How to earn $105,000 a year with a tinsmith DEP

A good $105,000 per year. This is the pay check that a tinsmith with a vocational studies diploma (DEP) can get, according to an enthusiast who took over his father’s workshop after seeing him practice this trade since the age of seven. years.

“An apprentice coming out of school will earn $50,000 and a journeyman $85,000. I have employees who make $105,000 over time and a half,” shares Joël Chamberland, president of Ferblanterie Laro D. C, of ​​around twenty employees, from Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, in the capital. -National.

“We have a 50% bonus for the evening rate, rather than the 9% to 13% of the collective agreement. We also have some double-time projects,” adds the 26-year-old, who would gladly take on four more tinsmiths in his conduit manufacturing workshop.

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He tells the Log that some more remote projects even go so far as to offer more than $155 more per day for accommodation and food, plus other travel expenses. Particular attention to the back, hearing, sight, air… workers must protect themselves well, insists Joël Chamberland.

“It’s relatively profitable. Salaries are rising fairly quickly,” summarizes Joël Chamberland, himself a tinsmith by profession, who manages the company whose turnover is around five million dollars.

Tinsmith of metal roofing, exterior cladding, ventilation … the sectors are diverse, continues the boss of the SME Ferblanterie Laro DC

In Quebec, one in 20 jobs is related to construction, according to the Commission de la construction du Québec (CCQ).

In 2021, more than 5,105 tinsmiths were active on construction sites. Some 1,021 companies are still in hiring mode and job prospects are deemed “excellent” with the 1,605-hour diploma in hand, again according to the CCQ.

Initiated at the age of seven

For Joël Chamberland, president of the workshop in the Capitale-Nationale, the trade has no more secrets because he fell into it when he was little, like Obélix in the magic potion of the druid Panoramix.

“I started watching my dad work when I was seven. I then made ventilation elements later in the pedagogical days and the summer holidays. I wanted to be with my dad,” he shares.

A few years later, he obtained his diploma of vocational studies (DEP) in tinsmithing.

Today, he runs the family business and sees that careers in construction are more popular than before, which is a good sign given the labor shortage, which stretches like a rubber band.

“The construction trades have been frowned upon. Parents and grandparents bet a lot on university, which was a guarantee of success, but since COVID-19, people are well aware that it is a good economic engine, ”he concludes.

–With the collaboration of Philippe Langlois