Journeymen Roofers Declared Incompetent

Journeymen Declared Incompetent 

As of 05/09/12 this text is published on a professional roofing contractor's website. I reprint it here in hopes that someone can possibly point out to me what on earth this individual might be "thinking".

 "Roof Reports and Roof Repair Estimates are usually issued on the same day of the inspection.  Our repairs are performed only by license-quality repairmen, and not by minimum-wage journeymen, who claim to be experts, but in reality have little or no roofing experience. "

Now wait a minute.

First of all there is no such thing as a ""license-quality repairman" this is just one more shell in the shell game.  On another of their advertisements the say they are describing the benefit of having "licensed or license quality repairmen" on the job. Well are they licensed or not? And if not (and I'm quite certain they are not) since the first one is a made up term what does that leave you with?

 And has anyone EVER seen a"minimum wage journeyman"?  I can say with complete  certainty that you haven't, because there is no such thing.  There never has been and never will be,  since minimum wage and journeyman are at opposite ends of the trades food chain. It's like saying "that white piece of black paper."

Quite obviously anyone with even the slightest actual trade experience knows that it is not possible to be a journeyman with little or no experience  in the trade, since journeyman means that you have achieved the highest level of trade experience possible.  As a matter of fact, to be a real journeyman one is actually required to have completed a much higher level of training than that required of a contractor.

How could anyone in possession of a real contractor's license be this ignorant? It's scary.

 This individual's verbal shell game seems to know no bounds.  

What is a journeyman?

Journeyman Roofer, as defined by CSLB:

A journeyman is a person who has completed an apprenticeship program or is an experienced worker, not a trainee, and is fully qualified and able to perform a specific trade without supervision. But, that person does not have a license and is not able to contract for jobs that value more than $500 in labor and materials.

Hmmm. That really sounds like a repairman that is good enough to be licensed but isn't.
I wonder why the powers that be don't just call them license quality repairmen? (Not really, I realize that would be stupid).

Or Wikipedia:

In the United States, employment in the building trades, such as an electrician or plumber or carpenter, usually requires that a person holds a state or local (city or county) license as a journeyman or master.

The journeyman license certifies that the craftsman has met the requirements of time in the field (usually a minimum of 8000 hours) and time in an approved classroom setting (usually 700 hours).

 A journeyman has the responsibility of supervising workers of lesser experience and training them, in addition to having the qualifications (knowledge and skills) to work unsupervised himself.

 A journeyman is commonly expected to have a wide range of experience, covering most fields of his trade. For example, a non journeyman worker of some 20 or 30 years experience may have most or all of his experience in only residential, commercial or industrial applications. A journeyman however, has a broad field of experience in residential, commercial, and industrial applications.

Wow, again that sounds like a craftsman that is good enough trade wise to be licensed but isn't.

 So apparently, according to the definitions accepted  by the entire rest of the world (with the exception of the wisdom in blue above) it is actually requires a broader range of actual trades experience to be a journeyman than it does to be a contractor. The main difference being that a contractor has an actual license that can be held accountable in the event of a problem.