Mike Rowe Addresses US Senate Committee

Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation about the need for more skilled blue-collar workers.
In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We've elevated the importance of "higher education" to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled "alternative." Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as "vocational consolation prizes," best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of "shovel ready" jobs for a society that doesn't encourage people to pick up a shovel.

In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a "good job" into something that no longer looks like work. A few years from now, an hour with a good plumber – if you can find one – is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist. At which point we'll all be in need of both.

His purpose was to encourage support for industrial education through programs Rowe participates in, such as  Go Build Alabama, I Make America, Discover Your Skills, and mikeroweWORKS. Read his entire testimony at the Discovery Channel site. Link -via reddit

Thank god I live in Alberta, where trade school is promoted to a (much) greater extent than university. I was friggen valedictorian and I can't get into the trade school program of my choice, but all the universities will take me!
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Hmmmm, while I'm sympathetic to a few aspects of his testimony, the fact of the matter is that there is a free market for labor. If there are not enough people developing skills to do "job X" (whatever X may be), you simply are not paying them enough, offering steady employment, &c.. *In aggregate* (not necessarily singly) workers are rational -- they evaluate options against alternatives and train for where their total rewards are best. Big portion of this are pay, benefits, and employment certainty.

So, when I hear about a reputed shortage of skilled engineers for example (GM's onetime CEO once testified to this effect), I say "bollocks". What they really mean is that "there is a shortage of skilled people who are willing to work for what I want to pay". If you, Mr. CEO, want a better supply of engineers, you need to start their pay higher and keep raising it with experience. THAT alone will encourage people to enter the profession (and stay there). When people find that their careers stagnate or steady employment is hard to maintain, word gets out and millions of kids learn (or are told from their parents that X is a bad career choice). If most lawyers were starving, there wouldn't be so many of them.

It's exactly the same thing with these vocational trades. Certainly some plumbers, roofers, &c. can do pretty well (especially if they own their own business), but there are tons of them just getting by working for big firms in crowded markets. If you want to attract good people to these fields, you need to make it MORE attractive than their other options.

Don't worry, the supply will follow the demand. If the net benefits of being a plumber exceed those of being a lawyer, we'll have a lot more plumbers. It's pretty simple, really ... there doesn't need to be government tinkering/meddling to "fix" this.
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I'm thankful my father taught me how to work with my hands (he's a local Mr. Fixit-type small businessman, also car mechanic) I was academically gifted and my counselors would never let me take vocational courses. I wasn't aware how rare skilled blue collar work was until I got to college and none of my room mates knew how to do anything. No idea how to run cable, add a telephone line or electrical outlet and one guy had his spare tire in his trunk that was literally just a tire as in, not on a rim. When he got a flat he asked how to change it.
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I told my daughters that if they learned plumbing, they would never be unemployed. I had to learn a lot of plumbing myself just because the few plumbers in my town are so busy they never get around to any jobs that aren't either highly lucrative or emergencies.
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Indeed Miss Cellania. In the words of author Robert Heinlein:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

I'm still working on a few of these, but I keep knocking them off...
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@Gauldar, you make a point, but it's a simplification of the situation.

Rowe was right that blue collar jobs are viewed by many as beneath them. So kids aren't offered training anymore to do this kind of work. There's a negative attitude that I find dismally prevalent among those promoting immigration reform: we don't want THOSE jobs, so let the people who do want them have them. How degrading and dismissive. This leads to all kinds of abuses towards employees of all levels.

Contractors use cheap labor to not only keep costs down, but undermine negotiations with skilled workers. They move jobs overseas to save money, without recognizing that unemployed Americans will not have the money to buy their products. Employing the labor of employees who are here illegally allows employers to avoid paying taxes, avoid paying for insurance benefits, avoid paying for injured workers, and ignore health and safety standards. These employees are viewed as throwaway resources. So what if they die or are permanently crippled? What can they do about it?

There's also a great lack of appreciation for the truly skilled workers, such as machinists. I've watched them create parts out of a block of metal with tools, a lathe and their hands. It's incredible to me, yet they are viewed as just another blue collar working shlub. As noted above, a good plumber can do amazing things. And I worship electricians, because that stuff scares me. Carpenters, wordworkers, furniture makers, they don't just pick up a hammer and router and go to work.

I should just end my rant here.
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Exactly, Miss C. A friend of mine told me she was calling around for plumbers quotes because both her toilets were running. I told her "Don't you dare call a plumber! I'll be right over." Taught her the parts and how to fix it herself, and both thrones were fine within an hour.

Damn. I should have charged her.
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Sid, I don't agree with you 100%. I don't disagree with you 100%, either :). Supply and demand theory only gets you so far. I would argue that humans, even in the aggregate, are emotional, sometimes irrational creatures. So I can't agree that simple supply and demand will win out in the end.

I can tell you're an intelligent person and it sounds like you are well-educated. So I ask you, in your family, was it simply expected that you would go to university? Was vocational education offered as an equally viable, i.e. acceptable, alternative to you either by your schools or by your family?

