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"We talk about creating millions of shovel ready jobs for a society that doesn't really encourage people to pick up a shovel." Mike Rowe
He's right. We've turned manual labor into the work for the stupid people. Smart people get degrees and make lots of money, the rest work with their hands. That's how it's treated. If you disagree ask yourself this: How would you react if your child told you they want to be a plumber when they grow up?
I'd react just fine to that. There is no shame in being a plumber. A good friend of mine in the UK is a plumber, self-employed and makes a decent living. In fact, he and his wife just bought a house. They spend their Christmas in either Florida or the Caribbean.
Now degrees have become the new HS diploma and people are encouraged to follow the herd, do a business degree, many ending up working in Accounts Payable earning $13 an hour, with student loans to pay back.
What's say we end the whole "blue collar" "white collar" nonsense? Work is work. Not every manual labor worker is stupid an not every corporate slave is a brainiac, just because they have a fancy piece of paper. Our country would benefit from far more trade schools. Perhaps we shouldn't be telling all of our kids that academic ability and breaking into the corporate world is the only way to success. Of course, if we actually paid skilled manual workers a decent wage, becoming an electrician or a plumber would suddenly become a much more attractive option.
The way this country is going, we'll have 100 million people with what will become useless business degrees and no one left to build, repair or maintain. Stop looking down at skilled labor, America.
If skilled labor was payed more, more people would be willing to do it. (Novel concept, I know).
Simply bump up the salaries from 40k to 60k, and you'd see people becoming electricians by the droves. The market, however, doesn't reward skilled labor, and thus people don't want to do it. It's not like people care about what they are doing as long as they are getting paid to do it. Or, you think, ibankers love their job? No, they love the money...and the truth is, so does everyone else.
I heard something interesting the other day. When asked why a company was sending jobs to South Korea, it wasn't the cheap labor, it was the access to a plethora of engineers.
Now, these engineers weren't completely trained with a 2 or 4 year college degree. They had been taught basic engineering skills, and then expected to learn everything else on the job.
There are a lot of folks doing manual labor jobs, they are just not seen.
I don't think we have a problem with skilled labor, or a lack thereof, in this country. I think that the problem is that when things are broken, we simply buy a whole new one.
For instance, my septic began backing up. Now my house is old, and the septic was put in originally below the water line. Can't do that now. But instead of fixing my old septic, they simply buried a new one next to it, with a pump from my old septic. Much less technical skill with that.
If skilled labor was payed more, more people would be willing to do it. (Novel concept, I know).
Simply bump up the salaries from 40k to 60k, and you'd see people becoming electricians by the droves. The market, however, doesn't reward skilled labor, and thus people don't want to do it. It's not like people care about what they are doing as long as they are getting paid to do it. Or, you think, ibankers love their job? No, they love the money...and the truth is, so does everyone else.
I've seen this frequently in these kinds of discussions. Skilled labor would be more popular if they were paid more. Where is that higher pay supposed to come from? If you want electricians to make more then you will have to pay more for their services. Getting one to come out and fix that light that doesn't work just got more expensive, new homes just got more expensive, etc.
The market drives wages. For a company to get jobs it needs to have competitive prices. If you suddenly started paying your employees 20K more a year you wouldn't get too many jobs, if any. Why would anyone pay more for the same work? If your price is competitive and you do a good job, you get more jobs.
If skilled labor was payed more, more people would be willing to do it. (Novel concept, I know).
Simply bump up the salaries from 40k to 60k, and you'd see people becoming electricians by the droves. The market, however, doesn't reward skilled labor, and thus people don't want to do it. It's not like people care about what they are doing as long as they are getting paid to do it. Or, you think, ibankers love their job? No, they love the money...and the truth is, so does everyone else.
I disagree from a different perspective - we do not educate our children to use their hands as well as their heads, and we set them up to pay more for simple things they ought to know how to do for themselves.
I was amazed to find out that people hire plumbers for $24 an hour to come out and replace the innards in their toilets, replace a wax seal or a water heater. My brother is an electrical engineer who used to make $200,000 a year in the 80's in CA - repairing the movie theaters' lighting and projection facilities over a 300-sq-mile area. You can make "the big bucks" if you know what you are doing and work yourself into a position where your skills are not only in demand but are valued.
