Handy pay rise for our tradies

THE Gold Coast jacks-of-alltrades had a bumper pay rise last year.

ServiceSeeking.com.au crunched the data on 16,500 quotes from Gold Coast tradies last financial year to discover handymen received a 14.89 per cent pay increase.

This was followed by earthworks contractors, whose pay rose 11.83 per cent, and plumbers, who were up 6.23 per cent.

The average quote for a handyman was $56.77 an hour from $49.42 the year before.

Gold Coast handyman Sascha Voevodin said he charged a flat rate of $60 an hour, which he believed demonstrated to customers the quality of his service.

“It is hard to imagine anyone struggling for work on the Gold Coast at the moment,” he said.

“I do a lot of putting up shelves, fixing up plaster, holes in walls, I fix a lot of broken things, broken louvres, window frames and all sorts of things.

“I have a very high attention to detail and make it perfect for the customers. If they aren’t willing to pay that rate I won’t do it.”

An earthworks contractor from the Gold Coast who wished to remain anonymous because he feared his business would be branded as expensive, said $86.67 an hour was very cheap.

“Considering the cost of the plant equipment it would be very hard to do a job for $86.67 an hour,” he said. “We would

be closer to over $100 or even $200-$300 an hour.”

He said the average cost would vary dramatically depending on the equipment used, from a bobcat to a large bulldozer.

For the second year in a row removalists finished on top of the list on the Coast, charging an average of $91.69 an hour and still had the fourth largest increase of 5 per cent.

However Gold Coast removalist Brendan Taylor said the average rate of $91.69 was low for big moves around the state and Australia, possibly skewed by a higher number of smaller jobs.

“That is the sort of rate with an owner operator where they don’t have an offsider,” the Ready Set Move owner said.

“We charge about $109 an hour and that’s for two people, the truck, fuel, insurance, tax and the cost of running the business.”

The former Elanora High student said the bigger companies charged at least $130 an hour because they also have to pay office staff and other people who aren’t doing the driving and moving.