Blue Collar and Proud of It: The All-In-One Resource for Finding Freedom, Financial Success, and Security Outside the Cubicle Read Online Free PDF Page A

are amazed by what we contribute to our communities, and we go home feeling that we’ve made a difference. This country was built by blue-collar workers, and it’s going to be rebuilt and built up by blue-collar workers. We’re not going away, and the work isn’t going away either. You can’t take your car to a call center in India to get it fixed, and you can’t ship your kitchen sink overseas when it’s leaking. Jobs in the building trades here can’t be outsourced anywhere. And while many factory jobs are certainly being lost in the economic downturn that’s taking place while this book is being written, a great many of the headline-making workforce cuts are taking place among white-collar workers.
    Not Your Father’s Assembly Line: Blue-Collar Goes High-Tech
    Thanks to overwhelming advances in technology, blue-collar work is changing rapidly. Computerized auto body shops, high-tech construction equipment, and advanced lawn irrigation systems are what blue-collar workers are now handling on the job. Much of the work is cutting-edge, and that’s why kids and twenty-somethings should feel excited and proud about choosing the blue-collar path.
    Mary Stanek Wehrheim is president of Stanek Tool Corporation near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She often hosts open houses at her company’s plant to show parents, teachers, and students what her tool-making operation is all about. The people who work for Stanek are well trained, highly skilled individuals using computers and advanced machinery. As she points out, no one wants to turn over multimillion-dollar equipment to people who earned all Ds in high school and have no training. “Many kids get into the trade after they’ve floundered for a while, ” says Stanek. The reason for the floundering is that blue-collar work was not presented initially as an acceptable choice. “After they’ve left school and gotten confused, parents can be more receptive, ” to a child’s decision to learn a trade, she says. Isn’t it a shame we couldn’t make these choices available sooner? We should be able to skip over the step that sets up so many people to fail.
    Opportunities are everywhere, but training and certification are a key component to success in these fields. As technology has taken off, and largely taken over, you need the skills and the know-how to run many of the machines, diagnostic equipment, and electronics that are involved. This is the new blue-collar world. In your grandparents’ generation and even your parents’ generation, people could often go straight from high school into many blue-collar jobs. While this move is still possible in some sectors, more likely you will need some type of postsecondary education— an apprenticeship, on-the-job training, or classes in a particular trade. You can’t just waltz out of high school and into most of these jobs. In later chapters, we go into much more detail about exactly what type of training you need to land a job in many of these blue-collar fields.
    Success in the Real World
    Veronica Rose, one of New York’s first female master electricians, now owns her own commercial and industrial electric company. She joined the electrical union back in the late 1970s, much to the surprise of her father, who said she’d nevermake it. “It’s easier to raise a building than it is a family, ” says this mother of five children. It turns out that three of her kids were college material and two were not.
    She sees her own work as something that can be admired. “The world is a better place because of what I’ve done, ” says Rose. “I’ve created something that has brought the United States, the town, the community to another level.” And she’s not shy when it comes to talking about the money you can make. “It’s a better income than some of the college grads will ever attain their lifetime.”
    Changing Times
    If you’ve been out of high school for a while or have been working for years in the white-collar world,