In
a few days, Penguin will release the 10th Anniversary edition of my
2004 book The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker.
I wrote a long new preface to update the book. Over the next two or three
blogs, I will reprint some essays and commentaries I’ve been writing to
coincide with the publication of this edition. A lot has happened since 2004
that is relevant to the book’s themes: from continued changes in work and the
way work is understood, to developments in Career and Technical Education, to
the emergence of the Makers Movement.
The
blog below was a contribution to a forum in the March/April, 2014 issue of the Boston
Review. The lead essay was titled “How Finance Gutted Manufacturing” by MIT
political scientist Suzanne Berger. The gist of Professor Berger’s argument is
that the growing dominance of the financial industry in our economy has
contributed to the decline of manufacturing. Stock market pressure to
streamline and turn fast profits has stifled innovation in the creation and
production of goods. You can read Berger’s essay here
as well as all the commentaries on it. My commentary concerns the effects of
the situation she describes on workers.
***
In her
thought-provoking essay, Professor Berger argues that our dominant financial
strategies and incentives hamper innovation. She also suggests that these
strategies are not good for workers either, and I would like to elaborate that
point.
Because
of the transformations Berger describes, there are fewer apprenticeships for
entry-level workers and fewer opportunities for in-house training. Some industries
do establish partnerships with local community colleges to train students for
specialty manufacturing or tech service jobs, though these arrangements are ad
hoc and often short-term. On the whole, the arrangements do not emerge from a
more comprehensive workforce development strategy.
But
even if a miracle happened and tomorrow a major shift occurred in the
relationship of finance and manufacturing, we’d still be faced with a limiting
web of cultural assumptions about certain types of work and the workers who do
them—assumptions that would put a drag on the desired revitalization of
manufacturing and innovation.
Our
egalitarian ethos not withstanding, there is a tendency in the United States to
attribute lower intelligence to those who work with their hands. There are
counter-examples, of course—culture is a complex business—but the tendency is
manifest in the dynamics of occupational status, in the history of vocational
education, and in the myriad injuries of social class, from negative editorial
characterizations of the intelligence of 19th century laborers to
the guy installing my washer who tells me that customers treat him and his
co-worker “like mules.” Similar attitudes exist about the work itself. In an
earlier MIT report on industrial productivity, a senior executive at a major
U.S. corporation wondered if “smart people” were needed in manufacturing.
This
tendency to denigrate entire categories of work and workers is amped up in our
high tech era. While there certainly are important distinctions to be made
between the work of today and that of a generation or two ago, the commonplace
“old economy–new economy” distinction leads to some terribly glib and
inaccurate binary characterizations. The work of our time demands new “21st
century skills” of problem-solving, trouble-shooting, and communication—as
though the work of previous eras didn’t—for new work is “neck-up” versus “neck
down” in nature. Consider this not atypical summary from an award-winning
management book, “Whereas organizations operating in the Industrial Age
required a contribution of employees’ hands alone, in the Information Age
intellect and passion—mind and heart—are also essential.” The significant
cognitive content of physical work—some of which I detail in The Mind at Work—gets erased in such
comparisons.
Another
element in this depiction of the American worker as inadequate is the
much-discussed “gap” or “mismatch” between the skills workers possess and the
skills needed by today’s industries. Granted that some job applicants have had
poor educations and some lack the technological savvy that would give them a
leg up, the ubiquity of the skills gap discourse further stigmatizes the
American worker—and, according to Wharton management scholar, Peter Cappelli,
masks a discomforting truth. It’s not that entering workers are necessarily
inadequate, it’s that the apprenticeships and in-house training that provided
the necessary skills for a previous generation have diminished. What in fact is
an erosion of opportunity is transformed into yet another deficiency of the
American worker.
Along
with contemporary changes in corporate structure has come a reinforcement—even
an intensification—of negative and reductive ways of characterizing American
workers. One result is an inaccurate assessment of the potential of those
directly involved in production. Another is disinvestment in the educational
programs and training that create a robust work force, from shop floor to
market. If we hope to realize the innovative potential of manufacturing, we
will have to address not only the structural dynamics that Professor Berger
describes, but cultural ones as well.
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