What Jobs are we Talking About?

Or Upon Reconnecting with old friends.

Recently I had the opportunity to reconnect with two old friends. One reminded me that he was finished with, “trying to change the world.” The other reminded me of what happened to the old Blue Collar Democratic coalition. They are the working class who have been losing out since the end of manufacturing across the industrial heartland of the U.S.

First about trying to “change the world.” I grew up with folks who had a dream of a utopia controlled by industrial workers. Workers would form elected councils that would start at their workplaces and move on through government. Yes they would be elected by the people who actually worked in the mines and mills to run the country.Back then there was the Soviet Union. Its supporters held that it was the living example of the new utopia.

I was a young radical growing up in the storm of these never ending arguments. There was a debate between myself, as a leader of the Young Communist League in the Bronx and Gus Tyler the head of the Young People Socialist league. It was held at The Bronx Free Fellowship. This question was posed to me. “In the struggle for socialism do you consider the Soviet Union a beacon or a burden?” Without hesitation I answered emphatically, “it was a burden.” That was my first step away from “changing the world.” Gus Tyler expressed shock and disbelief. Yes I confirmed my position. He then wanted to know “what on earth do you believe?”

In explaining my comment I said that I had come to the conclusion that in our struggle for a better world we can make improvements in the every day lives of working class people. I explained, “that’s what unions do every day in factories across the land.” It was in the struggles for Home Relief, Unemployment Insurance, Right to Organize that I experienced the real gains made for working people. Later I came to understand that what I was doing was making “imperfect adjustments.” This idea left plenty of room for future adjustments. That’s is how I have been dealing with “changing the world.” I guess I am still in that space and that is why I remain engaged even if it is just this old blogger holding forth as if on “Tremont & Prospect.” ( Soap box corner in the Bronx.)

On to the second old friend who for the many years was always a voice for the Guys who worked in the monstrous industrial heartland of the country. In a recent NY Times column David Brooks said, “This is the beating center of American life. The place--the trajectory of American politics is being determined. If America can figure out how to build a decent future for the working-class people in this region then the U.S. will remain a predominant power. If it can’t, it wont.”

Wow where is Brooks coming from? This heartland of America is now the rustbelt of most of those smoldering giants of the early industrial revolution. The few new mills that are operating under foreign ownership are producing more stuff with 80 percent less workers than in, “the good old days of Bethlehem Steel.” Brooks wake up it’s over. In place of Steel Making and cigars for a successful melt we have computer screens you sit in front of and push buttons.

Which brings me around to what kind of jobs are we all talking about? Can I remind my readers that some months back I wrote a blog on “Women As A Majority of the Work Force.” Now that has some real implications for the kind of jobs we are talking about. I love when I hear talk of, “shovel ready projects.” I don’t know exactly when the shovel became obsolete. I do know that any shovel job that required more than a dozen shovel fulls was taken over many decades ago by a machine called a back-hoe. They come in all sizes from a little bitty one that I can rent to use in our garden to giants operated by one person that can dig a quarter mile six foot deep trench before lunch.

My point is that jobs in the U.S. have been rapidly changing from the old industrial mills to the service, health care and automated computer controlled operation. It is now estimated that half the workforce or 75 million people do their jobs sitting in front of a computer screen the whole day.

That reminds me of a book Patricia Sexton wrote back in 1969 called “The Feminized Classrooms, White Collar and the Decline of Manliness.” I knew Pat Sexton and I read the book when it came out. Most of what she had to say is in the title. I was ambivalent at the time because my own experience moving from the plant floor to the office helped me to understand that in the white collar settings men and women were equal as far as the tasks were concerned.

Sexton’s concern about “manliness” was and is real. It was while working as a plumbers helper in high rise buildings I became a man. I was doing hard physical labor that was only done by men. Hence I became one. My work determined my state of mind. So now I’m in front of a computer screen and my major help comes from my wife who knows a hell of lot more about this machine than I ever will. This brings me back to the unemployed that Brooks wrote about in the “Great heartland of America?”

It was my second “old :friend” who called my attention to the fact that without some kind of college education getting any job at all is becoming extremely difficult. So what is going to happen to all those middle aged blue collar guys who lost their jobs as a result of the recession? Who out there thinks they can be retrained to sit here like I am and be, a claims operator at an insurance company? I have some real doubts as to how possible that will be. That brings me back to the David Brooks piece. If we need to create jobs in the Heartland to put the old timers back to work I’m afraid we can’t and so we may be losing our “predominance in the world.” I’m not sure if that’s good or bad?