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Mike Rowe speaks about our job situation
I don't usually post stuff I've found online or been sent, but this is AWESOME. I posted it elsewhere and I kind moderator suggested it would be better suited for here.
Mike Rowe: America Has a Dysfunctional Relationship with Work - YouTube Please discuss and give me your feedback and opinion.
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617 swapped Toyota Pickup, 22-24 MPG, 50k miles on swap |
#2
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Fifty years ago you could hire on at a place and they would put you with an older worker that would train you to not only do the work but how to do it to their standards. It was about three years before you started making any money for the employer, but that was the only way to find someone who could do the job.
Now if you don't have the skills right off the bat you don't even need to apply. No one seems to want to invest in talent like they once did. If you are not making money for a company from day one you are just a liability. Talent of any kind, no matter what the job, must be developed. Dirty job or not if the money is there people will line up to do it. Add to that the fact that skilled jobs are a moving target. Right now the demand for welders is high. By the time someone finishes welding school the demand may be low. Now they are a welder and experienced welders are being laid off. The fear of the unknown is something that must be overcome if people are going to start developing new skills. It is a complex problem, but until employers decide to start developing their work forces as they once did I don't see it changing. Even then a company can go out of business and leave everyone stranded, but the workers will have gained both skill and experience and will find it easier to start over. |
#3
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People view trades as kind of a default situation. I have heard more and more people stating their child may land up with only a trade.
The old days are gone. A lot of trades take a sizeable knowledge base today in comparison to years ago. So most their children would probably wash out of many of todays trades just as easily as higher education. At seventy one I am still offered jobs. I understand why. Usually by contracters that are buried in work that they cannot find the right people for. Since I have had my time I thank them and turn them down. The high monetary offers also indicate their desperation. If you do quality work you should always be busy if you want to be. |
#4
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Simple straight forward message - applicable for all first world countries and many first world aspiring countries.
The sooner we all realise that talking about the job does not equal doing it the better.
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1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver 1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone 1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy! 1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits! |
#5
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In the old days, you'd get a job and stick to it till retirement. I work in X, my sons and daughters stay in X and we are living there too. Today, I work in X, I get offered a job in Y, we move. We are a mobile society. I lived in Madison from 91 to 2010. Better prospects and we moved to a town a hour away to lessen the drive. Tomorrow, if a super offer comes up in Atlanta, we'd be there too. Until you can find a system that keeps us in the town, we are going to move. Take a Wal*Mart employee. Why would I, as management, want to invest in him? Tomorrow, when he gets an offer of $0.10 more, he'd either have me pony up or quit. IF you can guarantee me he'd stay, we could talk about employee retention and promotion. Till then, he is cannon fodder. A relationship is a 2 way street. I will not foolishly pursue a woman in spite of her lack of interest in the relationship. So what commitment would the employee make? That he'd stick with me thru thick and thin? I have seen employees take training (time and money) from an employer only to ditch them soon after for a better offer. If you are going to be that way, why would you expect me to want to train you ON MY DIME? You go get trained and be profitable from day 1. Why? Because I don't believe you will hang around and turn down a better offer. OTOH, as the employee, why would I care about you? He gives me a better offer and I'll take it. Tomorrow, you could cut me. Bottom line, it works both ways.
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01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke 99 E300 Turbodiesel 91 Vette with 383 motor 05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI 06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI 03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red 03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow 04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler 11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow |
#6
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And the basic flaw in your argument is: You put something in and expect to get something back for nothing. If you make an investment in talent you need to have some way to exploit that talent. Otherwise why make the investment?
Companies invest money and the employee invests time and energy. It is a workable deal for everyone and the employee is eager to uphold their end of the bargain. The bargain falls apart when the management weasels out of their end of the deal. Companies have to invest in talent the same way they invest in equipment and that is long term. If you are planning on paying below market wages once you have trained someone then you deserve to have them walk since you clearly don't understand how this system works. I have seen companies pull a routine on employees that if they leave after a specific amount of time they owe the company for their training. This is a stupid way to deal with it. I ran into one of these for a person I needed so I asked how much they needed to pay off their contract and just wrote them a check. If the company that trained them had offered them an equal amount to what I offered they would have never jumped ship. But the original company could not see the value in this, so it was their loss. At one time there were clear career tracks that companies set-up. If after five years an employee was not advancing they would likely be let go, but the overall focus was on the long term. Today that seems to no longer be the case. Good people will always advance. It is managements job to see that they are advanced in the company they are employed with because if I can't take advantage of a talent there is always someone else out there that thinks they can. |
#7
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Slightly dated but, I believe, entirely applicable real world example....
