Plumbers

Economic globalization and corporate acquisition trends are spilling into the plumbing system. Not since the English Public Health Code of 1848 became the model international plumbing guideline has a similar magnitude of change affected plumbers.

The World Plumbing Council-representing 14 countries including the United States-plans to standardize the planet’s plumbing. The more immediate concern for plumbers is the steady transformation of plumbing from a craft into corporate big business.

A global agenda is being flushed out by the WPC. The mission of the council, formed in 1990, is to unite the plumbing industry, protect the environment and health of all nations and exchange information.

WPC representatives from 11 countries met in September in Singapore. After several days of debate, delegates issued a proclamation proposing new international standards and government regulations for licensing, registering and certifying plumbers. The council plans to meet again next year in Sun City, South Africa.

Within the United States, service contract companies are acquiring independent plumbing contractors, with larger outfits buying up the service businesses and consolidating them into divisions of even bigger public firms, says Phil Amodeo, executive director of the Indiana Association of Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Contractors in Indianapolis.

Plumbers seem destined to follow family farmers, local retailers and numerous other businesses that are being transformed from small operations to components of larger firms, which eventually grow into global enterprises.

Amodeo says many independent plumbing contractors are still in business, generating some $500,000 to $1 million a year in revenue. But they’re being replaced by larger concerns that earn $5 million to $20 million in annual revenue. This trend, he believes, seems to have accelerated over the last two years.

* The United States has made many contributions to the worldwide evolution in plumbing. Boston built the colonies’ first waterworks for firefighting and drinking water with hollowed logs in 1652. Philadelphia developed the world’s first waterworks built with cast iron pipes in 1804. Chicago installed the nation’s earliest comprehensive sewage system in 1885. Boston’s Tremont Hotel in 1829 was the first U.S. hotel to provide indoor plumbing, tempting guests with water closets and heated bathtubs. Ancient historians note King Minos of the Greek island of Crete owned a flush toilet 2,800 years ago, complete with a wooden seat. Toilet technology was apparently lost until it was reinvented for the sake of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I in 1594. But toilets wouldn’t become popular with the masses for another 200 years.

* Approximately 375,000 plumbers and pipe fitters keep the U.S. flowing every day. Twenty percent are self-employed, two-thirds are in new construction and the rest do maintenance work.

* Virtually all plumbers learn their craft through four- or five-year apprenticeships. Unions or trade associations with such programs require a minimum of 144 hours’ classroom instruction.

* Demand for plumbers in the United States is projected to outpace supply through 2005 or longer, because fewer young workers are entering apprenticeships as the population ages.

* The median weekly salary for plumbers is $530. Some 10% of them earn $970 per week; the lowest-paid 10% make less than $284 per week. Apprentices usually receive about half the wage paid to experienced plumbers.

* America’s most misunderstood plumbing fixture is the bidet. Would-be users often report having trouble reaching the control handles. This invariably happens because they’re facing the wrong way-backward-like one sits on a toilet.