They Should Be Applauding You

Joe Dageforde
Sep 4, 2018 · 5 min read

Construction, no matter how it’s perceived, is invaluable. As I’ve been looking into the idea of being proud of what we do, I’ve unwittingly found myself in an industry that seems steeped in some sort of shame.

It’s messy, dirty, dusty, loud and a blatant inconvenience to everyone around it until it’s done. No one wants you around while it’s going on. BUT, when it’s finished… everyone raves about how awesome and new it is, how much it has improved the area etc. There’s hype around who’s moving into the new building and a certain status upgrade is assigned to those occupying the new digs.

A day wouldn’t go by without me hearing, “I’m just a dumb concreter”, or, “There’s no way I’m letting my kids get into construction”. I hear workers being referred to in derogatory terms and to be perfectly honest, I’ve said those things myself. A good friend of mine and I used to dream up different vocations to tell people we did while out on the town just so we weren’t tarnished with the brush of Construction. But, you know what? Stand proud, and say it loud because without every single cog in the chain of Construction, our nation would be nowhere.

There would be no house, road, sewer lines, electricity, train stations, or even trains for that matter, no tunnels, office blocks, apartment towers, bridges and fancy restaurants. Scariest of all, there’d be no breweries, bars or pubs!

I was talking to another mate who told me that back when he was a Builders Labourer, he’d get on the train after a 12 hr day of hard work. He would have been cleaning toilets for a whole apartment tower, covered in concrete and dirt, he’d be wet and muddy if it’d been raining. People would move away from him in the train and he always felt like everyone was looking down on him as though he was a lower class citizen.

Let me tell you, those people should have been applauding him.

He would have worked harder that day than any of them, doing the jobs that few of them would have put their hands up to do and without people like him, they would be walking back to a humpy they may have put together themselves along a dirt track worn in only by repetitive footsteps.

I’ve been talking to a couple of the workers on my current site, asking if they felt any shame stating what they did for work, and in each case, they did at some point. Some said they did to begin with, then came to a realisation that they were valuable regardless.

One guy said to me, “I was standing in the line up at the supermarket with my few things and everyone was looking down at me. I was dirty and grubby and I felt bad for being in there. It was like I didn’t belong. But then I thought, fuck’em, people like me built this supermarket and all of you’s would be stuffed without me! Besides, I earn twice as much as them and contribute more to our society through all the tax I pay!”

I can remember the exact same thing when I was a Chippy. I was making 60K a year back in 1998 when a fully qualified Architect or Engineer was making 40 to 50K and they had to study for 4 to 6 years to get there, and had a HECS debt so big it could swallow a whole house! I would be there in my ‘Jackie Howe’ singlet with my ‘Stubbies’ shorts and sock savers over my boots. My face and arms were stained black from the hardwood sawdust after it’d hit my sweat but I was working hard.

Having a trade held far greater status in years past when we were more connected to where things came from. Society valued tradespeople and farmers more. Learning a trade was a craft and a lifelong career in which you just got better and better. Now we have skill shortages because there aren’t enough young people willing to do a hard day’s work.

During the 20 years of my Construction Managerial career, I’ve unblocked hundreds of toilets! I’ve been told that a cleaner doesn’t unblock a toilet, the site plumbers were not ‘maintenance plumbers’ and that it wasn’t the role of a labourer. I guess that means we’re all just going to go get a new toilet every time one gets blocked? No, it just came down to me (You’ll hear me write about these things in my works around leadership!!). It didn’t matter how senior my role up the Management ladder, it has always been hard to find the right people who’ll put their hands up to do the dirty work, and when you find them, they are the most valuable people on your team. They are the grease that helps the whole machine run smoothly.

Now it is also entirely true that many (not all) long term construction workers would be considered ‘rough’ and may not be very smooth around the edges. Many come from lower socioeconomic sectors of the community and are thrown into the industry out of a lack of choice. There are also some real ‘salt of the earth’ type people in the sector and regardless, they all deserve our gratitude and respect. I’m not telling everyone to go out and “Hug a Labourer!” I’m just balancing out the respect and status scale that is currently out of touch. Everyone sure notices when the Bin Man doesn’t show up and when your toilet is blocked, you need the type of person who comes in, gets dirty touching things that make you dry reach just thinking about, and then says, “Don’t worry, it’s only poo”!!! (I have heard these exact words!!!)

More recently, the Construction Industry has been plagued with a new breed of Construction Professional, everyone wants to be a Project Manager straight out of Uni and thinks they can be a builder via a degree. Well, you can’t. Cutting the ‘Hard Work’ corner makes you a qualified but poor candidate for any of those roles. How can you possibly understand what it takes to carry out a task if you’ve never been on the wrong side of a wheel barrow? How can you program a sequence of works when you’ve never spent a day busting your hump putting something together, only to find you have to pull it all down because the next thing you want to install won’t fit past what you just built? How can you adequately cater for the needs of the ‘end result’ team if you don’t appreciate what goes on behind the scenes? There are so many steps, variables and sequences and it takes years and years to just scratch the surface of knowledge required to properly run a site. Even then, the best thing you can practice is respect for those who actually do the work. Speak with them and involve them in the planning and organisation of the works.

Now I know that the machine that is our society needs the lawyers and accountants, clean business people and stockbrokers. I’m not saying that their roles aren’t important as well, but they aren’t the glamour underdogs in this story.

Anyone putting in a hard day’s work should hold their heads up high and know that they are one of the valuable few that do the less desirable jobs that make everything come together. Those in the glamour roles need to show a bit of appreciation to the people who installed the lights that make their sequins shimmer and clean their shit off the toilet.

Joe Dageforde

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I am many things, but I am not beaten. My aim is to create positivity by sharing my triumph over adversity through not giving up. Openness breeds comfort.