Published Wednesday, May 5, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News



Skilled workers getting no respect
BY DAVID KUSNET


IN the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, because of a shortage of skilled
construction workers, families are waiting several months to move into their
new homes.


In Massachusetts, the state government is offering a $20,000 signing bonus
for new teachers.


In Detroit, auto companies are worrying about what will happen when the
current corps of tool-and-die makers, most of them pushing 50, retire in a
few years.


In California, even after convincing Congress to let them import more
foreign computer professionals, high-tech companies say they still can't
find enough skilled employees.


These seemingly unrelated items tell the story of a still largely unexamined
problem: In important occupations, from skilled blue-collar jobs to poorly
paid professional positions, employers seem unable to recruit and retain
good workers.


To the extent that policy makers have addressed this problem, they've
offered two comforting but inadequate explanations. First, they say, a labor
shortage is a good problem to have, a sign the economy is growing so quickly
that it's swallowing up the supply of willing workers. Second, they add, if
there's any problem, it's a ``skills shortage'' -- too few well-trained
people to fill too many demanding jobs.


But what if other explanations are at work? What if our economy is
unprepared to offer rewarding, stable careers to skilled workers without
prestigious credentials? What if our culture refuses to respect the value of
workers in unglamorous jobs -- from computer ``geeks'' to construction
``hard-hats'' -- encouraging ambitious people to overlook these occupations
and pinch-penny employers to undervalue them?


A closer look at conditions in four of these jobs -- construction, skilled
factory work, classroom teaching and information technology -- suggests that
Americans downgrade the very jobs where skilled workers are in short supply.


In construction, for example, recent surveys by business groups, from the
National Association of Home Builders to the Business Roundtable, find
developers fretting about the lack of such skilled craft workers as
carpenters, electricians, pipe-fitters and welders.


But it wasn't long ago that some of the same business groups, together with
the Associated Builders and Contractors, were working overtime to drive down
wages and drive out unions.


In large measure, they succeeded. In spite of a recent uptick, construction
workers' wages, adjusted for inflation, are well below their high point in
the late 1960s and early '70s. Union membership has declined as well, from
40 percent of the work force during the 1970s to scarcely 20 percent today.
But lower wages mean fewer young workers are attracted to construction. The
drop in union membership means a decline in workers' skills, since fewer
recent hires have participated in apprenticeship programs jointly operated
by unions and contractors.


To be sure, the culture takes its toll, too. Young people who don't go to
college are seen as ``failures,'' and fewer native-born Americans want to
work with their hands outdoors -- at any wage.


Something similar is happening with skilled factory work. In the auto
industry, skilled workers are mostly about 50 years old. They're nearing
retirement in an industry in which workers qualify for pensions after 30
years on the job. Few young people are taking their place.


As for skilled machinists, their average age is also about 50, and many are
approaching retirement as well. Only about 15,000 young people become
machinists each year, leaving 30,000 jobs unfilled.


Just as the construction industry is paying the price for breaking its
unions, such industries as auto and aerospace are footing the bill for
downsizing their work forces. With the factory closings and massive layoffs
of the early 1980s, many workers in skilled trades lost their jobs, and many
companies disbanded apprenticeship programs. This broke the long-standing
link between generations of skilled factory workers.


With teachers, too, America gets what it pays for. As today's teachers
retire, the public schools will need to hire 2 million new teachers over the
next decade. Already, school systems say they can't find enough good ones.
About 6.5 percent of the new teachers hired each year come with emergency
credentials. In Massachusetts, nearly 60 percent of current teachers failed
a competency test, thus the state's $20,000 bounty for capable new teachers.


In the past, school systems could find able teachers because well-educated
women couldn't find better jobs. Now, with discrimination declining, teacher
salaries are still lagging: about $25,000 for newcomers in most states.
That's far lower than most other professions.


BUT what, then, of the new economy's supposed stars: information-technology
workers? To hear the high-tech industry tell it, there are about 350,000 job
openings for skilled workers, particularly computer programmers and
engineers and systems analysts. That was why, last year, Congress passed,
and the Clinton administration approved, legislation increasing special
visas for foreign information-technology workers.


But, on closer examination, it seems the industry wants cheap and disposable
workers at least as much as skilled ones. Perhaps because employers have
been able to hire so many well-trained, low-paid and hard-working
immigrants, pay scales have generally risen at no higher rate than in the
work force at large. With long hours and high stress, computer programming,
in particular, is a young person's job. Few leading companies offer training
for veteran programmers to help them upgrade and update their skills.


All this suggests that, whether the nation is looking for better teachers or
tool-and-die makers, plumbers or programmers, we'd better ask ourselves how
these occupations must appear to young people choosing their life's work.
Can we claim that, if they prepare for these careers, they can look forward
to secure jobs with rising wages and at least a little respect from their
family, friends and neighbors? Or is our economy too enthralled with
flexibility and our popular culture too enamored with glamour for even a
booming America to promise the skilled workers it needs the rewards they
deserve?





----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
David Kusnet, a visiting fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, was chief
speech writer for President Clinton from 1992-1994. He wrote this for the
Los Angeles Times.