Carpenter license, money grab or what?

[Tig]

In my neck of the woods I see people duped into hiring guys with hammers when they really need a trade professional The result is a lot of wasted money. So once again legislation is being created to protect us from ourselves.
The money part of this, is about bringing the shady operators above board into the taxable realm and help end the unfair competition. And the same goes for the properties they work on which are not always permitted and taxed. Which is all fine by me, since they all need to pay their fair share.
So bottom line is that I wish we didn't need this, but I understand what they are trying to fix.

 

[HillStreet]

When I built my house in 2009 I was contacted by a guy that wanted to do my framing. He and 2 of his buddies were laid off from other jobs and had only limited experience in carpentry. No experience on large jobs, no insurance. I passed on the offer and hired a full time construction guy who did a terrific job and became a friend.

A license won't make anybody a professional. The electrician that wired my house was licensed but was a real odd-ball---- he looked for jobs where he could make $2000 a day and only work 3 days a month ( he told me this). Luckily I insisted on a contract, and I was glad to see him leave when he was done.

 

[Gem99ultra]

I certainly can see the need for everyone that is in business of building to be licensed and insured. I will say up front that neither does NOT need to be expensive - but having the proven skills to charge for work being performed IS.

Here in the USA, specifically in the State of Georgia, EVERYONE claims to be skilled in every trade your can name. You'll find upon requiring them to produce a copy of their license, that yes - they are licensed... but it may just be a diver's license, or in one personal case where I had a workshop built, the GC turned out to be a two man team with only a license to lay floor tile. What a joke. And what shabby non-conforming work.

The joke though is on me, the owner. The "carpenter" erected a building that wouldn't stand up in a 15 mph wind. Fortunately, I shut him down before I was too far in payments to find and hire a licensed contactor with proper skills - which was no easy task!

I also agree that proper insurance should be required of contractors. One person getting hurt or killed on your property while working for you can totally wipe out your current and future savings. I've found that untrained contractors usually have poor safety methods, resulting in not only poor work but costly injuries.

My real gripe is that the cost of insurance and licensing should not be cost prohibitive to contractors. IF they are truly skilled in the trade that they proclaim to be skilled in, and if their insurance were a reasonable cost, we'd all be the better off for it.

 

[doxford jim]

Having a licence doesn't guarantee anything.
I was forced to hire a so called professional ROWP (Registered Onsite Wastewater Practitioner) to design and build a new septic system - government rules. Well the new septic system failed in six months and was condemned by the health department. The whole horrible mess took a little over three years to sort out completely. I had to use the court system and the provincial (state) association for the ROWP's to get it all done - everyone was blaming someone else etc.
I used the ROWP's because I was forced to, however I did get some justice but I ended up paying for a Cadillac and got a Volkswagen so as to speak.
Up here lawyers are excessively expensive, so which ever way you go you pay. The ROWP that installed my first system is no longer allowed to carry out this work and is no longer a member of that association - a lot went on behind the scenes that I was not privy to of course.

I don't think the public is any further ahead - just another layer of government regulation that is not working very well. It does however, offer some sort of process where abuse and incompetence is concerned - albeit lengthy (in my case).

 

[newbury]

<snip> It's appalling how some so called "professionals" are so bereft of knowledge of their trade (Remove a load bearing wall? Cut 90% through a main load carrying beam?) and there is a real need for oversight on who is doing work that has the potential to cost a customer several thousands of dollars to repair their shoddy work. The real trick is how do you set it up to make it have a real benefit to both the customers and the knowledgeable competent tradesman? What checks and balances do you need in place? :confused3:

The only tools available to the community as a whole seem to be licensing and inspection. If everyone was trained in plumbing, electricity, carpentry, air conditioning etc. they could easily tell if they were getting shoddy work.

<snip>A license won't make anybody a professional. The electrician that wired my house was licensed but was a real odd-ball---- he looked for jobs where he could make $2000 a day and only work 3 days a month ( he told me this). Luckily I insisted on a contract, and I was glad to see him leave when he was done.

The carpenter I hired in Mississippi for a 6K job (w/ contract) worked part-time as a school bus driver. He did a great job but was never there for more than 4 hours a day. We rehired him for another job but he insisted on us hiring his friend to assist. I caught his friend going to do a 3/4/5 measurement to make sure a window was level, instead of going down the ladder to get a level. Other aspects showed shoddiness. I caught the friend raiding the scrap pile to build something for "a friend". I told him that was MY scrap pile, I paid for it, please keep out. I might hire the bus driver again, but not his friend.

I certainly can see the need for everyone that is in business of building to be licensed and insured. I will say up front that neither does NOT need to be expensive - but having the proven skills to charge for work being performed IS.

Here in the USA, specifically in the State of Georgia, EVERYONE claims to be skilled in every trade your can name. You'll find upon requiring them to produce a copy of their license, that yes - they are licensed... but it may just be a diver's license, or in one personal case where I had a workshop built, the GC turned out to be a two man team with only a license to lay floor tile. What a joke. And what shabby non-conforming work.

