Jobs? You don't need a high-tech degree, you need a hair net!

[Guest guest]

The number one job-creator for America's future?

Restaurant workers, including fast food. You don't

need a high-tech degree, you need a hair net!

 

 

 

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19264/

 

Sales Clerk, Ph.D

By Jim Hightower, AlterNet

Posted on July 22, 2004, Printed on July 23, 2004

http://www.alternet.org/story/19264/

 

This passage is an excerpt from Jim Hightower's new

book, " Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush. "

 

In his January state-of-the-union peroration, George

" Pinocchio " Bush's biggest lie was not about weapons

of mass destruction.

 

Attempting to diffuse the growing anxiety and anger

about the loss of middle class jobs, he made the

bald-faced assertion that the solution is simple: More

job training. Millions of unemployed and underemployed

Americans must have stared in slack-jawed disbelief as

this son of privilege mouthed the corporate line that

everything is OK with our economy, if only America's

worthless workers would get more training and improve

their skills.

 

Training for what? Here came George's whopper: " Much

of our job growth will be found in high-skilled

fields. " That's a lie and Bush knows it. Well, OK,

he's clueless about real life, so he probably doesn't

know it, but his speech writers do.

 

Bush's own labor department reports that of the 30

occupations that will account for the highest job

growth between now and 2010, two-thirds require

minimal skills. High-tech companies will create only

284,000 more jobs for computer software engineers in

that period - while 10 times more jobs than that will

be created in just these seven very low-tech fields:

Freight movers, home health aides, janitors,

waitresses, security guards, office clerks, and

cashiers.

 

The number one job-creator for America's future?

Restaurant workers, including fast food. This category

alone will create 10 times more jobs than will

software engineering. You don't need a high-tech

degree, you need a hair net! And all of these jobs pay

pitiful wages – of the top 30 " growth jobs, " nearly

half pay only $14,000 - $20,000 a year.

 

By the way, despite his call for more training in each

of his four years, Bush has cut the budgets of our

federal job-training programs. And forget about

getting one of those 284,000 software engineering jobs

– companies are now shipping them off to India,

Russia, and other low-wage countries.

 

Training doesn't create jobs, and low-wage jobs don't

create a middle class. America needs a living wage,

labor law reform, an end to subsidies for corporations

that ship our good jobs out... and a president who has

a clue.

 

Here's America's high-tech future!

 

Jobs with the largest growth between now and 2010:

 

Listed by title, annual salary, and necessary

eduaction level

 

1. Food preparer, $16,000 – On-the-job training

2. Customer service rep., $26,000 – On-the-job

training

3. Registered nurse, $48,000 – Two-year degree

4. Retail sales clerk, $18.000 – On-the-job training

5. Computer support specialist, $39,000 – Two-year

degree

6. Cashier, $15,000 – On-the-job training

7. Office clerk, $22,000 – On-the-job training

8. Security guard, $19,000 – On-the-job training

9. Computer technician, $55,000 – Bachelor's degree

10. Waiter/Waitress, $14,000 – On-the-job training

11. General manager, $68,000 – Bachelor's degree

12. Truck driver, $33,000 – On-the-job training

13. Nursing aide, $19,000 – On-the-job training

14. Janitor, $18,000 – On-the-job training

15. College teachers, $52,000 – Doctoral Degree

16. Teacher assistant, $19,000 – On-the-job training

17. Home health aide, $18,000 – On-the-job training

18. Freight haulers, $19,000 On-the-job training

19. Computer engineer, $70,000 – Bachelor's degree

20. Landscaping worker, $20,000 – On-the-job training

 

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

 

Remember how we were told that globalization would be

such a boon for American workers? Blue-collar was

going to become white-collar, low-wage would move up

to high-tech, and everyone would sing

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah all the day long!

 

They were feeding us globaloney. Dell, Microsoft, IBM,

Google, Oracle, Intel, CSC and the other greedheaded

giants of high-tech are swiftly moving these very jobs

out of our country to China, India, Pakistan, Russia,

and elsewhere, making a killing by paying a fourth as

much to a foreign employee as they pay here, then

pocketing the difference.

 

This is leading to a tense workplace. Internal IBM

memos show that while U.S. companies are ecstatic

about the bucks they gain by abandoning the homeland,

they're very skittish about the anger this engenders.

One of the memos tells top managers to be evasive when

talking about the company's long-range employment

plans, advising them that " Terms 'on-shore' and

'off-shore' should never be used, " and that anything

written to employees must first be " sanitized " by the

corporate communications department.

 

IBM says it'll " save " $168 million this year by

replacing 3000 of its " knowledge workers " with cheaper

versions abroad. These are the jobs that were supposed

to represent the future of upward mobility in America,

but instead, the " global sourcing " of such work (as

IBM's fun-loving corporate jargon-meisters call it) is

leading to a distressing wave of downward mobility in

our country.

 

IBM now provides a " suggested script " for managers

faced with telling employees that their jobs are going

bye-bye. For example, to soften the blow, managers are

instructed to say: " This action is a statement about

the rate and pace of change in this demanding

industry... It is in no way a comment on the excellent

work you have done over the years. " That's a bit like

slathering some Oil of Olay on the stiletto you're

thrusting into someone's back.

 

The official corporate line, repeated religiously by

politicians and pundits, is that high-tech is such a

zoom-zoom industry that a discarded worker can easily

and quickly find another job. They might check with

Mary Lowrance about that. She was a high-tech worker

for AMD Corporation, where she'd won awards for

setting production records and helping devise ways for

the company to save money. AMD repaid her by sending

her job offshore. A year and a half later, she's still

out of work, even after applying to more than 500

other firms. " My job has gone away, " she says...

" there are just no jobs to be had. "

 

To add insult to injury, many American high-tech

workers are forced to train their foreign

replacements! Refuse, and they lose any severance pay.

 

Even some Republican leaders, such as Rep. Don

Manzullo, are gagging on this globaloney: " The

assumption was that while lower-skilled jobs would be

done elsewhere, it would allow Americans to focus on

higher-skilled, higher-paying opportunities. But what

do you tell the PhD, or professional engineer, or

architect, or accountant, or computer scientist to do

next. Where do you tell them to go? "

 

If you're a high-tech CEO, you tell 'em to go to hell.

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights

reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/19264/