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Labor Day has become the last chance to go to the beach before the kids go back to school instead of a celebration of our blue collar work force. With the decline of labor unions, we seem to have forgotten the power of motivated, intelligent and well paid workers. In the global economy, it has become increasingly clear our kids will be forced to get some education past high school. With good reason, parents are urging their kids to go to college and steering them away from a life of blue collar labor. This is understandable because blue collar workers are under siege from all sides today. Since, all but the most innovative and complex items will be manufactured in China for the foreseeable future, why would a parent wish for a life of layoffs and shrinking wages for their child. Why is the blue collar class even necessary in the new global economy?
Why should we care about our blue collar work force? Wouldn’t it be better for the United States if all blue collar workers were sent back to school to be doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists?
Doctors, scientists and engineers are critical for US success in the global market place (a column for another day) but, we dismiss the blue collar worker at our peril. During World War II, we overpowered our enemies not only with our military but, with pure unadulterated industrial might. A pilot who survived a shoot down in that war would have a brand new plane the next day. This allowed total air supremacy in Europe and near air supremacy in the Pacific. The blue collar work force was so important in this effort we put our wives, daughters and mothers to work outside the home for the first time. The same is true to a certain extent today.
We need to maintain our ability to build military equipment in our country. Some would say our strategic partners like the European Union will be happy to build our tanks and planes for us. Let’s say, for example, we need to bomb Dilbert’s favorite place, Elbonia, into submission for harboring terrorist. For this example however, the EU has economic ties to Elbonia. Without a blue collar work force trained to build planes required for the war on Elbonia, the EU could simply cut us off.
The strongest argument, beyond defense, for the maintenance of a healthy economic middle class may be the situation we find ourselves in today. In previous recessions, the American blue collar worker was there to buy our way out. Cars, washers and big-screen TV’s were the economic engine which made life better for all. Today, with blue collar workers the victim of falling wages, increasing healthcare costs and credit extended to them by unscrupulous financial markets, they are simply not able to help. They work harder, smarter and productivity has never been higher. Blue collar workers, however have taken a beating and are sadly not up to the task. Many economist will tell us the 2009 recession will be long and deep because the blue collar worker is not there to bail us out.
So as you soak up the last rays of summer or fire up the grill, I am sure one of your free market worshiping absolutist friends will be there. They will tell you Darwin was right and economies work best on the principle of “survival of the fittest.” They will tell you it is natural, no, required, for blue collar workers to lose their jobs to cheaper Chinese workers. They will tell you business should be free to systematically exterminate blue collar workers who want to organize or demand a part of the stockholder’s dividend. After all, they will say, companies owe them nothing.
I might tell them to give the blue collar worker a break at least on Labor Day.
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You might have heard. The 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong being the first man on the moon is coming up in a few days. Living so close to Huntsville, Alabama, I have seen a good bit of hype about the anniversary in the local press. I saw an article in the magazine section of my paper and I am sure there will be a few national news stories on the actual anniversary date. The story in the USA TODAY Sunday magazine insert caught my eye.
The story caught my eye because several people including Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sally Ride and John McCain were asked how the event impacted their lives. Tyson, the college professor turned PBS Nova Science Now host, seemed to have an experience similar to mine. I remember watching the landing on a small 19-inch black and white TV with my father, mother and infant sister in Nashville, Tennessee. I remember how awed my father was when NASA actually pulled off the feat. My dad should not have been surprised because he worked, for a time, for a space contractor, doing computer test simulations for the Saturn V launch vehicle. Perhaps his excitement rubbed off on me because adults had trouble making out the fuzzy image on the small TV. I am sure my six year-old mind did not comprehend what actually happened that day.
What happened that day was repeated six times in my young impressionable life and I am sure I probably said more than once I wanted to be an astronaut. I was never to slip the surly bonds of earth, except for a few flight lessons and a few commercial flights but, I did become an engineer.
What’s your point Joe?
If you feel technology is the way out of our economic mess. If you feel having more scientists and engineers are the way to get there. Then, you should understand the value of a manned space program. Let’s call it the Air Force method of recruiting.
Have you ever seen airmen greasing fittings on the tractor which pulls airplanes on a recruiting commercial? Have you ever seen an airman cleaning out the porta-potties on transport planes in a recruiting commercial? Well, of course they don’t show any of those critical tasks being performed on an Air Force recruiting commercial. What do they show a young 18 year-old when they want him to join the Air Force? They show the sexiest part of the mission. They show pilots breaking formation in F-22 Raptors. They show pilots flying simulators which make a kid’s X-Box at home look like Pong. How many Raptor pilots do you think are recruited each year as a percentage? I would bet it is a very small percentage.
For a large percentage of us, calculus is not really fun. I personally learned the math so I could do the fun stuff like science. My dad taught math and I still hated it. I did however, see the thrill in his eyes when he explained where Neil Armstrong happened to be on that hot July day in 1969. He and Neil inspired a love of science that would only be reinforced later by my high school science teacher. At the end of the day, like most kids, I would have never learned math for math’s sake. Like the Air Force, I was shown the Raptor and not the hard work required to make the Raptor fly.
My point in this article flies in the face of what another celebrated spokesman scientist, Doctor Carl Sagan, preached. He and many other scientists called the manned space program a waste of money. They would tell us a thousand robots like the famed rovers spirit and opportunity could be launched for the cost of one Shuttle mission. However true it may be, most kid’s eyes glaze over when they see a little six-wheeled rover digging in red dirt. You need a real person hopping in a big tall rocket and blasting into space to capture the mind of a twelve year-old. You may think twelve is a little early but, in today’s education system, twelve is when a kid begins to decide which math to take. To be able to take calculus in high school you have to take algebra in the seventh or eighth grade.