I ask because I'm amazed and a bit disheartened by the number of people I know who believe that a college degree is the *only* way to have a financially comfortable life. My family was no different so I recognize this bias.

In a family of professionals, it's expected that a child will get at least a college degree. For families, especially immigrant families, that do not yet have college graduates but do have ambition and hope for their kids, the goal is to have their child get a college degree. That's part and parcel of the American Dream. Our parents, wanting the best for us and having absorbed the U.S. bias toward higher education, push us to do well in school so we can get into a good college so we can get a good job.

There's a bias against professions that require a person to use their hands in addition to their brains. We're proud to announce our child is a lawyer but not necessarily proud to announce that she's a plumber. It's societal conditioning. Note the words: hope, dream, expectation, pride. None of these are rational motivations. Even the terms "white collar" and "blue collar" carry emotional/judgmental overtones in this country. One is respected; the other less so.

This country holds a college education in disproportionately high regard, disregarding the fact that some people are not wired for academic success. It doesn't mean they're not smart or capable but that school learning isn't their strength. And/or they may be good with their hands but our schools don't currently offer vocational programs that allow non-academic kids to develop their strengths. Instead, if a child doesn't excel academically, we "joke" that they'll be asking "do you want fries with that?" for a career. By not offering vocational programs, we're individually and collectively turning our backs on an entire tier of jobs that pay well and offer steady work.

Your engineers example brings up a couple issues, too. First, wages offered to U.S. engineers may be lower because businesses can find equivalently educated employees in other countries for a much lower wage. Profit, not patriotism, is a company's main motivation. That doesn't mean I don't agree with you that businesses should pay for quality if they're demanding quality.

Second, supply and demand when it comes to jobs (versus widgets) may have a many-year delay between the increase in demand and the meeting of it with supply, especially when you're dealing with professions that require advanced degrees or a steep learning curve. By the time you get your master's degree the demand may be down. Current college grads are experiencing this. The time-intensive preparation for some jobs makes it difficult to respond to demand adequately especially in a global economy where the supply can come from somewhere else and a company's or industry's needs can change almost overnight.

If we're talking about supplying plumbers, where does one get training since the U.S. largely lacks vocational programs? I know there's on-the-job training but I imagine it would be more efficient to centralize part of the training in a group setting versus individual mentoring.

I wouldn't consider it meddling for the government to offer vocational programs. Instead I believe it would open up another avenue for success for Americans, and as a bonus, they're jobs that can't be shipped overseas.
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Our local public school district recently built a vocational high school. It offers training for students for various vocations and trades such as auto repair and maintenance, culinary arts, health services and more, and is open to the public to perform services for a low fee. They have an auto shop, bank branch (for my local credit union, no less!), salon, market, and print shop - staffed by students! They can graduate with a license or certification in their area.

This is the first of its kind that I have seen, and it is very difficult for students to get enrolled (it's a pretty large school district and there is only ONE of these schools).

Too bad there aren't more around the country...it's such a good idea.
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Mike Rowe's TED talk from a couple of years ago is also worth a view, but be warned there's some rather graphic discussion of sheep castration going on here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html
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Well, speaking as a college-educated person who has a blue-collar job, I say KUDOS to Mike Rowe! I am trying VERY hard right now to go on a rant about how blue-collar workers get short-shrifted by the more "acceptable" white-collar members of society. I may have two college degrees, but after a long day of work, I look at my roughened hands with PRIDE. If anybody asks me what my most prized possession is, I hold up my calloused palms and say "TAKE A LOOK! HERE THEY ARE!"
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mellie928; many junior colleges also offer votec training. I'm starting welding courses at one to become a certified welder through the AWS.

I agree with some of Mike's points; we've certainly made a fetish of higher education. The only reason I tried college was because it was socially unacceptable for me not to go. And god knows a degree doesn't equal a good job either; I don't have a degree and make more than my wife (who's got a science degree).
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When I was working as an engineer at IBM, one of my co-workers said that he was disappointed that most of the time we were just high-paid plumbers. I asked when was the last time he hired a plumber for less per hour than what he made.

It is still true. An independent plumber makes more than an engineer.
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I managed out an associate degree [history], but since I didn't go to college right out of HS, my career history is pretty much one dead end job after another. I've been trying to get into the electricians union training program, but the wait to even see if you get in is over a year. Hopefully I'll hear something come fall.

At least my parents encourage me in this. My dad's a mechanic by trade, worked for the airlines for many years, so they know the value of blue collar and are both strongly union. They don't see blue collar work as beneath anyone. Then again my grandfather [dad's dad] built his own house too.
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I just started a job requiring a haz-mat license for delivering liquid oxygen for $10.84 an hour. I needed a job so I had to take it. even though I have military experience working with LOX for over 6 years.
and the company's wondering why they have such a hard time finding and keeping their CDL drivers. where if they paid $15-18 they'd have no problem.
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