The economic crisis is hitting hardest at working class jobs, and rates of male unemployment have skyrocketed. A commonly asked question is, how do we retrain them for emerging job opportunities in other sectors? The Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente suggests the problem runs a whole lot deeper than we think.
The new economy (over the long term) is creating tons of service jobs in retail, customer support, and personal care. The trouble is that these jobs require temperamental attributes that are stereotypically feminine – things like patience, a pleasant demeanour, deference to the customer and the ability to empathize and connect. Another way to put it is that these jobs require emotional labour, not manual labour. And women, even unskilled women, are much better at emotional labour than men are …
This identification of masculinity with hard physical work (no empathy required) is deeply embedded in the history of the human race … But no matter how much education and retraining we offer, we are not going to transform factory workers and high-school dropouts into customer-care representatives or nurses’ aides any time soon. It’s their wives and daughters who will get those jobs …
In the new world of work, the old values of working-class men are an anachronism. And what we are really asking of them is not to retrain or upgrade. We are asking them to abandon their very idea of masculinity itself.
She’s right. I grew up in that culture. My father worked his entire life in a factory. I spent my high-school summers doing factory work. Sexism and racism ran rampant. Fights were almost everyday occurrences; working class disagreements almost always end in them. When a Garden State scholarship enabled me to attend Rutgers, I was floored by the relative safety, meritocratic orientation, and personal freedom afforded by middle-class culture. Sure, modern middle-class culture has plenty of faults. And certainly not all working-class men share these retrograde attitudes. Many workers in more modern, high-performance factories (a good deal of whom are women) would fit nicely into service or professional work. Still, that old blue-collar male culture remains too much a fixture in too many places.
The demise of high-paying blue-collar jobs and the economic devestation it means for families and and communities is tragic. But the demise of that old-school working-class male mind-set is not something to be sad about.
May 25th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
The creative class brings to the table:
1) emphasis on creativity
2) emphasis on education
3) with college a defining moment in their lives, they have replicated “college town life” in many of our large cities, including bicycling, bookstores, and cafes. The switch from the car-centered life to the book/computer-centered life has made possible a sustainable future.
4) the technocratic ideal has been beneficial to women and immigrants in particular.
What they miss:
1) craft is as important as education in judging merit.
2) certain jobs lacking both craft skill and educational background are of enormous value, e.g. sanitation workers
3) certain jobs require enormous technical skill and are highly well-paid, yet yield societal havoc, e.g. Wall Street financial wizards.
4) giving the “outsider” a chance is great – except when you are the insider. How many liberal professors would give up their tenure?
5) solidarity is the quintessential value of the labor movement. Those in white collar jobs sorely miss those values in the face of the infinitely elastic divide and conquer power of management. It is equally important to a good society as is creativity.
The creative class will learn to live in creative tension with the cooperative values of the working class.
May 26th, 2009 at 8:54 am
There are tons of unfilled skilled jobs out there for blue collar men. Just try to find a good brick layer, carpenter, cabinet maker, etc. These jobs combine creativity and typical blue collar male skills. Unfortunately we’ve stopped teaching these skills in the USA.
May 26th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Peter — Brick laying, carpentry, etc. are skilled positions, that few want to do (rather than unskilled). Moreover, in the housing downturn, there are limited opportunities.
What about all the jobs many immigrants eagerly take: as anon says, sanitation, is quite important.
May 26th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Yes, in Chicago, there is a career path for a female high-school drop-out up the many steps of the “nursing” ladder. But there does not seem to be an equivalent career path for a drop-out male.
February 16th, 2011 at 4:23 pm
Wendy I agree with you when it comes to all the jobs that the immigrants take when we are struggling to make a living due to cheap labor
February 24th, 2011 at 10:54 am
I agree with M, it seems that female drop outs do have better opportunities than males.