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Condescension? Nope. Realism, I hope. For whatever systemic reasons, university education is being promoted as the primary, if not the only path to an ecomically secure and socially satisfying life. And there is some basis for that notion in the economy our political system has allowed to develop: anti-union, anti-regulation, finance-driven, with wage stagnation and grotesque inequality of opportunity and wealth. Also a strange fetishization of the college degree, as though hands-on or tech-school training were somehow infra dig.
One of my wife’s middle-aged students was a guy who had been practicing engine repair for years and teaching it at a tech school, but was being required to get a bachelor’s degree to continue the teaching. I understand the bureaucratic process that drove this–and the guy was a fine student and delighted to be taking an English lit course, and my wife was delighted to have him in her class–but it wasn’t going to make him a better engine mechanic. On the other hand, my wife thought that maybe she had made another Shakespeare fan, which we, in our condescending, pinky-lifting way, think is a good thing, even if it has little to do with diesel technology.
As my post indicates, the university has been my life and I think universities are a crucial part of our culture–but I grew up in an extended family of skilled tradesmen who were able (thanks to a booming economy and strong unions) to put their kids through college, if that was what they wanted. Most did want. On the other hand, the son of one of my grad-school mentors decided not to go to college in favor of (if I recall correctly) being an electrician. That worked out OK, too. Seems to me that what matters is having the choice, rather than having one pushed onto you by economic or social circumstances. (Yeah, nobody is completely free. Still, maneuvering room is nice to have.)
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The high paying trade jobs in question are few and far between, a good lot of them are shrinking fields (member those coal miners?). And a good lot of them don’t pay nearly as well as those pushing these ideas would lead you to believe.
More over often times these are things you can not just go to a training program for, and walk into the position. My brother does excavation work, and is currently certified for a bunch of different medium sized machines. Those certifications required connections, and a number of years working experience to get. He makes ok money currently, but gets no benefits. Before he got those qualifications he made shit money. And he’s got a few more years to go before he can get into the “good money” in the big and specialized machines.
No training program would have let him jump to those big machines fresh out of highschool. And I really don’t think they should, I wouldn’t want the younger, inexperienced version of my brother running a 60ft tall chainsaw. Plus he was still pretty fucked when the construction trades hit the skids during the crash.
His job wouldn’t exist at all if he didn’t live near a major city, with a lot of major construction projects going on. And you can’t be a shipyard welder in Kansas. So where as there are some shortages of certain skilled trades, they’re intensely regional. Demand for those jobs is in specific places, and in other places workers with those same skills are over represented, out of work, and unable to relocate.
Frankly these sorts of jobs, along with manufacturing and some of the other stuff we keep hearing about. Just don’t employ a large proportion of Americans, and can’t provide enough jobs to employ those in need of it, or to lift people up from working poverty. None the less mitigate our other problems, like wage stagnation, lack of savings, income inequality/wealth disparity.
The largest number of jobs, and an ever increasing portion of them, among the lower middle classes and working poor are service jobs and retail.
So to the extent that you haven’t noticed the left addressing trades and manufacturing (curious given that labor and trade unions are a core part of the left). It’s because it’s not a solution.
Instead the left is focusing on making the jobs and careers that are available (including these trade jobs) to people, better. With increased labor protections, rasing the minimum wage, progressive taxation, among other things.
You might have also noticed that there is a growing crisis regards student debt. Including among people who are already employed in quality jobs. So that “free college” nonsense may have more to do with preventing that from getting bigger, or recurring in the future. As it is about making everyone go to college whether they need it or not.
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… and a good boss… (oh, wait…)
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Thanks, your reply clears it up for me.
We need to fight this. Fight it. Pointless credentialism is a parasitical growth on America’s workforce, public and private.
Yep, but we’ll let young people run up a half a million in college debt without blinking an eye. Priorities out of whack much?
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Sometimes I wonder what would happen if power brokers on the left created their own version of Lonesome Rhodes. A candidate who seems just average and folksy, but is actually clever, competent, and committed to progress.
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And we’ll get all that debt wiped out by making them all welders!
And ignoring all the people who do go to college will be great! When they’re loaded down with debt we’ll just make them welders!
And when all those extra people getting trade schooled over supply workers for shrinking fields. Forcing down pay it’ll be fine.
They totally won’t end up like all those working class people in restaurants and retail, even the highly trained ones. Getting underpaid and exploited!
Besides these are just poor unfortunates who are wholly incapable of understanding all that fancy schoolin’, but will somehow manage to thrive in the most technical, difficult, and thus highest paying forms of the manual trades. Which are the ones that pay the best. And involve the most school.
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For lack of a better word.
