Nobody Wants to Work? Or Nobody Wants to Lead?

The welding and fabrication industry keeps saying it wants young people, but too many shops are terrible at training them. In this episode, Greg Sheldon calls out the excuses, weak leadership, toxic shop culture, and old-school attitudes that are hurting the future of the trades. This is a hard-hitting episode for shop owners, foremen, experienced tradespeople, and young workers who believe the trades are not a backup plan. They are the backbone.

Metal Fabrication Nation with Greg Sheldon. Real talk for welders, fabricators, shop owners, and the next generation of tradespeople. Built on the belief that AI won’t replace real tradespeople, and the trades aren’t a backup plan; they’re the backbone. 

Greg reminds welders, fabricators, foremen, shop owners, and tradespeople that they are not behind the times — they are building the future. Follow the show, share it with someone in the trade, and keep pushing the industry forward. Want to see what bad quoting may be costing your shop? Get the free calculator and Baseline Efficiency Report here: https://gregsheldon.github.io/metalfabexcel/calculator.html

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Metal Fabrication Nation. I'm Greg Sheldon. And today I want to say something straight. The trades are not a backup plan. But the way some shops treat young people, you would think they don't actually believe that. Everybody says they want more welders, fitters, fabricators. Everybody says young people don't want to work anymore. But when a young person walks into the shop, what happens? No plan, no structure, no real training, no real explanation of how things work. Just noise, pressure, sarcasm, bad attitudes, and some guys think being miserable makes him a leader. Then the kid quits and says, see, nobody wants to work. No. Maybe nobody wants to teach, maybe nobody wants to lead. Maybe the shop was a mess and the young person just saw it quicker than everybody else. That's what people don't want to admit. Some shops are not short on workers. They're short on leadership, on standards, communication. They're short on accountability from the top down. And I'm not talking about making the trade soft, because that's not okay either. I'm not talking about hand holding everybody and kumbaya, and you know, we all get in a circle and you know stroke each other. The bar, I'm saying that the bar should be high. The trade is serious, steel is heavy. I mean, all this stuff takes a lot of work and deadlines matter, quality matters, safety matters, showing up matters. We have a serious problem with that today. And if you're in an in the industry, you need to be tough enough to handle hard days. But let's stop pretending that bad leadership is the same thing as toughness. Yelling is not leadership. Throwing a new guy into chaos is not training. Making someone feel stupid for asking a question is not building skill. Man, that happened a lot to me when I was young. It's like it's they would say there's no stupid questions, but then their actions would not reflect that thought process. Someone like it's lazy. It's lazy leadership. And a lot of people hide behind that old line, well, that's how I learned. Okay. And that is how I learned. But we need to change. And I made the shift when I was in a management position. Um but why so many people leave is because they are not being treated the way they should be. Maybe that's why good people walk away from the shop that could have been developed into a real tradesperson. Just because you learn the hard way doesn't mean the hard way is the right way. Sometimes the hard way is just bad management. Let's be honest. Let's be really, really honest. There are some shops that will spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on equipment. They maintain the machine, clean it, calibrate it, protect it, train people how to use it, but then a young person comes in with energy, potential, interest, and they get treated like they're disposable. That's backwards. You can replace a machine faster than you can build a good tradesperson. A good welder takes time, a good fitter, a good fabricator, a good foreman. They all take a lot of time. But some people and shops act like young people should walk in fully trained, fully matured, fully aware, and fully loyal on day one. That's not realistic. That's not leadership, that's fantasy. And schools are part of the problem too. For years, young people were told that the trades were what you did if you couldn't do something better. That mindset is absolute garbage. And a good tradesperson is not second class. A good welder is not second class. A good fitter is not second class. None of the people in the metal trades are second class. We make the world operate. Some of the smartest people I've ever met were tradespeople. The way like they don't use fancy words, they're just real people. They look at a drawing, look at steel, and figure out how to do something and make it work when nothing else, nobody else could do it. That's intelligence. That's problem solving. That is serious value. And it's it's time for people to stop acting like working with your hands means you're stupid. That's absolute garbage. It's a lie. A real tradesperson uses both, both their hands and their mind. Now, young people need to hear the other side too, because it's not all shops. If you're coming into trades, you need to understand something. Nobody owes you a career. Nobody owes you respect just because you showed up. Nobody owes you top money because you watched a few videos and laid one good bead. Um you need to earn your name. You need to earn trust. You need to earn the opportunity. You need to become in demand. You need to be counted on. On time, ready. On time is not on time. On time is early. With your phone away, with your ears open, ready to be hum to have the humility to ask the questions and enough backbone to take correction. If you're too good to sweep the floor, you're not ready for the trade. And