Salute to the oil and gas industry

[cakadu]

The flip side of that cowman is there goes more ag land out of production. We are slowly eating away at our land base and there will be less and less to grow food with. I guess it won't matter because everyone will have so much money that they can afford to pay whatever the food we import costs, right?

There is a huge cry for apprentices and skilled trades. Please put the emphasis on skilled. The problem is that employers are stretched so thin right now that they don't have time to take on apprentices - they want people who can hit the ground running.

It also costs money to go to school - if you're in school you're not earning and for some that is significant. There is no doubt that tradespeople will be in very short supply for at least 10 years if not more.

High schools are having a hard time keeping kids in school because of the lure of money. Bottom line in today's trades you have to have and understand math among other things, so getting that education is important. Do we really want to be creating a generation of not having finished high school?

We keep flogging the money, money, money aspect of things but we don't want to take a long hard look at the social and or environmental costs of what that rush for money.

[cakadu]

A member of my family is apprenticing in a trade and was scheduled to attend a specialized training course in February. The company could not do without him at work, so they scheduled his training for the last two weeks in April and are paying him his regular salary and all his expenses at school to ensure he is going to come back and work for them and not 'jump ship' to their competitor who has already offered him two dollars an hour more.

His Dad, has advised him not to burn his bridges with the company that has kept him busy for the past five years, but its a prime example of what is happening everywhere.

The service station where I by gas for my vehicle can't get kids to work unless they are just very young, so they rely on an all girl crew...between the ages of 14 and 65 !!!

Small communities are having huge problems with drugs, smaller cities that were the retirement choice of many people are now growing so fast that the older people that chose to live there are afraid to drive downtown because of all the traffic !!!

Thankfully I live 10 miles from town and it isn't knocking at my door yet !!!

[cakadu]

sorry, I didn't finish the thought in my last post...what the rush for money is doing in both the short and the long term.

The labour shortage is critical and is only going to get worse over the next while. We have a huge number of "baby boomers" who will be retiring in the next 5 years or so and the succession issues that creates is mind-boggling. We have known for many years that this was coming, but not much was done in that regard.

Now we have the added challenge of keeping kids in school so that they have an education of some sort that they can draw on. Post-secondary education no longer means going to university or even to college to get a degree. It includes training in the trades.

It is my understanding that many parents are not supporting their kids going into the trades for a number of reasons. Many in fact still look down upon trades and look up to degree status. I can't tell you the number of law students that were looking to get an articling position in the past. It may not be the case today, but for a time I knew law students that had been out of school for 2 or more years and hadn't found an articling position. It is a necessary step in becoming a lawyer.

The lad's dad is pretty astute to advise him not to bite the hand that feeds him because things are not always what they seem to be.

Still, the onus is fast coming onto employers, particularly those who have traditionally not paid very well, to treat employees better in order to keep them. Oftentimes a job is not just about the money. Feeling valued and that you are a part of something bigger have a great deal to do with job satisfaction.

Let's face it, if you hate your job there is no amount of money that will make it worthwhile. That and the fact that life it too short to waste it doing something you hate.

[cowman]

Here is what I consider a typical story: A friend of mine(oil consultant) has two boys. The one graduated from high school, went up to Fort Mac and took the test to become a power engineer(steam ticket) at Syncrude. Got accepted and they put him to work/school for six months until he got his fourth class ticket, then a full time job. The next year he completed his third class ticket(right before Christmas). At Christmas I saw him at his Dads home and he told me he was making $76,000 and by next year would hopefully have his second class ticket and move up to $105,000! In the meantime he had bought a small three bedroom house for $336,000(Dad loaned him the down payment) and was renting out two rooms to guys he worked with...which was paying the mortgage!
His younger brother, who did not finish high school, moved up there last summer, and through family connections, got a job driving the big oil sands trucks...for $30 an hour. He gets all the work he wants and is staying with his brother(one of his renters)! Not too shabby for a couple of kids under twenty ?
Now personally, I figure the government should be putting money into education that really matters? And actually do we really need more lawyers and over educated government workers who produce paper? I would suggest the world just might be a better place if we took all the lawyers out in the woods and shot them? Just my opinion.
Oh...and by the way "Dad" is an old Manitoba farm boy who came to Alberta in the early seventies to work as a rough neck. He stills owns 6 quarters of land around Verdun.

[cowman]

cowman your friend's son would make in excess of $105,000 with a second class ticket working at the Joffre plant and wouldn't need to live in Fort Mac.
I have a son with a second class ticket and with his years of seniority working in petrochemical plants he is pulling in well in excess of $130,000, and works an hour out of Calgary.

All the big bucks in Fort Mac are gone just to maintain any decent standard of living.

