Today, I had the pleasure of viewing Mike Rowe’s TED talk on what he’s learned from doing the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs” [LINK]. TED Talks, if you haven’t seen them, are often inspirational [LINK]. I’ve embedded the Mike Rowe talk below and I want to summarize his main argument on how he feels “we” have declared war on blue collar jobs:

1. Hollywood portrays tradespeople as undesirable. The stereotypical sexist steel worker, the fat plumber whose butt crack hangs out, the silent and stoic construction worker, etc…
2. Madison avenue (advertising companies) who try to sell people that working hard for a living is undesirable
3. Washington (or your equivalent seat of government) who create policies that make it difficult for tradespeople
4. Silicon Valley (as the representative of high tech) who glorifies gadgets over hand tools

I am not going to say that these arguments are flawless but the point is clear – Western societies don’t respect trades jobs like we used to. No big deal, right? Back in January of this year, I wrote a piece on how a looming labour shortage in BC is going to cripple our efforts to maintain and upgrade our infrastructure in this province – a point that Mike Rowe raises in his talk as well [READ]. Enrolment in trades programs at post-secondary institutions are down across the board. Here’s a quote from the TED talk:

Barack wants to create two and a half million jobs. The infrastructure is a huge deal. This war on work, that I suppose exists, has casualties like any other war. The infrastructure’s the first one Declining trade school enrolments are the second one. Every single year, fewer electricians, fewer carpenters, fewer plumbers, fewer welders, fewer pipefitters, fewer steamfitters. The infrastructure jobs that everybody is talking about creating are those guys. The ones that have been in decline, over and over. In the meanwhile, we got two trillion dollars, at a minimum, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, that we need to expend to even make a dent in the infrastructure which is currently rated at a D minus.

Our situation in Canada is no different. We’re spending money on infrastructure right now but our capacity to supply the labour needed to do the work is diminishing rapidly and, as I am suggesting, will be almost non-existent by 2015. All of these issues gave me pause to think about why I left the trades at a young age and turned to “creative class” work (to borrow the Richard Florida term). Here’s my background:

I come from a large, mostly blue collar family that has given me a healthy respect for the trades. My father is a welder. Several of my uncles work in the wood finishing business. Another uncle owns a landscaping business. Many of my cousins, my brother-in-law and my sister are in the trades. It should come as no surprise that I did my stint in the trades as well. Between the ages of 13 (yes, 13) and 21, I worked as a signmaker. If you’re not familiar with this trade, I’ll forgive you but it’s essentially people who manufacture, maintain and install signs. Those real estate development signs? We did those. Restaurant signs? We did those. We even made signs for The X Files to turn local libraries and college buildings into “FBI Headquarters”.

The work I did was mostly with metal, plastic and wood. I used fairly simple tools like band saws, drills, nail guns and table saws to make these signs. We painted them, we finished them, we applied vinyl lettering to them. Every sign was a unique work of art in its own right. Later, as the company I worked with grew, I learned how to weld to help them expand the business into display cases. By the time I was 20, I was the de facto foreman. In the end, I left the business because they went through a rough financial period and were having trouble making payroll.

That was my last blue collar job and I never really looked back. I didn’t think that the work I did was beneath me. Far from it – I enjoyed the work and was often whistling while I worked. What changed was that I went to university to study social science instead of going to trades school. Why? Because at the time, I wanted to be a cop and knew that I needed a university degree under my belt if I was going to get that job. That’s the only reason. I thought law enforcement would be a better job for me. In the end, I was wrong but I never went back to the trades.

Everything that Mike Rowe said is true. There are forces that conspire to make the trades seem undesirable. I took a lot of heat from my classmates during my undergrad when I would come to school after working at the sign company and I was “dirty”. I smelled like sawdust and welding flux. Nobody wanted to sit anywhere near me. I had a few people ask me if I was in some kind of government program for “the disadvantaged”. What they didn’t realize was that I was paying for my university degree with cash and they were accumulating huge student loans.

So why didn’t I go back to the trades? I think it was a few things:

1. At that time, pay for tradespeople was far below what I could make as a creative class individual. My job at the sign company paid $12/hr in 1996. By 1998, I was making $18/hr working in PR.
2. As someone with a newly minted university degree, it didn’t seem to make much sense to go back into the trades – why had I just spent five years at school if I was going back to a job where I didn’t need any training?
3. I was told by many people that my skills would be put to best use in creative class jobs – not in the trades.

It was only in the last few years that I’ve started to partially regret not sticking with the trades. Pre-2010 Olympic fever in Vancouver saw tradespeople making amazing money – more than me and usually with less experience. I think some effective PR here has also alleviated some of the stigma attached to the trades. In BC at least, we’ve returned to a time when students can choose to specialize in a trade in grades 11 and 12 and fast track their career. The kid next door is doing it and he’s doing great. At the end of the day, I have settled into the role of the entrepreneur but my roots in the trades will always be there.

I agree with Mike Rowe that there is a “civil war” in North America between tradespeople and everyone else. As someone who has walked in both worlds, the tension in palpable to me. Just some food for thought.