Posted on 05/16/2011 5:32:53 AM PDT by TSgt
Chairman Rockefeller, Ranking Member Hutchison and members of this committee, my name is Mike Rowe, and I want to thank you all very much for the opportunity to share a few thoughts about our country’s relationship with manufacturing, hard work, and skilled labor.
I’m here today because of my Grandfather.
His name was Carl Knobel, and he made his living in Baltimore as a Master Electrician. He was also a plumber, a mechanic, a mason, and a carpenter. Everyone knew him as a jack-of-all-trades. I knew him as a magician.
For most of his life, my grandfather woke up clean and came home dirty. In between, he accomplished things that were nothing short of miraculous. Some days he might re-shingle a roof. Or rebuild a motor. Or maybe run electricity out to our barn. He helped build the church I went to as a kid, and the farmhouse my brothers and I grew up in. He could fix or build anything, but to my knowledge he never once read the directions. He just knew how stuff worked.
I remember one Saturday morning when I was twelve. I flushed the toilet in the same way I always had. The toilet however, responded in a way that was completely out of character. There was a rumbling sound, followed by a distant gurgle. Then, everything that had gone down reappeared in a rather violent and spectacular fashion.
Naturally, my grandfather was called in to investigate, and within the hour I was invited to join he and my Dad in the front yard with picks and shovels.
By lunch, the lawn was littered with fragments of old pipe and mounds of dirt. There was welding and pipe-fitting, blisters and laughter, and maybe some questionable language. By sunset we were completely filthy. But a new pipe was installed, the dirt was back in the hole, and our toilet was back on its best behavior. It was one of my favorite days ever.
Thirty years later in San Francisco when my toilet blew up again. This time, I didn’t participate in the repair process. I just called my landlord, left a check on the kitchen counter, and went to work. When I got home, the mess was cleaned up and the problem was solved. As for the actual plumber who did the work, I never even met him.
It occurred to me that I had become disconnected from a lot of things that used to fascinate me. I no longer thought about where my food came from, or how my electricity worked, or who fixed my pipes, or who made my clothes. There was no reason to. I had become less interested in how things got made, and more interested in how things got bought.
At this point my grandfather was well into his eighties, and after a long visit with him one weekend, I decided to do a TV show in his honor. Today, Dirty Jobs is still on the air, and I am here before this committee, hoping to say something useful. So, here it is.
I believe we need a national PR Campaign for Skilled Labor. A big one. Something that addresses the widening Skills Gap head on, and reconnects the country with the most important part of our workforce.
Right now, American manufacturing is struggling to fill 200,000 vacant positions. There are 450,000 openings in trades, transportation and utilities. The Skills Gap is real, and it’s getting wider. In Alabama, a third of all skilled tradesmen are over 55. They’re retiring fast, and no one is there to replace them.
Alabama’s not alone. A few months ago in Atlanta I ran into Tom Vilsack, our Secretary of Agriculture. Tom told me about a governor who was unable to move forward on the construction of a power plant. The reason was telling. It wasn’t a lack of funds. It wasn’t a lack of support. It was a lack of qualified welders.
In general, we’re surprised that high unemployment can exist at the same time as a skilled labor shortage. We shouldn’t be. We’ve pretty much guaranteed it.
In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We’ve elevated the importance of “higher education” to such a lofty perch, that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled “alternative.” Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as “vocational consolation prizes,” best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of “shovel ready” jobs for a society that doesn’t encourage people to pick up a shovel.
In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a “good job” into something that no longer looks like work. A few years from now, an hour with a good plumber – if you can find one – is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist. At which point we’ll all be in need of both.
I came here today because guys like my grandfather are no less important to civilized life than they were 50 years ago. Maybe they’re in short supply because we don’t acknowledge them they way we used to. We leave our check on the kitchen counter, and hope the work gets done. That needs to change.
My written testimony includes the details of several initiatives designed to close The Skills Gap, all of which I’ve had the privilege to participate in. Go Build Alabama, I Make America, and my own modest efforts through Dirty Jobs and mikeroweWORKS. I’m especially proud to announce “Discover Your Skills,” a broad-based initiative from Discovery Communications that I believe can change perceptions in a meaningful way.