[cowman]

Well emerald I might have to tell him he isn't getting paid enough!
Horse: School tax mill rate 4.54
municipal residential 3.85
municipal farmland 6.5
Inn. fire district .50
Red Deer recreational .15
Parkland library .04

[Horse]

With the tax rates Cowman and Emerald has posted I am begining to feel like I am living in Sask.
As for the high or not wages I dont realy care what people make but it sure is hard on those that live in lets say the real world, take single mothers they cant follow the oil patch very well but sometimes the patch comes to them but still if they have kids you cant find care for erigular Hr , but they still have to heat thier homes and fuel thier cars and turn on the lights and they are the ones raising the next generation that is going to pay your pensions.
O silly me they should know better than to get pregnant or should have picked better men that have oil jobs.

[Horse]

horse, you forgot to mention seniors living on a fixed income that have to pay utilties as well !!!
If there is a working FATHER involved with the single mothers children she certainly can collect child support and now there are many ways to ensure that it is paid.
Many of us live in the real world horse,and learned long ago that if we were going to remain solvent our lifestyle had to reflect our lowest possible income !!!!!!! Which in my case is living in a 30 year old house and remodelling it as I can aford it, one room at a time. I know many young people who make good incomes that would not wait to have the house remodelled, they would do it all at once, and not give up their Mexican vacation or the new vehicle and RV and ATV either !!!!!!!!!!
Just because a person makes good money Horse, does not mean that they are better off than you or I, and like you said who cares !!!!

[Horse]

Emerald you mentioned a while back about $55000 income tax so I dont see why you would be hampered by lack of funds .
Yes and there are others like AISH and the not so severly handicaped and those who are to damed stuborn to give up the farm but to far from town to get a job that will pay to drive and we cant all get into the oil patch.
I think the amount of suport you can get from a spouse dosent cover the cost of an infant child unless the spouse is making big bucks ,
Just think you cant even go out for a bottle of milk unless you get them all dressed or have someone to set them now we never had that problem but 1 daughter has and I tell you it is one hell of a rough road, and yes she put herself in that position but you have to live with what is not what if.
How much good is the 6 figure salery if there isnt any bread on the shelves or you cant get a tire repaired or gas for your vehicle or a Big Mac now I realize that these are low skill jobs and dont deserve as large a salary as lots but they are still jobs that need done and the people should at least be paid a living wage.
I was a director on various orginazations and almost always when salerys vere looked at and raises given it was on percentages and even in a few yr you could realy see the gap wideing to where it has got to where it is now some making $30,000 and then all those making the 6 figures is there realy that much direrent when it comes right down to it. I would like to see the 250 /hr lawyer repairing his tire or cooking his own hamburger.

[nicolaas]

All this oil wealth is both good and bad. I know a lot of money can be made in the oil patch which supports families, which is good (and you don't even have to be too intelligent to do it either). The bad part is that not enough enphasis is placed on education. It is to easy to be a high school drop out and make 30 bucks an hour to drive a truck,....something any uneducated fellow from any third world country can do. That should be the measuring stick.. can my job be done by a bushman from africa after a few months or a year of training? As soon as the patch is gone, we will be left with exactly that, a third world country, ulness we prepare ourselves for the future. We have to make sure more people graduate university is the sciences, engineering and computer eng/science,also in the easier 2 year tech programs and the trades...Our emphasis should turn from resource extraction to manufacturing/value added/biodiesel/programming, alternative energy,etc. That is where we will gain the advantage in the long term, and have a chance of maintaining our standard of living in the future. With the present attitude of our oil industry leaders (and thus the alberta gov't), this likely will not happen. P.S. I worked in the oil patch for 15 years on the rigs, on perforating /logging trucks, and as an operator in gas plants (3rd class), and I really am troubled by peoples lack of priorities on education.

[cakadu]

Yes there are more ways to try and get dads to pay emrald, but that doesn't necessarily mean that mom and the kids are living the high life by any stretch of the imagination.

I recall a friend of mine whose ex-husband worked the rigs for years and he made 6 figures when the patch was nowhere near as hot as it is right now. She had to basically plead for every dime that she got - court ordered or not and if the poor kid needed any extras that was a huge fight in and of itself. The extras I'm speaking of were for things like help with learning i.e. the Sylvan program. The ex would not, under any circumstances, pay the money to her because he figured she would take and blow it. No basis for it, just the way he was. She really had to work to convince him that it was in the CHILD's best interest to get this extra help.

Nicholaas - you bring up excellent points about getting that education. One may not want, or be able, to drive that truck or hold a welding rod forever. Without some sort of education it would be pretty tough to move forward.

I'm all for getting life experience, but I also feel that an education is an important thing to have. How badly do we want to take a step backward?

To try and put this into some sort of perspective - is it any easier for someone raised in the city to understand the farming way of life? If you've been making any kind of money for any length of time, sometimes it is pretty difficult to understand that others are not anywhere near the same level.