So when we talk about seventh and eighth graders making poor math scores on achievement tests, I submit the best way to fix the problem is to inspire them. Inspire a new generation of Joes, Neils and Sallys. It’s easy to talk about a manned program and hard to fund it in an ongoing meaningful way. It is especially hard when we consider manned space flight a luxury. If you think about space flight in terms of a recruiting tool to help our country regain it’s technical edge, it begins to look more like a necessity.
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The New York Times sold my paper today and one of my friends lost his job. My paper was the Times Daily in Florence, Alabama. I will keep my friend’s name to myself. I call it MY paper because I have subscribed, bought or stole it for more than 26 years. I, for a brief time, even delivered it. My wife did too. A paper route is a character building experience full of life’s lessons. You learn people will turn off their lights and stay quiet to keep from paying the paper boy. It was also a lesson in advanced finance. A paper carrier has to do a credit risk calculation before he throws every paper. Customer service, you find, is the key to a Christmas tip. My paper and those tips helped pay for my Volkswagen.
The stages of my life have been, in part, defined by my paper. At first I looked for my name on the honor roll. I looked and looked. The next stage of my life was seeing who got married followed by seeing who had a baby. Now regretfully, a few of my friends are showing up in the obits. My paper, and the M*A*S*H reruns mom sent were the hottest commodity in my Army barracks in Germany. However, I think my buddies really only wanted to see the commercials dad didn’t delete on the M*A*S*H videotapes. The paper was a unique resource for the cost of everything from a used Chevy to who won a ball game. When I ran an engineering business I wanted to know if my firm got the contract at the council meeting. Since I have begun blogging, I am always interested in what and how the professionals are writing. In general, the paper has been a part of my whole life.
Life is what a paper is all about. I guess when the New York Times bought my paper and sent a new guy to help run it, I was concerned. Turns out however, the last guy was a pretty good egg. He began going to my church and his unassuming nature made he us instant friends. You could tell he loved the paper business. He knew how important a human touch was to my paper. He wrote a column each week which usually dealt with some mundane part of everyday life. Invariably, the column was a situation my family and I had experienced. The column was a break from all bad news. I think my friend understood we needed a break. He probably told his editors the same thing from time to time.
Only time will tell if the group who bought my paper will give it the same love and care as my friend. Love and care seems to be the first casualty of the national trend of sagging circulation. The papers seem to only respond with consolidation and the elimination of people like my friend. My friend bucked what I am sure was a hallmark of the New York Times papers. He really tried to find out what living in the Shoals was all about. He hired reporters and editors who cared about how to serve people like me.
Serving might be the key to the crisis in newspaper circulation. Instead of transferring papers to the internet, maybe papers should look to the people who grew up reading and printing the dead tree version. Maybe the newspaper business should look into the things which make a daily paper useful to the people who buy the subscriptions and not people who would rather read two lines of a story on the internet. Maybe they should keep people like my friend who are older but, have lots to give before retirement. Instead of spending time on the business of papers, maybe they should spend time on the art of the paper business. They can blame it on circulation and money if they want. Part of the problem however, might be papers are getting rid of people like my friend.
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Deb Cupples at Buck Naked Politics has written a Pulitzer quality summation of where tax cuts fit into a stimulus package. One of her zingers goes as follows:
It’s astounding that with such facts of recent history staring us all in the face, some Republican politicians are still chanting the old, worn-out lines about cutting corporate taxes.
Deb Cupples-Buck Naked Politics.
Her take on the GOP insisting on the cuts and Obama’s capitulation is a great read for anyone truly interested in making our economy better.
Nancy Pelosi should also read this article instead of the shenanigans outlined in my previous article.
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A co-worker of mine and I were talking about a “bailout” for the Big Three American auto makers. His stance was similar to the senator from Alabama, Richard Shelby. Shelby asked the Big Three CEOs, “Why should we believe your firms are capable of restructuring now when you weren’t able to do it under more begin conditions?” Now, I am not sure if CNN Money got the quote wrong or if the senator from Alabama continues to be as inarticulate and embarrassing as usual. My friend was also embarrassed. I admit I had been prepared for his right-wing stance. However, after reflection, we quickly determined three members of his immediate family could lose their jobs if the American automakers failed. The problem my friend didn’t understand was that Shelby and the state government had been doling out money to the auto industry for years. But the money was for foreign car makers.
I tried to find a quick and dirty amount of money we had spent attracting foreign carmakers to the United States. If you consider Industry Week’s average incentive of about $100,000.00 per job and multiply it by the Federal Trade Commission’s estimate of 35,000 jobs, you quickly get to about three and a half billion dollars. As an engineer, I usually have to give you a statistically based analysis on how confident I am about the three and a half billion dollars. I won’t do that. However, I bet you a nice bottle of single malt I didn’t include a third of the money we have spent on incentives for foreign car makers.
So, Senator Shelby, if you want use rhetoric to make points with your right-wing free market worshiping constituents, go ahead and be a hypocrite. Remember you helped spend 300 million on one foreign plant in Alabama at a cost of $150,000.00 per job. Spending 35 billion on 240,000 American auto maker jobs totals about $145,000 per job. After all, even my right-wing buddy at the water cooler has decided to give it another look.
POST SCRIPT:
It has been pointed out that the incentive money most of the foreign car manufacturers receive is not a loan. Those monies are grants or gifts. The American carmakers are asking for loans.