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Wage rates
I am having trouble deciding on what would be a fair wage to pay for an experienced vinyl fitter. I want to pay my people properly but on the other hand our charge out rate must be competitive if we are all to keep our jobs. It’s therefore in everybody’s interest that I get it right.
Of course, many factors are involved, not least of all location, but if anybody is prepared to share this information I would be grateful.
I realise that this is a sensitive subject and a lot of people might not like to put that sort of information on a public forum but if this is the case you could always PM me with area and hourly rate. Needless to say any figures I get will be in strictest confidence.
If I get enough data I could put up a list of regions and rates, which might also benefit others in the same predicament.
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16 Replies
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Dunno John, around here the average for skilled labour is about £8 an hour, they even pay that for filling shelves at ALDI, tradesmen are are on about £12-15 an hour, landwork about £7, shops min wage, my missus gets £11 an hour as a trainee nurse working extra hours to cover for others, if it was me I’d want £350 to £400 a week.
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When i was employed as a Fitter, i was on £8 an hour + Overtime, at time & a Half + Van.
I did do some private work in that time and would get paid £15-£17 per Hour.
Which is why im now self employed 🙂
Hope that helps
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If you have to pay a good wage to have the fitting done then you should make sure they do a good job everytime.. “they” cover mistakes & things like having to return to the job, non-pay.
If they are on a self-employed basis, they should pay for “all” mistakes, time, inconvenience caused out of their own pocket like the rest of us running a business have too.
Pay them by the hour and they will take all day to do a job that normally takes 3 hours.
If they make a mistake they will tell you it was missing… & blame the graphics debt..
Oh don’t start me on this 😆 😆 😆 😉
Only recently have I started to think our staff maybe getting some place.. good workers & pretty honest into the bargain. It’s all you can ask these days!if your staff are good at their job then pay them a decent wage. pay what you would consider decent in their shoes…
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A tough question !
I usually start trainees off on the lowest wage that I can get away with, when they show that they are learning and taking some kind of responsibility for there products, we sit down and talk about furthering their prospects and obviously pay.
Experienced people get a deal that is relevant to thier skills and the amount of work I think I can give them.
Having said that, I think there is no problem in discussing wages in public and with that in mind I’ll start the ball rolling.
Surrey/Berks/Bucks based skilled subcontractors £10-£15 ph, skilled employees £8-£12 ph unless they have serious talent.
Obviously my prices are based on my overheads etc, but it would be good to get things out in the open so we are all playing on an even feild.How does this come across to you guys ?
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Back to the old adage “You pay peanuts, You get monkeys” 😆 😆
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But the peanuts are real expensive ones, there doesn’t seem to be a higher grade of monkey though.
I have always struggled with this. I’m in West London (Isleworth) and i’ve had a few guys call up looking for work. Each one of them looking for a possition as signmaker, not manager, not supervisor, plain old sign maker and looking to get £25K One guy didn’t do any of the computer side or dealing with customers and quotations, just weeding application etc… If i’m going to pay someone £25K they have to be able to do everything including the screen printing, transfer printing, and some of the admin.
……..I don’t even get close to that salary myself!
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Some stuff to think about here.
Firstly, having asked for this sort of information it is only proper that I put up my own.
Skilled and experienced fitters get £8.50 per hour.
Trainees start on £5.00 and get raises as they become more experienced and their value increases. The upper limit depends on their own abilities.
The girls who cut, weed and tape get £6.50 per hour.
The office lady is on £6.00 per hour.
Overtime is time and a half for all of them.Robert, I agree with everything you say but the self employed fitters aren’t a problem. They give me a price and if I can sell their work on at a profit I take on the job, if not, I don’t. In that situation I haven’t really lost out because the very act of talking to sub-contractors means that we can’t manage the work ourselves, it would just have been a bonus, so the only loser is the self employed fitter himself, who has just priced himself out of a job.
Innocent, I do the same myself. Too many times have I had prospective employees telling me how good they are only to find out, when it was too late, that they are nowhere near as good as they say they are. I start them on as little as possible and increase the rate as they prove themselves to be worth it.
Steve, unfortunately paying more peanuts doesn’t guarantee better monkeys.
