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A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

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Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

#171

Post by pwthornton »

pnathan wrote: post #161
eropple wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad because it cause physical damage . Virtually every long-term practitioner of a "hard work" job is damaged: back, knees, neck, hands. It's very often a career that you can't outside past 50.

A good deal of that is alleviated and managed by care at the job site and personal fitness. Growing up around construction workers, all too many of them did not take care of themselves and the debt was called in later in life. Quite sad, but largely preventable. Of course, this does not protect from non-mitigatable risks, which are non-negligable.

Can you give us an example of how this is preventable? Repeatedly physical stress wears down the body. This is why you see long time weight lifters and runners with worn out joints in middle age.

Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

#172

Post by EpicEng »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #109
al2o3cr wrote: post #98

"In the next few years, this company anticipates 15,000 new openings for welders and pipe-fitters in the southeast. And the head of recruitment has absolutely no idea where the workers will come from. That should scare us all." Oh FFS. If the company can't find 15k workers perhaps they should consider raising wages. Mr. Rowe's show has clearly demonstrated that no matter how unpleasant 99% of the world might find a p…

Yes, I was disappointed in Mike Rowe that be basically wrote off the whole problem as people not willing to do hard work. Everyone is willing to do hard, physical labor where you risk handicapping yourself for life...it just has to pay comparatively well to office jobs. Then again, people around the world are competing for the same jobs nowadays, and obviously those with lower standards of living are going to do them…

And many people with degrees are delivering pizzas for a living while trying to pay off their student loans. That is a problem.

Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

#173

Post by EpicEng »

ryandrake wrote: post #11
protomyth wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mentions the data several times, go look at the US Labor stats. Infrastructure jobs are open and we don't have the skilled workers to fill them. ND is importing welders from Canada while road work on the eastern side of the state gets delayed. ND has stats on that too. Some jobs cannot be outsourced. [edit: skilled workers are need more in infrastructure / construction then factories]

"Number of available jobs" is a meaningless statistic. HN-ready example: I'd like to do a web start-up, if only I could find skilled engineers. I'm willing to pay 100 experienced, skilled Java programmers $10/hr to build the site. What? No takers? Not one?? Well, there you go! 100 jobs unfilled. Skills gap! You can't offer poverty-level wages for skilled jobs, then complain that "we don't have the skilled workers" wh…

Except they're not shitty jobs. You start low, yes, but you work your way up. Most of them are union. Soon you're making $25+ / hour with benefits and overtime. Yes, God forbid, what a horrible life.

Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

#176

Post by eropple »

pnathan wrote: post #161
eropple wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad because it cause physical damage . Virtually every long-term practitioner of a "hard work" job is damaged: back, knees, neck, hands. It's very often a career that you can't outside past 50.

A good deal of that is alleviated and managed by care at the job site and personal fitness. Growing up around construction workers, all too many of them did not take care of themselves and the debt was called in later in life. Quite sad, but largely preventable. Of course, this does not protect from non-mitigatable risks, which are non-negligable.

Which (when true--lifting heavy things on a daily basis is eventually deleterious even when one uses proper technique) takes time, which reduces productivity, which isn't acceptable because money.

It is economically smart to burn out people doing "hard work". And it's not like we're going to do much to help them.

Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

#177

Post by eshvk »

aarkling wrote: post #138
eshvk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this going to solve anything? All this is going to do is bring in a flood of applicants to the job that has no listing of a college degree as a requirement. Then HR is going to reject a bunch of applications. At the end you are just moving the barrier to an internal portal.

Plus I'm pretty sure that would be clearly unconstitutional.

Well listing IQ requirements is not allowed. So presumably restricting this falls under the same category?

Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

#178

Post by pnathan »

pwthornton wrote: post #171
pnathan wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good deal of that is alleviated and managed by care at the job site and personal fitness. Growing up around construction workers, all too many of them did not take care of themselves and the debt was called in later in life. Quite sad, but largely preventable. Of course, this does not protect from non-mitigatable risks, which are non-negligable.

Can you give us an example of how this is preventable? Repeatedly physical stress wears down the body. This is why you see long time weight lifters and runners with worn out joints in middle age.

There are a large number of people who have terrible fitness and are 50+ pounds overweight. Many people smoke. I don't have numbers on the correlation with socioeconomic status, but I'm pretty sure that worse fitness and smoking correlate with lower status to a degree (can't recall the news articles on such things, I've read occasional notes on such things). That's borne out by my personal observation.

So basically, if you take the intersection of "bad habits" and "physical work", you wind up with "worse body" as a result. On the other hand, careful maintenance of your body & health habits allows you to do better than your unmaintained colleague. It's hard, but doable.

Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

#179

Post by fotoblur »

Notice how the questioner seems to have someone else's actions to blame for the problems. This is often a narrow way of thinking and can be a deception in ones own view of the world. What I like most about Mike's responses are that he doesn't blame anyone, per se, but understands that these problems are best described by analyzing the current environment in which they become evident.

Who could blame colleges for raising tuition when the current funding environment begged them too? Who could blame people for not wanting to work shit jobs in the heat but instead go to college and work at jobs that require instead a skilled intellect, pay more, and are more comfortable? And why shouldn't Mike talk about people who work hard, dirty jobs when a show about them made him famous?

Re: A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe

#180

Post by pnathan »

eropple wrote: post #176
pnathan wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good deal of that is alleviated and managed by care at the job site and personal fitness. Growing up around construction workers, all too many of them did not take care of themselves and the debt was called in later in life. Quite sad, but largely preventable. Of course, this does not protect from non-mitigatable risks, which are non-negligable.

Which (when true--lifting heavy things on a daily basis is eventually deleterious even when one uses proper technique) takes time, which reduces productivity, which isn't acceptable because money . It is economically smart to burn out people doing "hard work". And it's not like we're going to do much to help them.

Churn and burn joints trying to crank maximum effort at maximum speed do exist in the trades. My observation is that as people acquire skill, they try to avoid avoid such companies. It's simply bad quality output, bad morale, and lousy work conditions.
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