Respectable blue-collar jobs

[Eamonnca1]

I feel like a response to this deserves a thread of its own:

One thing came up in conversation today that I hadn't even thought of before

Remember during the election we heard that Trump had all of his support coming from "non college educated white people".

How fvcking condescending can you get.....I know plenty of trades people over here.....electricians, diesel mechanics, HVAC guys .....who spend years at trade schools, learning trades and doing apprenticeships . They are just as smart and equally, if not more informed as many of the smarmy fvcks looking down their noses at them

I agree 100%

You know what I heard my teachers tell me in my day? "We want youse to go out and get good jobs. Not working outside in the rain as builders or labourers." Another one said "We want you to have a respectable job when you grow up. Not working out in the back yard lifting bricks." I always bristled when I heard that since my dad was a navvy in England when he met my mother, and later he was a breadman when I was growing up. My mother was a housewife until I was old enough to be left alone and she went back to work, first as a store detective and later going into factory work. When I heard teachers talking down to working class people like that I always felt that my own background was being insulted.

I have a handful of siblings, some of us went into professional work and others did not. All of us did well in life, IMHO. The ones that do manual work are as happy as any, and some of them are doing better financially than myself in a lot of ways, and fair play to them.

I have one friend who went to uni and ended up working in banking, but he says he feels out of place in it and he didn't really feel that university was for him. I have another friend who had no notion of going on to higher education, I think he did a HND and was happy to stop at that. Am I supposed to think any less of him?

University isn't for everybody. Software engineering, science, economics and the like are not for everybody, and the sooner we get that into our heads the better off we're going to be. Exposing all children to coding is all well and good, but we shouldn't expect everybody to want to go on to be a programmer. We still need people to build our houses, fix our cars, stack the shelves in the store, and serve us at the bar or cafe.  I work in a tech company in Silicon Valley, and some of the people in there that I have the most respect for are the ones that work in the cafeteria. They get up early and work their asses off, and they do good work. You can tell they take pride in it.

I once had a boss who bragged about taking his son with him in the car one day. He parked across the street from a mechanic's garage and forced the young fella to watch these men at work all day. The lesson he was trying to teach his son was that that kind of work was beneath him, and he had to stick in at college if he was going to avoid lowering himself to that level. Bit harsh in my opinion. I once worked in a machine shop one summer and enjoyed the work. (The ones I had to work with, not so much, but the work itself had its own job satisfaction.) My old boss' son turned out to be a bit of an asshole, and I'd say that little mechanic lesson was probably a factor.

Now there's a whole generation of people brought up to believe that they're so special that manual work is beneath them. Hence you can't get an American to pick fruit out of the fields, only desperate immigrants will do it. How many films have you watched where the good guy prevails by escaping the drudgery of being an ordinary working man? An entire culture has developed where we don't value everybody's job, hence low-wage jobs are treated like a punishment for not being good enough at school. An American conservative once tried to argue with me that minimum-wage jobs "are not designed for people who want to have families." He thought that if you work 40+hours a week, you still don't deserve to earn enough money to get by on if the kind of work you're doing does not measure up in the prestige stakes.

What the hell's the matter with people now? What happened to a bit of respect for the ordinary working man and the dignity of the job?

[omochain]

I feel like a response to this deserves a thread of its own:

One thing came up in conversation today that I hadn't even thought of before

Remember during the election we heard that Trump had all of his support coming from "non college educated white people".

How fvcking condescending can you get.....I know plenty of trades people over here.....electricians, diesel mechanics, HVAC guys .....who spend years at trade schools, learning trades and doing apprenticeships . They are just as smart and equally, if not more informed as many of the smarmy fvcks looking down their noses at them

I agree 100%

You know what I heard my teachers tell me in my day? "We want youse to go out and get good jobs. Not working outside in the rain as builders or labourers." Another one said "We want you to have a respectable job when you grow up. Not working out in the back yard lifting bricks." I always bristled when I heard that since my dad was a navvy in England when he met my mother, and later he was a breadman when I was growing up. My mother was a housewife until I was old enough to be left alone and she went back to work, first as a store detective and later going into factory work. When I heard teachers talking down to working class people like that I always felt that my own background was being insulted.

