1. Search for a role, such as "tax accountant"
2. Choose your State
3. Click Search
Everybody, regardless of their occupation, plays an important role in maintaining balance in this world. Just imagine what your sink or your bathroom will look like if nobody ever decided to become a plumber. Plumbers are tradespeople who specialise in installing, testing, maintaining and repairing pipe systems and other related fixtures. Before they become full-pledged plumbers, aspiring plumbing masters must first complete professional plumbing training as apprentice plumbers.
Faucet leaks and drainage clogs are inevitable. With apprentice plumbers, there will be tradespeople to fix those plumbing troubles. If the skilled plumbers today refused to impart their skills and knowledge to promising apprentice plumbers, then the proper techniques of plumbing and gas fitting will cease to exist in the future. Skilled plumbers have to keep on educating and training new proteges to ensure the preservation of knowledge and techniques for apprentice plumbers. The apprentice plumbers they have supervised will be the workforce behind the plumbing industry.
Because apprenticeships are mandatory in Australia, all aspiring plumbers need to pass the apprentice plumbers stage before they become expert plumbers. Apprentice plumbers have to spend a few years of learning and training to become fully knowledgeable and skillful in plumbing, gas fitting and other related procedures. Because their apprenticeships are combinations of classroom lectures and on-the-job trainings, apprentice plumbers also earn salaries. The amount of salary they receive from apprenticeships, which is lower than that of skilled tradespeople, depends on the policy followed by their employers.
As mentioned, plumbing apprenticeships are combinations of classroom lectures and on-the-job trainings. This means that the five-day weekly schedule of apprentice plumbers are divided into one day of theoretical learning inside classrooms and four days of concept application in construction sites. While inside classrooms, apprentice plumbers are given math and science lectures on the concepts behind plumbing. Apprentice plumbers are also required to study blueprint reading so they can easily determine how to layout plumbing systems based on drawings.
Apprentice plumbers, unlike regular students, are not tested simply by writing the correct answers on papers. In plumbing apprenticeships, tests are always conducted during on-the-job trainings. Apprentice plumbers, under the supervision of a skilled plumber, have to apply what they learned inside the classrooms into actual plumbing procedures. Apprentice plumbers will inspect pipe systems, repair faulty parts, install garden sprinklers, and identify leak causes.
12 December 2008
Apprentice plumbers who are struggling to get by should look into government support in order to help them keep placements and also to supplement their income... read full story
21 April 2008
Why didn't the 2020 Summit have at least a 50 per cent participation by the average Australian? Where were the underpaid checkout operators, apprentice plumbers, unemployed Big Issue vendors, part-time students and even a middle-class public servant or two? The summit was a great idea but I think the Government missed a golden opportunity to tap the minds of the real people of our great land... read full story
4 February 1999
The State Government and plumbing unions are set for a legal showdown later this month, over union claims for a doubling of some apprentices' pay. In what could set a national precedent, unions have lodged a claim for a doubling of wages for first-year plumbing apprentices aged over 18. The Mi.. read full story
29 July 1994
The plumbing industry is pulling out all stops to introduce young men and women to the trade. JOHN WESTWOOD reports that this, and developments at RMIT and Holmesglen all point to a brighter future for young people. It often happens that an apprentice performs so well on a casual assignment that .. read full story