workin' for a living

[bunnyjadwiga]

Not long ago, I tried to explain to my kid brother that getting a college degree and working at a computer helpdesk, instead of as a roofer and flooring installer, might not be his best career choice for security and satisfaction, either life or job. I'm not sure he bought it. Marylaine Block in her excellent Neat New this week turns up this great site:

Blue Collar and Proud of it - Opportunities
http://www.bluecollarandproudofit.com/opportunities.htm
It's not true that you have to go to college and spend your work days in a
cubicle to make a decent living. America needs contractors, landscapers,
electricians, mechanics, and more. Find out here about the jobs, training,
and apprenticeship programs.

I'm more and more of the opinion that people are making themselves crazy by thinking that a college/cubicle job will make them successful and happy, because they won't have to work with their hands... but what it gets them is a mindless rat race. W. E. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk suggested that blacks of his generation had been screwed over by a system that taught them to despise manual labor, and I'm beginning to believe that is true for the modern generation. My friends come home miserable and frustrated and exhausted from jobs that have no meaning and no real rewards or satisfaction, knowing that they could be laid off tomorrow and be years looking for a new job. This isn't a good way to live-- and people want their kids to go to college to be like us?

Comments

[bunnykissd.livejournal.com]

Amen sistah!

I used to work in the office for an electrical contractor, and payroll was part of my job; those electricians were in a union, had *all* the good holidays off (that I had to work), started at 8 and were gone by 3 (usually, there were a few exceptions), had an hour lunch which the ALWAYS took, had awesome benefits, and most made over $20/hour!!!! But they got dirty... good trade if you ask me...

[bunnykissd.livejournal.com]

I won't even get into the overtime and company vehicles...

[lady-guenievre.livejournal.com]

And the sad part is because *everyone* goes to college now, there's so much "degree inflation" that where once, you needed a HS diploma, now you need a 4 year degree, and on up the chain it goes. Which of course sticks everyone who wants to be "sucessful" (whatever that is) in this extended adolescence getting all this (mostly useless) education while waiting to do something useful with their lives... and meanwhile not daring to do things like fall in love, get married, buy houses...it's all so very connected.

::slinks back to her cube job::

[alphaggek.livejournal.com]

I forget where I read it, but there's even cases of people with advanced degree's chucking it all and working as a plumber or an electrician, and making *more* money!!!

plumbers

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

I could definitely make more as a plumber. and have better hours.

Re: plumbers

[fnoxib.livejournal.com]

But you'd still have to deal with other people's shit.

[nobodyanymore.livejournal.com]

That's just so true. My grandfather and father are/were electricians, and my brother opted to carry on with the tradition and become an electrician as well, and now at 27 he owns a house on some land (all my family still lives in the little town I grew up in, whereas I've moved to the big city), 2 vehicles, and makes big bucks. I didn't do the four-year degree route (although I do intend to get one someday just to prove I can), but I did go to college and now sort of work in a cubicle-farm type environment (although I'm lucky, I have my own office instead of a cubicle). If I could have, I think I might have tried to go into a trade, but for health reasons can't do work that involves a lot of physical labour.

[fuzzybutchkins.livejournal.com]

*Sigh* such a big point you make, and I'm living in the middle of it. Unfortunately, i actually *like* the paperpushing cubie jobs. I actually aspire to be the help desk nerd because, as the blue collar website states, THAT'S WHAT I'M GOOD AT. I can actually explain computerese to the normals in terms that they'll understand, and I have that customer service gene so rare in nerds. Of course, when there is a job opening, i'm going up against hoards of BS'ed and MS'ed grads and MCSEs who wouldn't know a command line if they fell over it all fighting tooth and nail for a $28k a year job. What sense does this make?

So, of course, I end up at a temp agency and now i'm doing manual labor, and i'm actually liking it. I'm helping set up a cadaver lab (no, really). Minus the dead bodies, of course. But it is funny... there is me, an office temp done up in my office attire working along side of and doing a very similar job to construction workers, and i'm making HALF of what they make, and I don't get to wear jeans even.

[fnoxib.livejournal.com]

Simple rules for choosing a livelihood:

1. Do what you're good at and enjoy.
2. When you no longer enjoy it, do something else.

Let us not forget that plumbing and roofing and doing laundry all have their domain knowledge and require their own expertise for a job well done, just like white collar jobs do. Maybe your shingle guy didn't go to Roofer College, but you can be sure that not just anyone can do it well. Same goes for writing software or composing symphonies. There's dignity in anything done well.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Given my employment situation, I can readily sympathize with most of this. From a historical perspective it's easier to understand how the divides came about, though. College degrees were once meant as the prelude to two types of careers: Management, and The Professions (engineers, architects, doctors, lawyers, and so on). If you were in one of the professions, you were basically running your own business, setting your own hours, etc. To a certain extent that's still true, though doctors are increasingly pressed for time.

Management got paid a salary, so they couldn't get paid overtime, but they were generally expected NOT TO HAVE TO WORK O.T. If you got your day's worth of work done early because you were really on a roll, you could leave early... and unless your job description explicitly stated it, you could not be forced to work nghts or weekends. That, quite obviously, is no longer the case -- but people still don't look to "trades" as an alternative.

I wonder if that's because people instinctively equate "blue collar" with "heavy lifting" and/or "retail"... neither of which pays well, the former is beyond the physical abilities of many (including myself), and the latter has work schedules from hell.

I don't argue with the text of what DuBois was saying... but I take issue with the fact that it was him saying it, seeing as W.E.B. was one of the folks SELLING that line to blacks way back when.

hm... reading more on WEB DuBois

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Hm... I'd like to hear more about where I could read about what you are saying, as the book concentrates on Tuskeegee as a manual training facility.