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Economics, government & businessSkills shortagesOpinion

Have a rant – Skills shortage

by Personnel Today 12 Nov 2007
by Personnel Today 12 Nov 2007

The skills shortage is currently being talked about as though it is a new thing that skills shortages never existed before. Well, sorry, but they did and they always have.

Long before apprenticeships ever entered anyone’s minds, there were crops to pick and fields to plough, houses to build and swords to be made.

But to do these jobs required some knowledge some skills. Trouble was, local people didn’t have those skills.

So what happened? Well, in the area that I live in, there was a big need for bricks that wouldn’t crumble. And were there enough local craftsmen making bricks? Of course there weren’t. And the ones that did exist were making very poor bricks.

So what did they do – the lord of the manor, presumably – to rectify the situation? Well blow me down, they imported some migrant workers from Holland, who happened to know all about bricks.

They were ‘master craftsmen’, we are glibly informed in the record books. Of course, back in The Netherlands, they probably couldn’t hold down a job, such was the level of craftsmanship at the time (we are talking 1444-ish).

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Naturally, the original, nay traditional British craftsman, the one who wasn’t a master craftsman, was sitting around drinking mead, or whatever passed for tea in the olden days. Plus ça change, as the French fruit pickers of central London used to say. And probably still do.

Have your say. E-mail your rant to [email protected] – your details will be kept confidential.

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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