I encourage you to support these efforts, because closing The Skills Gap doesn’t just benefit future tradesmen and the companies desperate to hire them. It benefits people like me, and anyone else who shares my addiction to paved roads, reliable bridges, heating, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing.
The Skills Gap is a reflection of what we value. To close the gap, we need to change the way the country feels about work. Mike Rowe May 11, 2011
I'm a college graduate however many here will agree that the education bubble may be about to pop and that not everyone goes to college.
We must strengthen the skills trades and develop a new generation of entrepreneurs not union members.
There is nothing wrong with swinging a hammer for a living and I am often envious of those who do as I sit at my desk and breath stale air.
Video here: http://www.mikeroweworks.com/2011/05/mike-rowe-speaks-to-commerce-science-and-transportation-committee/
Yes, this is one incident where the celebrity knows whereof he speaks. He’s right. Not everyone is cut out for the college mold. We need skilled craftsmen for all kinds of things. A college degree is not necessary for a good life. Plus, if a person is not in college, they can’t be infused with liberal dogma....................
“We need to change the way the country feels about work”.
I don’t completely understand that statement. I was raised and continued to believe that all work is admirable. Doesn’t matter if you are an electrician, plumber, farmer, nurse, teacher, whatever. In fact, I have always wished that I knew basic carpentry skills like how to install a wood floor or how to fix simple plumbing. However, the government has no duty or responsibility to push one field of employment over another, especially with tax dollars. Usually a free market did that. If a plumber is good at his craft, he will make a good income. Same with a carpenter.
He’s absolutely right.
No skilled trades, no home repairs and no construction. Period.
I agree. This “everybody has a constitutional right to go to college” garbage is ridiculous. College should be the exception and not the norm. Strengthen the high school education so that everyone graduating from high school has the basic knowledge needed. Increase vocational training and apprenticeships, then make a college degree actually meaningful. The reason it won’t happen is that the NEA and most college campuses are actually about teacher job security and leftist indoctrination and not about education.
Wonderful, brilliant and to the point testimony.
I have seen a little of Rowe’s show, but don’t need to watch it all the time, as I am one who has been getting dirty for 35 years or more. Sensible social reformers have been echoing what Rowe is saying for decades now; including trying to debunk this absurd ‘mystique’ created around higher education and advanced degrees. Nuff said for now.
Where did the state universities go wrong?/S
What strikes me about Mike Rowe’s testimony is that it is nothing but common sense. Why anyone would need to go to D.C. to testify before those morons in the the government is beyond me. Our representatives are so stupid that they need someone to speak simple truths to them.
Bump
If the jobs are here, and have decent pay, people will develop the skills to do them. I withhold my engineering skills except for those who will pay for them. Companies have been known to take on apprentice help, looking forward, and that is done with no assistance from the government.
If there are better jobs elsewhere, the people will move there for work. I'd leave the US in a heartbeat.
If you think of colleges and universities as “management makers” and all we have are ‘managers’, who will do the actual ‘work’?..............too many chiefs and not enough Indians.............
In DC, commons sense is not so common................
If it's welders, they're going to move steam and process material. That means something is going to have to make heat. Either gas or coal.
Lack of welders? I work in Generation construction all over the US. There's no lack of welders, qualified or not. There is a lack of clarity and resolve in the federal government bureaucracies to allow baseline power plant construction to procede. In five years, planning has dropped from 500 plants of 100Mw or more to less than 100 plants with maybe a dozen baseline plants of 600Mw or more in process.
Vilsak is an idiot.
The success of his shows will probably make these kinds of jobs “cool” again - but I think there is one huge omission from his testimony: he didn’t tackle the fact that union demands have killed off many industries in this country that need dirty jobs.
Sure, Mike loves to do this stuff and is a great ambassador. That’s not what we see inside the union halls all too often.
A celebrity went before Congress to do an infomercial?
right on the money
Mike Rowe, one of my favorite Eagle Scouts!
Part of the problem is those who live in cities know absolutely nothing practical. Live in a rural area and men still know how to do a little of everything. I can not stand a man who can’t.
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