Metal carpentry has been one of the essential trades for the construction and livelihood of thousands of families in Spain. Despite this, since it is a hard and poorly paid job, many young people have preferred to turn their backs on it. Behind the workshop hides a complex reality: long hours, tight prices and an increasingly scarce generational change.
Jorge, a metal carpenter from Cali who has been in Spain for 20 years, knows this well, as he arrived in the middle of the real estate boom, when “there was so much work that one could choose what to work on and what not to work on.” Today, the panorama is different, although his passion for the profession remains intact. “A metal carpenter can charge from 25 to 50 euros per hour,” he explains in an interview with the content creator. Elandrevlog. But much more must be subtracted from that rate than it seems.
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“From those 40 euros per hour you have to deduct Social Security, the cutting discs and the van”
Jorge details that those 25 to 50 euros are not the professional’s net profit: “You have to deduct Social Security, travel, cutting discs, electrodes, tools… all of that falls within the work hour.” In practice, what an officer earns is usually between 1,500 and 1,600 euros per month, and that is working full-time and non-stop.
In his workshop, each machine represents an investment: an electric saw costs about 1,600 euros, a welding machine more than 2,000. “I paid them in three times, little by little,” he remembers. Because, although the job is stable if you know it, mastering it is not easy. “When you start as an assistant, you spend many hours on the radio because they don’t teach you how to weld. Here people are selfish, they don’t want you to learn, because if you learn, you earn the same as they do,” he confesses.
“No one teaches you here, and if you don’t know, you have to learn on your own.”
This lack of internal training is, for Jorge, one of the great obstacles of the profession. “The problem here is that people go to work, not to teach you. They see training someone as a waste of time.” That is why he encourages those who want to dedicate themselves to metal carpentry to find their own path: “Take courses, watch videos, buy a machine and practice. Because here no one is going to pay you for an approval.”
In fact, obtaining welding certification can cost up to 600 euros, and many companies only finance it if the worker approves. “I got it because I had already done my courses, but if you fail, they deduct it from your salary,” he explains.
“He who knows, works; he who doesn’t, helps”
Despite the difficulties, Jorge defends the pride behind the craft: “I like to build things. Passing by a place and saying: I made that door, we assembled that structure.” However, he recognizes that without a change in the mentality of the sector and in salaries, it will be increasingly difficult to find young people willing to follow the trade. “Here they need a lot of qualified labor. But if they don’t teach you and they don’t pay you well, who is going to want to learn?”