The joke though is on me, the owner. The "carpenter" erected a building that wouldn't stand up in a 15 mph wind. Fortunately, I shut him down before I was too far in payments to find and hire a licensed contactor with proper skills - which was no easy task!

I also agree that proper insurance should be required of contractors. One person getting hurt or killed on your property while working for you can totally wipe out your current and future savings. I've found that untrained contractors usually have poor safety methods, resulting in not only poor work but costly injuries.

My real gripe is that the cost of insurance and licensing should not be cost prohibitive to contractors. IF they are truly skilled in the trade that they proclaim to be skilled in, and if their insurance were a reasonable cost, we'd all be the better off for it.

My real gripe is inspectors who treat the job as something to do after they retired. They give a cursory inspection and if your a "good 'ol boy" sign off. On the last job I had done we had GOOD inspectors, they pointed out several ways to be safer and save money. In Fairfax County, VA we have very strict rules and inspections. In Itawamba County we have neither. I'm my own building inspector there.

But for the homeowner who does not know code or thinks 12-3 means there are 3 wires (looked all over, all the 12-2 was mislabeled, it had 3 wires) and doesn't have a trusted inspector it's a shot in the dark for them to get good safe work done.

 

[downsizingnow48]

I've seen this question from various angles. For some years I was in the trades in southern California, as a carpenter and later as a licensed residential building contractor. I am back in California now but have also lived in Maryland and Virginia. In all three states I did permitted (inspected) work on my own houses. In all three states I also had to redo unpermitted, uninspected - and dangerous/unsightly - work done by homeowners. So I have a bunch of remodeling experience, as a carpenter, contractor, and homeowner. My bottom line here is, there are a lot of ways to do things wrong. Homeowners - and hammer guys - can exceed their competency even when making what they think are simple changes (plumbing, electrical, structural) to a dwelling. The licensing/inspection/building code regime is not a guarantee of quality, and it sometimes requires more time/materials/expense than I might think necessary, and it sometimes impedes innovation and competition. However it serves a useful purpose in setting standards for safety and performance. Which requires building inspectors. I have found they are generally helpful in all three states, with some exceptions. So, back to the OP's original question, should carpenters be licensed? It depends on what they are doing. Swinging a hammer under supervision of a licensed contractor, I would say no. But if that carpenter is building a room addition on their own, I would say yes. So, there are nuances to the question that depend on local circumstances. On the whole, having seen unlicensed, unpermitted, and uninspected work in many houses (a few that I owned, many more that I was working on), I would opt for more supervision rather than less.

 

[TnAndy]

Sometimes (ok, a lot...no...make that most of time!) rules like that are just a money grab but sometimes it is driven by having a lot of incompetent people setting up in business. The old "I got a hammer so I'm a carpenter!" thing. It's appalling how some so called "professionals" are so bereft of knowledge of their trade (Remove a load bearing wall? Cut 90% through a main load carrying beam?) and there is a real need for oversight on who is doing work that has the potential to cost a customer several thousands of dollars to repair their shoddy work. The real trick is how do you set it up to make it have a real benefit to both the customers and the knowledgeable competent tradesman? What checks and balances do you need in place? :confused3:

Some of the worst work I've ever seen was from a guy that rides up and down the road in a truck with "Keith XXXX, Licensed Builder" on the side of it. He does none of the work and hires any drunk he can find to hammer crap together. BUT he has a builder's license because he went and took the state exam, paid the fees and nobody ever follows up from there.

 

[TnAndy]

I caught his friend going to do a 3/4/5 measurement to make sure a window was level, instead of going down the ladder to get a level.

For future reference: 3/4/5 will tell you if the opening is square. It has nothing to do with level, unless one of the dimensions is known to be level.

 

[Gem99ultra]

I think downsizingnow48 hit the nail on the head! A license that truly requires a craftsman to know, and prove he knows, his trade is more essential on some work than others. BUT - the inspector is our final stop gap. Inspectors here aren't even required to have a license of any kind. The county inspector that I ended up with had worked as an electrician. No work experience at all in the carpentry, plumbing or civil work. Heck - he either wasn't familiar with the building code, or simply didn't care. What I did learn from him was that he was well versed in turkey hunting. He had long conversations with my contractor on that topic. Totally useless in ensuring that my building was built properly and safely.

What doxford jim did, i.e. using the court system to shut that imposter down was the right thing to do. Hopefully his lawsuit included not only his personal monetary loss but the legal cost as well. I'll do my part in avoiding those unproven imposters when I bump into them. However, I don't know how to clear out the imposter inspectors. And as long as they let contractors get away with half-*** work, the contractors are going to continue doing just that.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I'm all for a politician license. Before anyone can run they need to test to show they have some common sense, they know how to budget money and keep their spending within the budget, and they are disqualified if they have been caught in a lie.

Until then, licensing will still be for safety. The ability for politicians to safely take your money and line their pockets.