Way back in the early days of NAFTA, I managed three manufacturing plants in Tijuana. Labor/wage/tax laws in Mexico, at that time, made it financially impossible to pay anybody below supervisor level one peso above minimum wage.... so becoming/staying the employer that workers chose to come to/stay with wasn't going to be driven via the pay envelope. Net result? Turnover rates ran 25%. PER MONTH. By the end of my first year, I had turnover rates down to 5% per year. How? By figuring out what my workers needed/wanted. We improved meal services. We figured out the Christmas party prizes that mattered to each group of workers (coats and blankets in one factory staffed by new immigrants to the area, school supplies in the factory in the more stable neighborhood, etc). We improved bathroom facilities and added shower/locker facilities. These were the 'low hanging fruit' wins. Quick, low cost, and immediate value to the employee. We brought training courses to the factories... creating a path upward in the food chain. Janitors became assemblers, assemblers became machine operators, machine operators became quality engineers, etc. We brought educational courses to the factories - started with basic 3 R's stuff, evolved into statistical process control and engineering courses. In short - we created an environment where the workers knew that they could do more than just collect their pay each week if they stuck around and put in a bit of extra effort. Have to say - that three year stint was without question the most emotionally challenging work I've ever done - but was without question also the most rewarding. I use lessons I took from that work to this day in trying to find the best way to make my people effective, satisfied, and successful in what I need them to do for me.
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1961 220b: first project car - sold. 2000 CLK 430: first modern Benz - sold. 2001 CLK 55: OMG the torque!!! - sold 1972 280SE 4.5: Baby Gustav 1991 300TE 4Matic: Gretel the Snow Bunny - sold 1978 300SD: Katz the Free Man - given away 1980 Redhead: Darling Wife |
#8
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An old HR saying is that people hire on for the wages and quit because of the management. I agree with this 100%. I knew a guy that worked himself to death at a slave wage drudge job for seven years while he attended school. After he found a real job he said the worst thing the management could have ever done to him was treat him like a human being because if he were happy in his job he would have never gone to school. He would have stayed where he was happy for the rest of his life. |
#9
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As I said, it is a 2 way street. Neither side is going to assure the other of anything else. I have seen employees jump ship for a little more and employers that toss employees when things go wrong. You don't retire with a gold watch anymore. Unlike the piece of equipment you like to make an example of, the basic flaw is the equipment is mine. It is an investment that will pay back. The employee? Hard to say hence the contract. The mentality of the employee is different from the old timers that started with a company and probably finish with the company unless something adverse happens. You seem to lay all the blame on the employer. Do you think the employee is a saint? Both are to blame for the current situation.
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01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke 99 E300 Turbodiesel 91 Vette with 383 motor 05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI 06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI 03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red 03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow 04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler 11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow |
#10
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Quote:
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01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke 99 E300 Turbodiesel 91 Vette with 383 motor 05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI 06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI 03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red 03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow 04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler 11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow |
#11
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I see this in my industry all the time and its a pressing problem. For years no one got into the trades, as a result all the guys that are in the trades are older right now. I'm usually the youngest guy on my jobsites and everyone else is pretty much in their 50's.
In my dads department at the Water Company the average age is 55 and going north quickly. Equipment operators, guys that can run equipment are all in their 50's. Very few younger guys are capable of laying out a road and a sewer line. I can't think of one off the top of my head. The problem is everyone went to college, and for a lot of people that was a poor decision. They graduated with a lot of debt and no real job prospects. So now they are stuck waiting tables or in menial $25k-$40k a year office jobs. Also no one wants to do hard work anymore, its not celebrated. Everyone wants to sit at a desk in an air conditioned office and type away on a computer all day. When the guy who does my site work retires I'm screwed, I have no idea who I'm going to hire, their is just no one left around. The same with my concrete guys, when they retire I have no idea who will be able to pour my foundations. Their are just no young people getting into it. Back in the day kids used to apprentice in the trades in HS, and would start working in them right out of HS. That doesn't happen anymore, so the new people don't get the years of on the job training and experience from the old hands that they need. A lot of these jobs are pretty complicated and you can't learn them in a text book. That's another thing that drives me nuts, the trades are viewed as a lesser path than going to college. That's BS a lot of those jobs are harder and pay better than the white collar ones. You can't be a dope and run heavy equipment, lay out roads, pour foundations do HVAC, electrical, and plumbing work, etc.
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1999 SL500 1969 280SE 2023 Ram 1500 2007 Tiara 3200 |
#12
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Agreed. It grinds me when the "entertainment industry" portrays a tradesman such as a plumber as a butt crack showing dimwit. In my experience most tradesmen are very bright. they are well paid too.
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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC] ..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis. |
#13
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Investment in people, if done correctly, is a life long thing. I have even known people who left and went out on their own and I now buy services from them. I do this because they deliver the best for the buck and they do this because I taught them how to deliver to customers. I think I just have a different view than most management people on this. Finding talent is the hardest job I have and next comes developing it. But if I do it right I have time to kick back and focus on the big picture and a part of that big picture is keeping talent happy. All I know is: It works for me. Taking care of developed talent is the most important job I have because if I don't someone else will. Samuel Goldwyn took such good care of his employees that when Joe McCarthy's men came to his lot to arrest some of his talent he threw McCarthy's Goons off his lot with his own hands. That type of employee care is hard to find, but that's what it takes to keep your investment in talent from ankleing. If you need employees stop crying and start hiring. Their leaving depends entirely on you and your management skill. |
#14
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Very few stay for 5 years, regardless. I just can't compete in pay with the oil industry which has a constant need for people in geospatial analysis. They pay extremely well, I don't. |
#15
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I have seen more than my fair share of newly hired that need to be taught simple math and how to tell time, as far as what is starting time, and have no problem reading the clock to figure out quitting time. This is not a complex problem if someone hired makes the firm money or shows the ability, and desire they will have a job and be promoted if up to the task to make the firm more money. |
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