I have a handful of siblings, some of us went into professional work and others did not. All of us did well in life, IMHO. The ones that do manual work are as happy as any, and some of them are doing better financially than myself in a lot of ways, and fair play to them.

I have one friend who went to uni and ended up working in banking, but he says he feels out of place in it and he didn't really feel that university was for him. I have another friend who had no notion of going on to higher education, I think he did a HND and was happy to stop at that. Am I supposed to think any less of him?

University isn't for everybody. Software engineering, science, economics and the like are not for everybody, and the sooner we get that into our heads the better off we're going to be. Exposing all children to coding is all well and good, but we shouldn't expect everybody to want to go on to be a programmer. We still need people to build our houses, fix our cars, stack the shelves in the store, and serve us at the bar or cafe.  I work in a tech company in Silicon Valley, and some of the people in there that I have the most respect for are the ones that work in the cafeteria. They get up early and work their asses off, and they do good work. You can tell they take pride in it.

I once had a boss who bragged about taking his son with him in the car one day. He parked across the street from a mechanic's garage and forced the young fella to watch these men at work all day. The lesson he was trying to teach his son was that that kind of work was beneath him, and he had to stick in at college if he was going to avoid lowering himself to that level. Bit harsh in my opinion. I once worked in a machine shop one summer and enjoyed the work. (The ones I had to work with, not so much, but the work itself had its own job satisfaction.) My old boss' son turned out to be a bit of an asshole, and I'd say that little mechanic lesson was probably a factor.

Now there's a whole generation of people brought up to believe that they're so special that manual work is beneath them. Hence you can't get an American to pick fruit out of the fields, only desperate immigrants will do it. How many films have you watched where the good guy prevails by escaping the drudgery of being an ordinary working man? An entire culture has developed where we don't value everybody's job, hence low-wage jobs are treated like a punishment for not being good enough at school. An American conservative once tried to argue with me that minimum-wage jobs "are not designed for people who want to have families." He thought that if you work 40+hours a week, you still don't deserve to earn enough money to get by on if the kind of work you're doing does not measure up in the prestige stakes.

What the hell's the matter with people now? What happened to a bit of respect for the ordinary working man and the dignity of the job?

Sad but true. Your value is measured in many quarters by the size of your bank account, not your contribution to the betterment of your community.

[No wides]

Sounds like a thread for people with complexes, if you like what you do and happy in your chosen profession why would you give a f**k what anyone thought.

[bennydorano]

Agree 100% with the opening post. I'd be delighted to to have a tradesman amongst my kids, with a bit of gumption there's a lot of opportunities, factor in the increasing costs of UK University and it seems a far more viable / practical option sometimes - especially if Uni was going to be a 3 yr party with a non specialised Humanities degree or the like.

[seafoid]

The US and the UK/Ireland don't focus on training schemes and apprenticeships like the Continentals do. There is far more work pride in Germany and the work quality is better. If you look after people they will produce good work.

[Milltown Row2]

The US and the UK/Ireland don't focus on training schemes and apprenticeships like the Continentals do. There is far more work pride in Germany and the work quality is better. If you look after people they will produce good work.

I taught in various colleges around N.I for 12 years, apprenticeship programmes work fairly well, it's just a percentage of kids that get into it have a seriousl over inflated opinion on how much money they get and being told what to do!! A very good percentage end up becoming very good at their job and moving up the ladder within that company or on some occasions going out on their own and have made a good fist of self employment...

[general_lee]

The Germans especially value their employees, pay them handsomely and so the work ethic and culture is something to be replicated. I've never worked in manufacturing here but something tells me it wouldn't be the same

[seafoid]

The US and the UK/Ireland don't focus on training schemes and apprenticeships like the Continentals do. There is far more work pride in Germany and the work quality is better. If you look after people they will produce good work.

I taught in various colleges around N.I for 12 years, apprenticeship programmes work fairly well, it's just a percentage of kids that get into it have a seriousl over inflated opinion on how much money they get and being told what to do!! A very good percentage end up becoming very good at their job and moving up the ladder within that company or on some occasions going out on their own and have made a good fist of self employment...

