Why is there so little promotion of the skilled trades?

[bordelond]

@MrDibble

That’s not true. Not true at all. Any profession that is currently comforting itself with “They’ll never replace us with machines” is just looking for a rude awakening.

I suggest you watch “How It’s Made” some time, to see how many factory tasks that used to be done by carpenters, welders, etc now get done by robots. Oh, there are still people around in those factories - they generally move a part from CNC Router Robot A to Sanding Robot B, or hold it while Robot C does some welding.

Shitty and dangerous jobs are the first ones we give to robots. Plumbing robots are already on the way.

That sounds very different than what I think of as work in “the trades”.

When my home air conditioning breaks and needs fixing, and R. Daneel Olivaw shows up and fixes it without human intervention … then and only then will I believe “robots will do it ALL one day”. You would literally need robots who imitate humanity.

…

Maybe by the time robots do it all, the concept of “a house” will be very different than what I’m living in now. Maybe the infrastructure, appliances, “machinery” of the house will be wholly unfamiliar. Maybe it will self-heal somehow, and never really break. I dunno. But we’re really far away from that IMHO.

[Hurk]

@MrDibble

That’s not true. Not true at all. Any profession that is currently comforting itself with “They’ll never replace us with machines” is just looking for a rude awakening.

I suggest you watch “How It’s Made” some time, to see how many factory tasks that used to be done by carpenters, welders, etc now get done by robots. Oh, there are still people around in those factories - they generally move a part from CNC Router Robot A to Sanding Robot B, or hold it while Robot C does some welding.

Shitty and dangerous jobs are the first ones we give to robots. Plumbing robots are already on the way.

In the mid-'70s I was working as a moldmaker for an Austrian guy. He made the comment that our work could never be automated.

Forty years later, much of it has been automated via CAD-CAM-CNC.

HOWEVER . . . and this is the important point: Each man is now 30-50% more productive than we used to be. We can make molds that are much more complex than was feasible before. We can build them faster and more accurately. So where are all the laid-off moldmakers, who lost their jobs because of computers?

I know a couple of shops who would hire them in a heartbeat, lol. So what other repercussions were there? We now use expensive CNC machines that somebody has to build. They are much more complex than the old standard Bridgeport milling machines we used before. So more jobs opened up in the companies that build machine tools.

Then there’s the software. My CAM software cost $10k, and some of it is double and triple that. Creating the software is a job that didn’t even exist before. And it’s pretty intense stuff to learn. There are people out there who make pretty good money training people to use the software.

People like to complain about jobs lost due to automation. My answer to fixing that is simple: Outlaw bulldozers and excavators and bring back armies of strong young men with picks and shovels to replace the machines. Outlaw 18-wheelers and force goods to be shipped in smaller trucks. More trucks = more drivers, more mechanics, etc. I could carry this point into infinity.

The main point of all this: Technology does not cause unemployment overall. What it does is raise the standard of living. A bulldozer operator earns a huge multiple of what he could make with a pick and shovel.

Sure, the buggy whip makers lost their jobs a hundred years ago, but maybe they got better paying jobs assembling cars at Ford. Or a job at a tire manufacturer, a steel plant, or something in the oil business – all of which must have been booming businesses a hundred years ago.

I remember reading somewhere, some years ago, that a farmer in Pennsylvania back in the 1800s found this black messy liquid oozing out of his ground, which was of course oil. It was considered worthless and a nuisance. Haha, well we know where that story went.

[nearwildheaven]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

And this is not an outlier. Enron is one of many energy companies that did and does engage in manipulation of energy markets for short term gains. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Washington Mutual weren’t exceptions in the investment banking industry; there were engaging in practices common across banking and securities with and just happened to be the companies hit the worst without influence for a government buyout, but which resulted in collapse and loss of thousands of those vaunted upper middle class office jobs and a wave of financial failures who saw tens of thousands more out of work.

There are reasons why they aren’t very many investment bankers, male or female, over the age of 35.

Those electrical lineman who are working in the Carolinas are making some hefty overtime right now, that’s for sure.

[Carryon]

I couldn’t agree more. My job involves finding jobs for others, and we do have work programs, for instance, driving a fork lift is a skill that pays decent, (for my clients as a whole) and when we had free training it was hard to get anyone to do it.

It was incredibly easy for me to place fork lift operators (especially woman), yet no one wanted that and it’s not exactly a huge training program in terms of time. So it appears to be a status thing, I wish the OPs views were more mainstream.

[jz78817]

@msmith537

Not only this, but the overall potential of a college degree is much higher than that of simply learning a trade. Yes, you can go and earn a decent living as a welder or carpenter or other tradesman. It also has the advantage of not having to live in the most expensive parts of the country like being an investment banker or tech worker might. But getting certified as a welder or carpenter doesn’t really prepare you to do much else.

How is this any different from getting a degree in a particular field?

[Mr.Nylock]

@jz78817

How is this any different from getting a degree in a particular field?

When I went to college - a couple decades ago - it wasn’t necessarily about just learning a skill in something, it was known, assumed, understood etc. that making connections was equally important. Kind of like when drug dealers go to jail.