Lorraine, absolutely right. I have absolutely no problem in paying someone £25k – £30k. But if I’m going to do that they need to be able to run this place profitably while I go cruising around the US on my bike.
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While we are being honest with each other about wages, don’t you think it would be good if we let each other know a rough idea of our chargeable rates ? I’m not talking about price fixing but a sort of guideline on jobs. Too many times I have had a quote thrown back in my face because I was way off the mark in the clients opinion cos joe bloggs down the road was working for peanuts. It isn’t a major problem in our area but I do get frustrated having to justify our prices.
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Innocent, thats a hard one.I don’t have the overheads of some of the larger sign companys, as im based at Home and work for myself.I aim to earn £200 a Day, based on a 5 Day week.
I have alot of clients who are Car/Van Dealers and are repeat customers, so they get a good deal.One offs i charge that little bit more.
I’ve had Transit sized vans ranging from £150-£600 depending on the content.Offering a good service is just as important as price.Well thats my cards on the table, whos next? (:) -
Geography has a hell of a lot to do with how much we can charge, I struggle to get £200 for a transit some weeks, put it this way I was in Dartford a few months ago and in the Sainsbury’s they wandted £1.20 for a cauliflower!!! £1.20!!!! I just go and cut one from me father-in-laws field. 😆 😆
35 miles away in Peterborough the average price is £300-£350 for similar work, I know because one customer drives his vans to me and saves £100, he told me he used to pay £300 (for what i would charge £150 for, not even 3 metres of one colour vinyl) so I told him £200, he was as happy as a pig in sh**. -
I completed a job a few weeks back. Done the usual salesmans bit of asking if they’d had competitive quotes and tried to extract some details. After a bit of cat and mouse I was shown a figure of £420 from a local franchise. I felt I could do the job for less and still clear £200 myself. I’ve since been told the original quote was actually nearer £1000!
With vast differences like that who can tell what a realistic rate is!? 😕
(-draw)
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i agree with martin and steve pretty strongly here.. location is a big factor.. i see mike charge domething at £500 if i asked the same up here they would simply laugh and walk.. 🙄
wages are the exact same….
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Steve,
Funny you should say that about Peterborough !
If there’s one place i can never get work it’s there 😕 Every time a customer walks in & has previously had work done there, I lose the work on price !!
In my first year (before moving the signs to home), I had a nice unit in a busy ind est in P’boro, only for 3 months but it nearly finished me – just couldn’t get any work at even silly money. One bloke I quoted about £60 for a pair of mags on a transit & he told me he could get them done for £35 !!! (lost him too !!). Another job, 32′ x 15″ panatrim sign, he asked me to “better” £300 ……. another one walks 😡
Strange how we can be so near to each other & still find it so different. Even though we deal with the fenland shortarm species daily, we get what i think are reasonable prices & never now have to run adverts or go looking for work, it all comes to us. Horses for courses i think.
Get back to yer paintin’ 😆 😆
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What do you Reckon the average wage for someone who Designs, cuts, weeds, applies, runs the Jetster and the Laminator and is responsible for all the Major Army Careers signage should be? 🙄
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Hi
On the subject of Rates in different areas it astonishes me at times when I see how much some guys in my area are lettering vehicles. One example a guy came to me with a midi bus he wanted stripes from front to back writing with shadows 4 colours in total he told me he’d already had a price of £120.. I went no further and told him that he was the man he needed to do the job. I know that I could not buy the materials for that price so how do the guys out there do these jobs at these prices. One theory do they work for a sign company nick the gear and do it at the weekend for cash??????. *drink*
Norman
NTC
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you’re probably right there NTC, sometimes I come across unbelievable prices and think to myself that he might come back in a few week when he realises how much it costs, but then you see the job and it’s been done for a major cheap price, what can you do ?
For me at the moment it’s a big brother attitude, entry to our premises is logged to an individual, internet access is controlled and logged to the individual, some of the higher end software logs each job produced and from which machine, internal cameras accesible to view anywhere via the internet. But i know it goes on as I used to do it when I was young (ok, I’m not so Innocent) and our group of companies have spent a s**t load of money trying to stamp out the “petty” pilfering. The pilfering could well be a major factor in the rediculous price wars that occur within our trade.
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