How to Save the Working Class
In the Age of Technology and Automation
“America first.” That’s the theme of the new administration — meant to communicate a promise of more jobs and prosperity for the working class American.
The plan seems to be to insource more manufacturing jobs, build oil pipelines with American workers and, in general, focus on the traditional blue collar work that has long-served as the backbone of the American economy.
The problem is that the American economy is evolving, and the backbone won’t look the same for long. Tech is quickly replacing human labor. How quickly is up for debate. We do know, though, that tech becomes smarter each year, and with increased capabilities, it offers more and more efficient, cost-saving solutions to industry problems. In order to compete, businesses across industries will have to adopt tech-heavy, human-lite methods.
Driverless trucking is happening. Goodbye millions of truck driving jobs. Automated warehouses are happening. Goodbye millions of manufacturing jobs. These things are happening. No amount of insourcing these traditional blue collar jobs can stop progress.
As a logistics tech writer, I am exposed to many upcoming innovations. I spend my day researching the automated restaurants and manufacturing robots, driverless trucks, and so on that are creeping into our daily lives. But at the end of the day, when I close my laptop and head home, I look at the mid-sized city I inhabit and realize how unprepared we, and smaller towns in general, are for the revolution that is already underway. I drive by the plastics factory, the Coca Cola bottling plant, the Little Debbie bakery, and I start to worry. I’ve seen the future. Will it be 10 years down the road? 20? I don’t know. But it’s happening, and my neighbors will feel it.
Now add to list of jobs in jeopardy: the cashiers at Walmart, Target, grocery stores, fast food stops, and the like, and you have a large community kept afloat by jobs that technology can (or will soon be able to) perform more efficiently and at a lower cost. That means humans don’t make business-sense in those positions for much longer.
Sure new jobs will be created, as with the last Industrial Revolution, but it seems to me that as technology gets more skilled, humans have to, as well.
That’s why the solution to the foreboding employment problem is an education transformation.
Vocational jobs have always played an important role in sustaining the middle-class. People without college degrees have been able to get certified in various jobs and build stable lives in the long-standing communities they live in (and want to continue to live in) for generations.
Many of the programs in place now, though, will not be able to generate those kinds of jobs for much longer. A machine can weld. A machine can drive a truck. Those programs are soon to be useless. This is why we have to update community colleges and programs to include tech-focused vocational options for those who are about to be displaced.
I’ve experienced the benefit of a similar-type program first-hand. Let me explain:
Not long ago, I was a stay-at-home mom, soon to be divorced, with no real work experience (you know… other than keeping babies alive and turning them into self-sufficient humans). I did have the advantage of having a college degree (In theatre… so… not great…), but I was not very employable. The only jobs I could get would not pay all the bills. The cost of childcare alone was an entire month’s paycheck for most jobs I was applying to. Despite working a full-time job, I would most likely have to be on food stamps and medicare just to make ends meet. And like I said: that’s with a four year degree.
That’s when The Iron Yard stepped in. This 3 month program teaches adults various programming languages (depending on which campus you attend) to prepare them for careers in tech. I entered The Iron Yard as basically tech-illiterate, and yet I was able to reach an impressive level of front end web development skill in a short period of time. Was I a master programmer? No. Did I have a lot yet to learn? Absolutely. But it gave me the start. I could leverage my new programming skills along with the customer service jobs, childcare jobs that I held before becoming a mom to get a job in the tech industry.
I am a sort of living proof that you don’t have to have an extensive background or even directly relevant tech experience to make the transition into a tech-driven industry. As long as education is available.
An important thing to note, though: As the system currently stands, my situation is not typical. I was able to attend The Iron Yard because I was able to borrow the 10 grand it cost to attend (Yeesh… 10 grand!) from my grandmother. I also had my parents who were able to help me with childcare and who also let me move in with them while I was on the job hunt. In other words, I had a safety net.
There are plenty of others out there, though, who work just as hard- or harder- than me but can’t get as far. A code school is not a possibility for many. Like I mentioned, they are often expensive (Although now many offer student loans, which were not available when I attended). Also, not everyone can just up and leave their current job for 3 months to do an intensive program like I could.
But The Iron Yards of the world do serve as an important benchmark in the progress towards a more modern education system.
The next step would be to incorporate these style programs into community colleges/vocational schools. They will need to offer flexible hours and teach technology skills that are relevant to the people in that area. Because not every stay-at-home parent or truck driver or what-have-you will be able to move to another state (like I ended up doing after finishing The Iron Yard) or start a hip thriving web dev agency. Each program needs to cater its tech offerings to the community.
Look at it this way: communities who grew up driving trucks or mining coal or manufacturing parts have a specialized understanding of these industries. They can provide a level of practical knowledge that others cannot. So whether they bring that knowledge into new tech roles, sales positions or into customer service jobs, they still have a place in these industries.
An important step in this transition from labor jobs to tech jobs is reframing our notion of what a developer is. There is this idea that a coder is this young dude who has grown up tinkering on the interweb. And sure, that’s a thing. But what if we start viewing certain types of coding as the new working class job? Sure you need the lifelong engineers who write that piece of groundbreaking complex code, but why can’t we have the men and women that once mined coal, mine code? In fact, that’s already a thing.
If we create a middle class of tech-savvy “laborers” who can debug and work on various features, then tech companies can insource their tech needs rather than turning to India or Russia. They can provide jobs for Americans who can be paid less than the developers living in the exorbitantly expensive San Francisco or New York, but who can still live a stable comfortable life. This should act as an incentive for the Amazons of the world to invest in apprentice-style programs in these smaller communities. They can hand off the less intensive work, still cut costs, and fit into the “America-first” framework.
These changes need to happen now, though. We cannot wait until the jobs are already gone because then you’ve already affected the livelihood of generations to come. Want proof? I live it.
See, what I didn’t mention above was that the whole reason I was able to borrow that 10k from my grandmother and get the help from my parents was that my grandparents lived that traditional blue collar life. They are the epitome of the classic American Dream story.
My Papa served in the military and then worked as a diesel truck mechanic. My Nana was a hairdresser. They didn’t have college degrees, but they were able to work hard, earn a fair wage, save money, buy a home, and eventually were able to buy some apartment complexes that they then could rent out for extra income. Their blue collar work provided them a great life, and by extension provided my father the opportunity to go to law school, and by extension provided me a great life where I could take a difficult situation, learn to code and create a great life for my daughters. That’s generations of stability created by blue collar work. We cannot afford to let these blue collar jobs disappear.
