Observations on Fading Boundaries Between Blue and White Collar Work
Does the blue-collar white-collar dichotomy have any meaning today? Will supply and demand push wages and benefits for traditional blue-collar workers in some occupations to or above those for many white-collar workers? Will unions have better luck with white-collar recruits?
A recent Wall Street Journal article described union organizing of “worried and grouchy engineers, hypnotists and podiatrists,” and offered these words about the fading blue-collar/white-collar distinction:
Globalization and technology have made the workplace less secure for everybody and fuzzed up the line separating white and blue collars. . . .
Forget revenge of the nerds. These days it’s revenge of the electrician, the mechanic and the plumber: Blue collars aren’t what they used to be. General Motors may advertise Mr. Goodwrench, but a good mechanic must master computer diagnostics.
Go over to the waiting room at the Mercedes dealer and you’ll see white-collar America at the mercy of blue-collar. I might be able to forecast the future path of the euro-to-yen ratio, but you think I can replace the catalytic converter under the hood of my car? Say, where’d they hide the hood latch, anyway? . . .
[T]he old-fashioned distinction between blue collar and white has been lost in an economy that demands ever-stronger skills and active brain cells. . . . [T]hese days carrying around your college diploma doesn’t entitle you to much. For one thing, a college degree is a cheapened currency. In 1950, only 6% of the population had one, compared with 28% today.
And what have these graduates learned? Many wouldn’t know the difference between absolute value and Absolut vodka. More important, though, a college degree does not prove that a person is willing to keep learning. . .
Politicians regularly try to stir up blue-collar workers, but the truth is that white and blue are more similar than ever before. How many executives still dictate to a secretary?
Meanwhile, my local UPS guy is carrying not just my cardboard box but a sophisticated inventory control device, and he guides his brown truck with satellite technology. After a few years that driver will earn more than $50,000 a year. You’re not going to get a job at UPS if your goal in life is simply to drive a truck. Likewise you won’t get a key to the executive restroom unless you’re willing to learn Excel and type your own reports. . . .
We are in a global race for IQ points. . . . The U.S. produces about half the annual patent filings in the world. That’s an outstanding number. But new ideas are not enough if we do not have a motivated, educated work force to exploit them. Despite improved high-school graduation rates, our kids are the Jamaican bobsled team of education, to judge by international test scores. They lose to the Slovenians. If we don’t buck up our schools, the next generation could end up with white collars and pink slips.
A picturesque description, to be sure, but what does it tell us that we didn’t already know? I’m not sure. That education and training are extremely important for everyone?
That “labor” and “management” are increasingly in the same boat?
That young people and career-changers should look seriously at “blue-collar” occupations, ignoring any social-class stigma (like the very middle-class mother of a boy on my son’s baseball team who unabashedly told us last night that she quit working for Accountemps to start her own (solo) housecleaning business because she could make lots more money)?
“What Color Is Your Collar? Job Security Is Scarce,” by Todd G. Buchholz (WSJ Career Journal)
Mr. Buchholz, an economic adviser to President George H.W. Bush, is the author of “Bringing the Jobs Home: How the Left Created the Outsourcing Crisis–and How We CanFix It “ (Penguin/Sentinel, 2004).
The left created the outsourcing crisis? really? here’s the argument from an Amazon book synopsis.
Thanks to the public education system liberals have defended for the past forty years, many high school graduates are nearly functionally illiterate. Not so in India.
Thanks to lobbyists and pro-union immigration laws, foreigners aren’t allowed to stay in the country after they finish their Ph.D.s. So they’re starting companies overseas instead of here.
Thanks to our liberal tax system, employers have to pay extra for American workers to fund Social Security—which no one believes will be solvent in a few decades.
Thanks to a legal system that favors the plaintiff, employers in the United States must worry about lawsuits over spilled hot coffee, trumped up sexual harassment charges, and other frivolous cases.
All serious factors in the problems we face, but let’s not lay them all at the feet of “liberals” please. Its not like we haven’t had many years of “conservative” government.
Photo credit: PhotoSydney via flickr