if you're too good to carry material, you're not ready for the trade. If you're not ready to be corrected, you're not ready for the trade. If you think all of these menial tasks are beneath you, you're not ready. The basics matter. All of the stuff, the fit up, the cleaning, the layout, the measuring, the the tacking, the grinding, the sweeping, the listening, the watching. Doing the same thing over and over until you get good matters. That's how skill is built. Not overnight, not from ego, not from pretending, not from using Chat GPT. Skills built by repetition. Failure, discipline, pride in your work. In this industry, like this is the truth. In this industry, your name follows you. People remember who shows up, who helps, who learns, who has humility, who asks questions, who comes up with solutions, and who continually makes themselves better. They remember who they also remember who complains, disappears, rushes, blames, doesn't show up. Your name is your resume. You your word is your bond. Protect it. The experience now, to the experienced guys, some of you are killing the trade trades while claiming you're protecting it. If you know someone, something valuable and refuse to pass on it, you're not old school, you're selfish. If you mock every person instead of teaching them, you're not tough, you're lazy. If you complain about the next generation, but do not want to build them up and take the time, you're part of the problem. That might sting, but I don't care. It's the truth. What happens when all you guys that know this stuff and have the knowledge retire? What happens when all that experience disappears? What happens when nobody taught the next crew how to do it right? What happens when the jobs are still coming in, the work has to get gone get done, but this next generation has no idea how to do it? That's not all the young generation's fault. That's on the industry. That's on the guys that know now. We don't just have a labor shortage, we have a mentorship shortage, a leadership shortage, a pride in your work shortage. We have too many people, tradespeople protecting their corner instead of building the future of the trade. And shop owners need to hear this too. If like if your training program is go follow that guy and don't screw up, you don't have a training program. You have hope, and hope is not a system. If your shop has no process, no first-week plan, no structure, no clear expectations, no teaching, no accountability, then stop acting shocked when people don't stay. People don't just leave hard work, they leave confusion, they leave things not being simple, they leave bad leadership, toxic shops. They leave places where nobody teaches, but everybody criticizes. Now, yes, some people are lazy, some people don't want it, some people should shouldn't be in the trades. That's real too. Not everybody's built for this. But you can't use the bad ones as an excuse to ruin the good ones. Because there are young people out there who are going to and can and have the ability to become incredible tradespeople, and someone just needs to show them and walk them down a path. That's what we need. We need better shops, better leaders, better foremen, better training. We need experienced people to pass on their giant algorithm in their mind, their 50,000, 75,000 hours that they've learned on how to build something. The trades are not dying. Weak leadership kills them, bad shop culture kills them, egos kill them, and refusing to train kills it. And pretending everything is fine while everybody complains at break will end this amazing trade. So, AI, let's talk about it. Everybody wants to act like AI is going to replace the trades. It won't. AI can't replace the algorithm that I just mentioned, the 75,000 hour guy, the 50,000-hour guy. It can replace the redundant tasks that we don't want to do anyway, the quotes, the planning, the checklists, the paperwork, training material, custom communication, but it can't go on the job site and solve a problem and make the bolts line up or put the the bearing on and know all that information because it's just not available to AI. It's in the minds of us tradespeople. You can't lead a tr a crew that's frustrated and tired and under pressure, and it cannot teach a young person. I again, AI will not replace the trades. There's too much nuance to it. So I just it it it can it has a place. It can help organize your business, but it might ex it might expose the businesses that are running on chaos for years, but it the future is not tradespeople versus technology. The future is skilled tradespeople using technology better than the other shops that are lazy and have excuses. That's where the opportunities are. So here's the message. Young people, the trades are the real path, but stop waiting for someone to hand you the future. Show up, learn, ask, put the phone away, build your name, experience to the experienced tradespeople, pass it on. If you know something valuable and don't teach it, don't complain when the trades get weaker. To the foreman, your job is not to just push production, your job is to build people who can produce. To the shop owners, if you want loyalty, create a place we're staying in. If you want skill, build it. If you want pride, lead with it. And to schools and parents, stop treating trades like a consolation prize. The world is not held together by theory, it's held together by people who can build, fix, weld, fit, install, lead, and solve real-world problems. The trades are not a backup plan, they are the backbone. And then if this industry wants the next generation, it has to stop complaining long enough to build them. So that's it for this episode. That's the end of my rant. Um, if it hit home, please follow the show, send it to someone in the trade, send it to a young person, a foreman, a shop owner, um for somebody that needs to hear it, just send it to them. I'm Greg Sheldon, and thank you for listening. Keep building, keep learning, keep passing it on, and uh we'll talk to you next time.