[cakadu]

Linda, I have a family member in a situation where he pays child support to the tune of $750 per month, plus spousal support of $1700.00 a month and has no contact with his child. He has entered into mediation with his estranged spouse where the spouse was advised that not encouraging the child to have a good healthy relationship with her father will have a negative effect on her in the long run but whenever the dad calls and tries to set up a time to see his daughter he is told she wants nothing to do with him and cannot come to the phone.

He is paying until she is 18, and now the mother has tried to demand that he pay for another year because the daughter isnt' going to graduate until she is 19.

He asked my advise and I told him that he shoud NOT pay another penny after she is 18, unless all negotiations on support were between his daughter and him.

I guess for every dead beat dad there is one that is paying through the nose and has very little contact with his kids which really makes me mad.

In many cases if a little more effort was used to make a marriage work there would be a lot fewer single mothers trying to raise kids on their own. I am not suggesting that anyone stay in a marriage where they are abused but taking the good with the bad is part and parcel of the whole meal deal in my view and when kids are brought in to this world parents need to put their best interests first, and in many cases that doesn't happen.

In my community 50% of marriages fail and that means lots of kids growing up without both sets of parents in their lives at all times.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I see a lot of young dads paying child support with no say in how their children are being brought up, and very little money left over to have any sort of lifetyle for themselves. So in my view a lot of single moms are that way by choice not necessity.

[cowman]

emerald: I think you gave this guy some bad advice? The fact is child support doesn't end at 18 if that child continues in school, college, university etc.? I have a friend who is still paying for a 26 year old...going to be some kind of doctor!
Nicolass: I do agree that there needs to be an emphasis on education. The times are a changing and we need to realize we are entering a very technological age.
The only thing I might disagree with what you wrote is this: The kid who has the hustle to get out and make a go of life usually has the hustle to be an entrepreneur? The Bill Gates and Sam Waltons of this world never got there by being educated, but by a drive to succeed and a nature of taking some risk? How many times do you see, when the paper is profiling some successful oil service company, the president says "well I started out on a rig roughnecking when I was sixteen"? Not to say there aren't many successful businessmen who are highly educated. I just think you are either born with it or not.
Here is a funny story. My son went off to university, got a degree in Commerce, decided accounting wasn't for him after starting to article. Came home to dear old Dad and helped him out! Anyway one day I was chewing him out for something I thought was really a dumb business practice and I said " What in the hell did those idiots teach you at that damned university"?
Now he has a very calm nature and never gets too excited so he thought for a few moments and said " Well, I learned how to drink beer and screw girls!"
Well that took all the indignation right out of me and I had to laugh! So I said "Well I guess that is important too! I guess my money wasn't totally wasted!"

[cowman]

Horse: Believe it or not I do share some of your concerns about distribution of the wealth from our natural resources/assets and do not think everyone is getting a fair shake?
The fact is we as the owners of Alberta don't get a fair return on our assetts? For example: We have a hospital worth millions of dollars. Where is our "return" on that capital investment? Now without a doubt some people are doing very well on our investment...but maybe not all of us?
Consider this: The people of Alberta have a huge asset base in crown land,infrastructure, oil, coal, lumber, government buildings? Who benifits?
The fact is this: Yes the oil industry benifits but they also pay "rent" if you will? THe doctor doesn't pay rent, neither does the teacher neither does the civil servant? So here we have the Alberta citizen getting no real return on his capital investment? The bum laying in the gutter actually is a multi millionaire...he just isn't getting a return on his share? He could get off his butt and become a productive worker...and he still wouldn't be getting any return on his Alberta investment!
As far as the little single mother....why doesn't the government give her a hand up...not a hand out, but a hand up? They send these little girls off to school to "upgrade their skills"? It really isn't an option...you either go or get cut off social services! They trot off, baby in tow and learn crap like Shakespeare and become real qualified...qualified to work at MacDonalds! And I'm sorry but MacDonalds just doesn't cut it when you are trying to raise a kid and get ahead! Why not train her for a carreer she can make a buck at and become a productive tax paying citizen? The other wonderful government option is kill that baby...which personally I think is not only evil and wicked but doesn't make sense?
The answer why they train these girls this way is fairly simple? The "re-education" is more about keeping some useless teacher on the payroll than about doing what is best for that little mother and the Alberta taxpayer?
Meanwhile, while we have all these educated burger flippers, we are crying for skilled labor and bringing in every Tom, Dick and Harry from out of the province and don't worry about the color of their hide or whether they are low lifes or whatever! It is completely stupid and not fair to the people who really are the owners of this province?
Just my opinion.

[cowman]

cowman, Childrens Services spends millions each year trying to sort out the problems kids have, much of which comes from broken or single parent homes where the kids do not come first !!!

It would be a perfect world if every child was wanted, and loved, but unfortunately in many cases they are the victim of a bad choice, and are treated like baggage instead of the precious commodity they are !!!