What's New in the Blue Collar World!

"A note from Joe"

Joe Speaks with TEAM Members
BOSTON, April 18, 2005

Recently, I went to a meeting of current and retired Technology Education (Industrial Art/shop) teachers, who call themselves TEAM (Technology Education Association of Massachusetts). They found me from my website, www.bluecollarandproudofit.com As I sat there and listened to these truly loyal and dedicated Technology Education teachers, I felt that sinking feeling deep inside myself. I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing!!!

There is a huge push to slowly cut and completely do away with Technology Education throughout Massachusetts and all across the United States. In the past ten years the cuts have been the worst. Trying to align Engineering and Science to Technology Education is a joke! This is not the way to go. Who will help the hyperactive kids, the clever kids and rebellious kids, who can’t fit into the desk, blackboard, and book world? The Richard Branson’s and Johnny Sorabella’s of the future. They always had a place to go and vent, learn, feel good, and most of all to feel normal. Where will they go now?

When I asked the teachers what the school boards, Congressman, and Senators say when you tell them to provide a place for these kids to thrive as they have in Technology Education classes for over one hundred years or they might end up in the department of corrections. The teachers said they just simply don’t care. Well, my question is who will fix the car’s, build the trophy homes, install the in-ground pools, repair the roofs, install the irrigation systems for the beautiful lawns, and who will pave the roads for all those white collar doctors, lawyers, and engineers that the school boards care so much about and are determined to pump out of our high schools at a faster rate than ever seen before in the history of America?

I heard the Pentagon is privately worried they can’t find enough machinists for our military. Has our country gotten so incredibly big that it doesn’t know it’s own tail is on fire? This is a crisis! Let’s pull together and wake up this sleeping giant one school board at a time. America is our country, let’s fight for it and make some noise! God help us!

Joe

Blue Collar Jobs A Hot Ticket
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 28, 2004

The Port of Los Angeles expected a good response when it ran a lottery to hire 3,000 new dockworkers. As CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker reports, what it got was an avalanche: postcards from half a million job seekers.

“Blue-collar jobs as far as industry goes, these are top of the pay scale, with great benefits,” says Jim McKenna, Pacific Maritime Association CEO and President.

They’re the kind of jobs you just don’t find anymore, with hourly wages of $20 and more. Bruce Stack is one of the lucky 3,00o picked in this longshore longshot lottery.

Securing those giant containers is tough, even in training. But downsized out of his last job and with his wife battling cancer, Stack is happy to exchange hard luck for hard work.

“This is one of the last American dreams down here in the way of employment,” says Stack.

Surprisingly, there’s a hiring frenzy in the railroad industry as well. That workhorse of the last two centuries, is steaming into the 21st with 80,000 jobs to fill nationwide in the next five years, so many, it’s even advertising at the movies.

But that’s not the whole story. Jobs moving freight are booming in large part because of all the appliances, computers, toys, clothing and other goods being shipped in from China and other overseas producers – goods that no longer are made in America.

So what is the news in all this for the factory worker?

“It is a good news, bad news situation,” says Jack Kyser of the L.A. Economic Development Corporation.

For people in the Midwest working in manufacturing who may be seeing their jobs go offshore, it’s bad news.

“All these containers represent a lot of bad news for a lot of people in the American heartland,” says Kyser, who tracks business trends in the West.

For Stack, the containers are something else: a silver lining in the dark cloud still hanging over American workers.

Source: CBSNEWS.com