In tradies and builders

While some companies are struggling to keep up with jobs, some in the industry are saying half the population isn’t getting a ‘‘fair crack’’ at trades.

Figures from Statistics New Zealand show only 2 per cent of all construction workers are women.

Nikita Ward took up a plumbing apprenticeship at Hutt City Gas and Plumbing in 2015 and, according to Upton, she is one of the only 22 female plumbers and apprentices nationwide.

A report from NZ Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers showed that in 2017, there were around 14,500 registered plumbers around the country.

‘‘We’ve got a shortage in the [plumbing] industry and 50 per cent of the population aren’t getting a crack at it,’’ Upton said.

After Ward finished her pretrade training several years ago, she started looking for an apprentice position.

She called around all the plumbing and gasfitting businesses she could find on the Ka¯ piti Coast where she lived, but either got no reply or was told they weren’t looking for apprentices.

Hutt Gas and Plumbing took her on and the company now employs three of the 22 female plumbers and apprentices nationwide.

Ward’s male workmates accepted her and the other two women easily but some customers found it harder seeing a woman working in a trade.

‘‘Some people are like ‘you’re a woman you shouldn’t be doing this kind of thing, get back in the kitchen’. And you feel like saying ‘Well, I do work in the kitchen, I’m just fixing stuff, not making you a sandwich’,’’ Ward says.

At high school Ward felt pushed into taking the university route and said she was never really told trades were an option.

Training organisation Skills chief executive Garry Fissenden said at the end of 2017 just 2 per cent of trainees who signed up were women, but that was up from 1 per cent the year before.

‘‘Eighty per cent chose electrical, 17 per cent plumbing, gasfitting and drainlaying, while 3 per cent went into roofing,’’ he says. In December 2017 Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway announced seven constructionrelated occupations had been added to the immediate skills shortage list.

At the same time, the Government took its first steps on the Kiwibuild programme, which aims to build 100,000 affordable homes over the next decade.

‘‘The construction industry needs skilled workers to achieve this,’’ Lees-Galloway said.

‘‘The Government will always ensure that where a genuine skill gap exists our immigration system will support employers to get the people they need.’’

In the current financial year so far, the number of visas approved for trade and technician jobs outnumbered professional visas.

Figures from Immigration New Zealand show nearly 16,500 technician and trades visas were issued compared to around 13,700 professional visas.

This was the first time trades visas had outnumbered professional visas in the last decade at least.

Those numbers came as no surprise to those in the industry leaders.

Both NZCB and BCITO representatives said immigration was a way of ‘‘filling the gaps’’ during a shortage of workers.

‘‘We can’t fill [a shortage] from here so we have to look overseas,’’ Florence says.

‘‘There is no magic bullet. There’s potentially minor levers you can pull but there’s really nothing that will solve it unless, over time, we get away from this boom-bust cycle.

‘‘I can see we’re going to have to live with the shortage for a time.’’