Why Dirty Jobs Matter

I like to watch TED videos on my iPod Touch. I think TED stands for Technology, Education and Design. What happens is that the TED folks assemble some of the greatest thinkers on the planet to come together on a routine basis to talk about stuff.

Sounds ordinary, right? Well, the “stuff” they talk about is truly extraordinary. You’ll just have to run out to the TED web site and watch one or two to get the drift of what I’m talking about.

So, last night I’m working out on the elliptical machine at Bally Fitness and I’m watching a TED video by Mike Rowe, host of the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs.”  This guy, dressed in ordinary workaday clothing, has no PowerPoint presentation, no props, no videos or music or gimmicks. He just stands up there and tells a story.

The story he tells is at once riveting and repulsive. He talks about castrating lambs on a ranch in Craig, Colorado–how it’s expected to be done, and how it’s actually done, and the difference between the two.

But the talk isn’t important because you learn something about castration. That part is fascinating and entertaining–Rowe is a very good story-teller.

What’s salient about Rowe’s 20 minutes is that he makes a very important American point: We’re losing the job battle.

While we have heartfelt and strong dialogs (diatribes?) about important things like health care reform and American soldiers overseas,  we have almost lost the notion of what it means to be an American worker. Rowe talks about the need for technical schools and colleges; not enough plumbers, carpenters, electricians and the like. Not enough mechanical engineers–heck, not enough engineers period.

Not enough people willing to a) dig into the math, physics, chemistry and other hard topics required to understand the deepness of engineering, and/or b) not enough people willing to bend over and get their hands dirty and backs aching in the process of carrying out good old fashioned American work.

Rowe’s point is that it’s job first, other things second. In one part of the video, he talks about “safety third,” meaning that despite the platitude of “safety first” and OSHA laws, and of course each person’s regard for their own well-being, nevertheless workers undertake things like mining, deep-sea fishing, logging and other dangerous occupations because they’re good jobs, they pay well and they feed families.

He doesn’t say it, but I think the point stands out: In many cases, we’ve let ideology get in the way of practicality. Case in point: so-called “green” jobs. Pundits and politicians bring platitudes that talk about the need to switch over from 20th century energy sources to renewable energy methodologies.

Fine. I have no argument with that–though I don’t think the economics bear out a short-term forklift switching over to renewables from conventional energy resources. The problem is that we’ve let strongly ideological environmental groups get in the way of progress toward renewable energy goals. Can’t build offshore wind turbines in the north Atlantic because the folks on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard will see them in the distance and their white blades spinning away will disturb the pristine view. It’s a beautiful site on Maui I can tell you. Don’t know why it’s anathema off the New England coast.

Can’t build transmission lines leading from a humongous concentrating solar array in the Desert Southwest to the nation’s cities because that would involve drilling holes in the ground for tower caissons and stringing unsightly wire across miles of American soil.

Can’t drill for natural gas–of which T. Boone Pickens claims there is enough for “100 years’ worth of clean-burning energy for Americans.” Why? Because drilling disrupts natural environments, and makes things unsightly and causes animals to have to rethink their living patterns or worse, kills them, and, well, there’s just something ideologically wrong about drilling for gas when there are other renewable energy sources we could be using instead. Never mind that the payback periods and inefficiencies of said renewables really aren’t sufficient enough for us to adopt them in a wholesale fashion…yet. Given enough time (decades) sure, we’re there. We’re all over that. But right now what we need is gas and coal and oil and power lines and power plants and refineries.

Which takes me back to jobs. It is ideologically unpleasant to watch Rowe’s Dirty Jobs TED talk because he talks about the politically correct (and wrong) method for castrating a lamb. And then he talks about an American worker who is, in the immortal words of Larry the Cable Guy, able to “get ‘er done.” And the getting it done is actually better for the lamb, as it turns out. Oh, and it keeps ranchers employed.

So here’s the thing: Rowe is talking about something very basic and important. What he’s really saying is that we need to put America back to work. Which means that a lot of the students in our schools today really shouldn’t be planning on going to college to study things like history, and psychology, and social topics. The jobs just aren’t there in numbers large enough to support a lot of students in those majors.

Instead, students should be planning on going into technical schools to learn about jobs that are important to Americans. For example, Process Tech, a major students can take at many community colleges across the country, teaches young people how to properly operate industrial facilities such as power plants, factories, and such.

We need welders, carpenters, electricians, brick-layers, mechanics, linemen (OK, linepersons), cosmetologists, machine workers, miners, loggers, and other skilled tradepersons. We need to get back to building and farming. We need dental hygienists and nurses. We need engineers.

We’ve got plenty of psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists (and other ‘ists), cultural studies majors, historians, and English majors. Boat’s full. Don’t major there. No jobs there. Nothing to do or see there.

What we don’t need is one more guy or gal with a history degree working as a barista.

(As an aside, one thing I noticed on a recent trip to Europe this summer was that all of England, France and Italy was planted. Not with Kentucky blue grass, but with stuff people can eat and use. Corn, hops, wheat, sunflowers, lavender, and yes, tobacco. The land wasn’t allowed to lie fallow. It was used. While I recognize if you drive through eastern Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas you’re going to see lots of crops, I still wonder what the proportion of crops grown in America by acre of soil is to Europe. I bet there’s a drastic difference. It made me think: where are all the American farmers?)

Rowe’s point is that, of necessity, American jobs have to be dirty jobs. If we’re to maintain the status quo in this country, feed and educate our kids, house ourselves, maintain our health and make this country better–what I’m talking about is good old-fashioned improving our lot–we’ve got to get our hands dirty again. And our backs aching. And our bodies and minds working in harmony in the process of creating things that people need in order to live.

Turns out our ancestors had the right idea. It’s the dirty jobs that are the best jobs after all.

This entry was posted on September 10, 2009 at 05:08 and is filed under Politics, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.