.
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subcontracting, no vacancies were supposed to have existed. There were said at the time to have been 724 working scaffolders. Of these, 4 (all employed by 1 firm) had received education up to Secondary School Form Five; 160 had craft certificates (they were employed in 19 different firms); and 519 (employed in 45 different firms) had received education up to Secondary School Form Three or below.16 Still today, many of the. older scaffolders have frequently only received a few years of Primary education as, was not uncommon until up to the 1960s. Many were young when they started learning the trade." Employment figures vary considerably depending on the state of the economy. During a building recession scaffolders sometimes move into other forms of employment, such as hawking or driving a taxi.
A shortage of scaffolders and the danger factor in the trade results in higher wages being paid. Wages for scaffolders are in the region of 10 per cent more than other principal trades, such as carpenters and bricklayers, in the building industry. If a group of scaffolders decide to 'take work', for a price, they can usually earn even more. In October 1997, the going rate for a scaffolder, at HK$890.00 a day, could not attract workers. It was necessary to pay HK$1,000.00 a day.
A shortage of scaffolders is brought about, too, partly because the work is of a casual nature, depending on the number of jobs available, with employees working somewhere between 20 to (but seldom more than) 25 days a month.** Once erected the scaffolding is 'hired out' at a set rate, depending on the time it is left standing before being dismantled.
Erecting bamboo scaffolding is normally seen, naturally, as a man's job, although, since the Construction Industry Training Centre opened in 1976, it has trained two girls (Plate 4). One of those later took over the managing of her father's scaffolding firm. With running the business in mind that was why she undertook the course in the first place. However, although scaffolding is normally seen as a man's job, of the trainee-places on the Training Authority's course, only nine were taken up in the 1997-98 intake. Severity per cent of the graduates from the course, which has been running for about 20 years, still work as scaffolders.
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