In the South self employed are discriminated against by the system. I think they don't qualify for unemployment money.
There are a lot of structural impediments that work against blue collar workers.
Middle class voters are more organised.
You would also wonder how much value accountants really produce these days....

[MoChara]

The destruction of the working class has been a deliberate creation, my opinion is it really kicked of in the days of thatcher. This bullshit of there's room in the middle class for everyone and anyone working class is lazy, thick or just scum.

Being working class and proud of your trade because you are good at it is slipping away. This is in part because of the replacing of solid guild and trades with call centre and other robotic uninspiring work. There's a great book about this whole subject from a British perspective which I found fantastic called "Chavs: the demonisation of the working class" I can't recommend it enough.

[bennydorano]

The US and the UK/Ireland don't focus on training schemes and apprenticeships like the Continentals do. There is far more work pride in Germany and the work quality is better. If you look after people they will produce good work.

I taught in various colleges around N.I for 12 years, apprenticeship programmes work fairly well, it's just a percentage of kids that get into it have a seriousl over inflated opinion on how much money they get and being told what to do!! A very good percentage end up becoming very good at their job and moving up the ladder within that company or on some occasions going out on their own and have made a good fist of self employment...

In the South self employed are discriminated against by the system. I think they don't qualify for unemployment money.
There are a lot of structural impediments that work against blue collar workers.
Middle class voters are more organised.
You would also wonder how much value accountants really produce these days....

In the North (& I don't know if it's bad advice by Accountants / Govt Agencies  or just trying to save a few bob) there are different types of stamp, if a self employed person signs on and they have only contributed to the basic stamp they are entitled to very little.

[RadioGAAGAA]

Last time I checked, it wasn't "blue-collar" workers that completely f**ked both the Irish and global economies with their smoke and mirrors bullsh!t.

[screenexile]

In the current climate I don't think I would send my kids to University... the job I do now I could have been doing 10 years earlier without a University education!

The sooner you're in the workforce the less debt you have the more provision you have for a pension and the better equipped you will be for the more Senior Roles when they become available!

[Rois]

In the current climate I don't think I would send my kids to University... the job I do now I could have been doing 10 years earlier without a University education!

The sooner you're in the workforce the less debt you have the more provision you have for a pension and the better equipped you will be for the more Senior Roles when they become available!

Agree - my company is changing their strategy to try to bring on more trainee accountants straight from school - you start earning from day one and you don't become fully qualified any later (and sometimes earlier) than the equivalent who goes to university and starts into a training programme as a grad. 

The thought of paying £7k a year for 7 or 8 hours of tuition a week is truly horrific. 

[Minder]

I think it was Tony Baloney that told the story here before about the girl from Tyrone that worked in a solicitors in Belfast, with full blown Malone accent, started crying at a party because she was too ashamed to tell her colleagues that her Da was a digger driver

[armaghniac]

Plenty of work is crap and if robots do it, then the human race will be better off. But other people, be they builders or hairdressers are artisans and these should be well respected careers.

University isn't for everybody. Software engineering, science, economics and the like are not for everybody, and the sooner we get that into our heads the better off we're going to be. Exposing all children to coding is all well and good, but we shouldn't expect everybody to want to go on to be a programmer. We still need people to build our houses, fix our cars, stack the shelves in the store, and serve us at the bar or cafe.  I work in a tech company in Silicon Valley, and some of the people in there that I have the most respect for are the ones that work in the cafeteria. They get up early and work their asses off, and they do good work. You can tell they take pride in it.

I once had a boss who bragged about taking his son with him in the car one day. He parked across the street from a mechanic's garage and forced the young fella to watch these men at work all day. The lesson he was trying to teach his son was that that kind of work was beneath him, and he had to stick in at college if he was going to avoid lowering himself to that level. Bit harsh in my opinion. I once worked in a machine shop one summer and enjoyed the work. (The ones I had to work with, not so much, but the work itself had its own job satisfaction.) My old boss' son turned out to be a bit of an asshole, and I'd say that little mechanic lesson was probably a factor.

Sad but true. Your value is measured in many quarters by the size of your bank account, not your contribution to the betterment of your community.

Slightly off topic, one school is alleged to have used a picture like this


and told the boys that this would be them if they went to University and told the girls that this would be them if they didn't go to university!