Okay I always had this sneaking suspicion that Rowe had never actually worked a day in his life. He just seemed way too PC and obvious about his love of blue collar.
I read the pledge and I found an enormous amount of bullshit in that. It’s basically saying love America be happy to be alive never complain and be okay with living in a tent eating beans over any kind of hope.
This man is complete bullshit and his promise methodology is utter bullshit.
I say this as somebody with a four-year college degree in a foreign language who worked as a teacher and then became a machinist with a stint as a professional watchmaking student for a couple years in between that. If anyone is qualified to comment on modern blue collar work at a high level, while having seen the so-called Ivory Tower side, I am and have.
I have had employers ask me to do things that would have OSHA scream, and beyond in danger. I have seen incredibly stupid preventable injuries in my field of machining because some people insisted on taking blame for things that employers neglected so that they could keep their job. I have worked in places in manufacturing where people have OD’d in the bathroom, though not on my shift. I’ve worked with alcoholics whose machine crashes nearly took out my knee caps, been asked to breathe on a daily basis phenolic resin dust, purely because the shop refused to shut off standing fans for airflow.
I have worked in shops dirtier than coal mines at times without respirators in powdered tungsten metallurgy and come home hacking black metal dust (though at least respirators were provided by that employer and much of that was my own doing however it was unavoidable because it was dust everywhere). I have nearly sawed my hand off with a 13-foot diamond covered bandsaw blade. And a lot more.
As things go, while the majority of people I have worked with were mostly of average intelligence, occasionally below, always obstinate, some of the brightest people I have ever met worked in machining. I have met equally stupid people in higher education, though mostly as trust fund kids.
The reality of manufacturing at least machining in America is that most employers demand the same types of bullshit from their workers that Rowe seems to here. I did have one employer right after Trump was elected that I actually quit because the working environment was so toxic politically that people were hanging flags directly on my equipment when they knew what my political persuasion was (not Trump). The overwhelming majority of people I have met are deeply conservative and in the last couple years I’ve seen no shortage of trumpians on a daily basis.
It is difficult to retain my sanity after everything I have been through and seen to stay in this career, but I can say that there are occasional good employers that do care about their workers and occasionally unions that actually help rather than ignore you. I enjoy my job now, and work at a very high level as a tool and die machinist. Pay finally matches the grief level.
It goes without saying Kochs are toxic, and this selfserving bullshit sandwich, masquerading as a tough guy hardship pledge, shows this fool has never worked in blue collar an uncomfortable day in his life.
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Rowe’s whole “safety third” thing is just such bullshit that I can’t believe he can say it without gagging.
The clips of him talking about it on the Crooked Conversations episode linked above are infuriating. He is basically just says all that matters is money. fuck that guy. so much.
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Good on ya mate. It’s a mindless exercise. 
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What? What “for the lack of a better word”?
Your comment is entirely cryptic. Was it a reply to an earlier comment? There are ‘reply’ and ‘quote’ options to help you make that clear.
Welcome to BoingBoing. 
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Ah yes. I prefer to donate to my local panhandlers, not an international corporation.
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If the wiki is accurate he never did anything related to manual labour or had any connections with the trades.
Yup, total fraud.
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Google “Wage Theft”.
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I’m aware it happens. It isn’t legal nor the norm in most of the skilled labor jobs.
If you’re working for some shady ass outfit doing that, I think any code of honor you would pledge to is out the window.
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There’s no one more hard right than Charles Koch. And there’s nothing light about Koch’s libertarian worldview implicit in Rowe’s “pledge”.
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If you can’t see what Mike Rowe is doing, then you need to wise up, fast.
He’s not a working class hero… because he’s not working class. Even if he were working class at some point in his life, he’s not working class now. That places him below someone working a 9-5 office job in terms of his working class cred.
Being working class is not an affectation. If you own any substantial business with employees under you, you are not working class. Sorry. That’s literally how it works. (Doesn’t matter if you have working class roots. Sorry again. It has fuck-all to do with culture.)
Meanwhile he’s pushing a bullshit vision of America where everyone can have a job that pays well if they’re willing to devalue their lives in the service of capital. The reality is that if there are more welders, welders make less. If there are more carpenters, carpenters are more expendable. If there are more tradespeople desperate to apply their skills, unions have less power. All of this applies to coding too, which is why teaching coal miners to code isn’t going to change shit either. I don’t devalue trade jobs and skills, but let’s not bullshit ourselves on basic economics.
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If Mike Rowe can’t see what he’s doing he better wise up.
Those worthy causes Koch donates to that Rowe cites on his blog are just pig lipstick for Koch’s evils. All big evil companies devote small sums to worthy causes so they crow about what nice guys they are. They’re like a Mafia Don in the confessional.
