Kim Macdonald: Mining style week-on, week-off work | Australian Markets

It appears ridiculous that residential construction websites principally sit empty on weekends — virtually one-third of the week — within the midst of a housing disaster.

But a main builder, who shall stay anonymous, defined that he tried offering penalty charges to get his tradies to work weekends however there have been no takers for a six or seven-day work week.

On the opposite, when wages shot up a few years in the past, most of his tradies scaled down from 5 days a week to solely 4, completely satisfied to make the identical quantity of money whereas additionally having fun with a long weekend.

He believes that if tradies had been in a position to work Saturday and Sundays casually, many would use the upper penalty charges to maintain a three-day work week as a substitute.

While it’s of course a gross generalisation, the sheer quantity of builders with a model of this story signifies it’s primarily based on a strong development.

I’m not judging somebody for searching for a work-life stability — with anecdotes suggesting fishing and browsing journeys rank extremely in tradies’ priorities — but it surely leaves the builders navigating a profitless growth with heavy weekend overheads.

And tenants are made to proceed paying exorbitant rents amid the housing scarcity, generally whereas enduring the gradual construction of their own home.

Australia does have a labour scarcity, but it surely additionally has one of the best quantity of construction employees per 1000 people at 5.2 per cent, in comparison with Canada (4.1 per cent), the US (3.6 per cent) the UK (3.1 per cent) and the OECD (3.3 per cent), in line with 2023 World Bank statistics.

The irony right here is that the work-life stability tradies are searching for might backfire, with Labor this week saying plans — ought to it get re-elected — to fast-track the {qualifications} of 6000 tradies to help meet our 1.2 million new properties goal. With the provision of tradies to go up, their potential to charge a premium goes down.

It is time to raised maximise productiveness in residential housing whereas guaranteeing it might compete with the mining industry for employees.

To this finish, I imagine a mining-style week-on, week-off roster would help the sector, guaranteeing different crews working non-stop on every home.

And it could give tradies a respectable break to relaxation their weary our bodies — and a spot of fishing too.