Maybe things have changed - perhaps getting that undergraduate degree in biology alone opens the the doors to big bucks and high status. I wouldn’t know, I’m mildly retarded.

[obbn]

I had a career as a telephone technician and I did vey week for myself. I made more than most of my friends who had college degrees with the added bonus of no debt!

We live in Polk County, Florida and at my Sons high school they have the Power Academy. It teaches students everything they need to know to be a linesman for a power company. Most who have taken the course are hired upon graduation by the local power company with starting wages around $45k. A good year and these kids can make $100k with overtime such as when a hurricane hits. I truly think every high school should have similar programs.

[ExTank]

As someone in the Trades, who’s worked Industrial Maintenance for close on two decades (18.5 years and counting), I can say that the attitude of Management wrt Trades and Maintenance personnel in general is a big part of it.

In an Industrial/Manufacturing environment, Trades do not generate revenue; we are an Overhead Cost that must be borne; hell, Management resents the fact that production machinery needs to be taken off-line occasionally for routine service and maintenance.

And when the machinery does go down for routine stuff, Management wants immediate turnaround, regardless of safety; I’ve been ordered to climb into machinery without proper LOTO, with components that are still 350-400 degrees (Celsius). I refused, and had to threaten to get corporate Safety involved to get Production Management to back the fuck off.

Then, Management wants maintenance to basically work 24/7/365, even while running what’s essentially a skeleton crew for a maintenance staff. So, if you Live to Work, you’re in hog-heaven raking in overtime.

But if you simply Work to Live, and want some kind of family life, time off for vacations, holidays, you’re basically fucked.

For close on ten years, I worked for a contract service provider doing industrial maintenance, and it’s fair to say I’d rather take up armed robbery or drug dealing than go back to that; I now work “in-house” again, and as bad as I’ve made that sound, it’s paradise compared to contract services.

Then, HR wants, in the “Ideal Candidate,” qualifications amounting to multiple graduate degrees and professional certifications, and then wants to start you at $15.00; in case you’re not good at math, that’s a fucking insult. A 20-something college graduate with a single bachelor degree can start, salaried, at twice that, or better.

I have an AS; in credit hours, I’m closer to a Masters (I wanted to daisy-chain all the credit hours into at least a bachelors, but it wasn’t to be). I can run most welding rigs well enough, as long as it isn’t too tricky (upside-down-in-the-rain), and oxy/acetylene, too. I can do journeyman-level electrical, hydraulics and pneumatics, troubleshoot/repair electronic control circuitry & program PLCs (reading and understanding the schematics for all the above is a given), and turn a wrench with the best of them.

Outside of a union shop, getting $25/hour+ is an uphill battle; my one experience with a union shop soured me considerably on unions. As long as the Shop Stewards and Local leadership were getting paid, they couldn’t give a fuck less about the rank-and-file (until it came to election time, and contract negotiations, of course; then it was all “Solidarity!” After the new contract was signed, it was back to business-as-usual).

So I reckoned, why pay a middleman to fuck me over, when Management can do it just as well all by themselves? And, I’m not out union dues and additional stress.

Given this experiential basis, why would anyone want to be in the trades?

[ExTank]

In case you’re wondering: yes, it was one of those Mondays.

[doreen]

@Mr.Nylock

When I went to college - a couple decades ago - it wasn’t necessarily about just learning a skill in something, it was known, assumed, understood etc. that making connections was equally important. Kind of like when drug dealers go to jail.

Maybe things have changed - perhaps getting that undergraduate degree in biology alone opens the the doors to big bucks and high status. I wouldn’t know, I’m mildly retarded.

That depends very much on the time, the school and the field. I went to college a few decades ago and there wasn’t much “making connections” among the undergrads at the public university. Who would we have been making connections with - the other students without wealthy or influential parents? I’m sure it’s different at Wharton.

It’s not that an undergraduate degree in biology alone opens the door to big bucks and high status. In fact, it’s almost the opposite - that an undergraduate degree in literature or biology ( or a lot of other fields) leaves you only qualified for jobs that want a college degree in *anything , because they don’t prepare you for a particular job or profession. *Those that do prepare you for something (like accounting, or physician’s assistant)don’t prepare you for much else. Which is not necessarily better/different than

But getting certified as a welder or carpenter doesn’t really prepare you to do much else.

[Mr.Nylock]

@doreen

That depends very much on the time, the school and the field. I went to college a few decades ago and there wasn’t much “making connections” among the undergrads at the public university. Who would we have been making connections with - the other students without wealthy or influential parents? I’m sure it’s different at Wharton.

I went to a public university, making connections there was a thing. It was a bigger thing at Wharton (being from the Philadelphia area I ran into plenty of Whartoners), it was a thing at Colgate, Northwestern. Maybe not so much a thing at Drexel. I guess it depends to some extent where you go, but other than community college it was considered a fairly important part of the long term future success equation anywhere I personally am familiar with.

I wish I could go back in time and be born into one of those families that sends their kids to boarding school where they become mildly depressed and do various drugs but being in the right pipeline always end up in the right places.