Too many folks want 'someone else to do it' - they have no idea how to do any work for themselves. My daughter used to work next to her dad on our vehicles in the front yard, got a summer job working as a mechanic at a Ford dealership, and put herself thru college (for a bio degree) by changing the oil and doing tune-ups on the college kids' cars. Many of them would call her to come out and change their tires when they got a flat! If the Pathology lab where she works suddenly decides that they don't want to pay her $100,000 a year to thinly dissect tissue and discover cancerous growths - she can always get a job as a mechanic. She is right now replacing the floors in her older home with ceramic tile and wood - herself - just like she did at our old house.
You can't train people to use their hands when they have been taught all of their lives to "call someone" or "just go buy it new". Most folks are as helpless as turtles on their backs when it comes to even the simplest maintenance or repairs. Which of course means that those who can use their hands and have developed the skills can charge whatever the market will bear.
I don’t know how many remember the old coal mining song “Sixteen Tons” - originally by Merle Travis but it hit number one when redone by Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955. One of the lines from the song was: "another day older and deeper in debt". However, even though the song complained about the system - there was pride in the work, pride in working hard and getting dirty.
One of my first jobs in the 1960’s was unloading boxcars with eight hundred one hundred pound bags of chemicals. This was before the days of slip skids - hard cardboard that allows a forklift to lift the whole stack. Rail cars get very hot in the summer months - lots of times over one hundred degrees. Many days I would personally lift up to one hundred and twenty thousands pounds - half the weight of the three boxcars that a coworker and I stripped. I could wring the sweat out of my clothing when I came home - not one dry stitch. I also did not need any gym to keep in shape. I did not complain and I was proud of how hard I worked - I still am.
That pride is missing today. Mike Rowe blamed Hollywood (besides others). It could just be parents in general - we all wanted our offspring to have it easier. It is just now that we are finding out that the easy way is not always the best way.
I think part of it is the mentality we have in our society that everything must be done on the cheap: government contracts are awarded to the cheapest bid, people would rather pay illegal immigrants standing outside Home Depot sub-human wages to save a few bucks. We are so strapped for cash in this day and age that we can't and won't pay for quality and pride in workmanship, so why should someone take pride in something that others won't take pride in?
Saturday morning TV on the speed Channel features many hands on craftsmen building custom cars for people with apparently a lot of money. If I was starting out on a hand work career I would try and get a job sweeping the floors at a Ferrari dealership and apprentice to their mechanical or body shop. The skills are the same but I'll bet they pay better than a Ford dealership. Eventually I would open my own shop for very carefully selected customers. Then I might actually make some money.
Same idea applies to heavy equipment. When a big shovel breaks down they want it fixed now. If you can prevent it from breaking in the first place they will pay well. If not, move to someone that knows the value of preventative maintenance.
I have not investigated but I’ll bet the railroad industry is looking for all manner of skilled workers. Those big Diesels do not care for themselves.
... so why should someone take pride in something that others won't take pride in?
Who cares "what someone else won't take pride in"?
Firefighters - underpaid, maligned as '23-hours of sleep, one hour of hard work' (at least until 9/11)
Cops - honest, law-abiding, life-saving protectors - reviled as 'boot-steppers'
- all sorts of professions have underpaid and underappreciated people who don't give a dang what other people "appreciate" - even the people who depend on them and pay their salaries! - because they take pride in being the best at whatever they do.
Where we went wrong is the "everyone deserves a prize!" self-esteem lie - that one's self-esteem and productivity is dependent on other peoples' opinions.
I worked in a factory for 9 years. It was over 100 degrees in the summer, very dirty, and the air was polluted with an abundance of chemicals. No thanks. I prefer not to get some funky cancer after 20 years of breathing in chemicals. I worked my ass off to get a degree and get the hell out of there.
However, there are many other opportunities that pay very well, that I would do if I knew how.
Further, there are a number of people who are better suited for skilled work and not academia.
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My brother is an electrical engineer who used to make $200,000 a year in the 80's in CA - repairing the movie theaters' lighting and projection facilities over a 300-sq-mile area. You can make "the big bucks" if you know what you are doing and work yourself into a position where your skills are not only in demand but are valued. 
