So I'm reading this story over on CNN about a new corporate structure called an L3C that basically allows charities and foundations to plow their tax free cash into dairy farms in New England because the dairy farmers serve a great social purpose and I am asking myself, what's so great about pulling on the mammary glands of a cow that makes it such a high social cause? How come tax free cash can't get dumped into injection molding? How come the cause of creating things out of resins and nylon – and creating jobs and making products people use for a whole lot of worthwhile purposes - isn't as important as making stuff out of the lactation of a cow?
A guy I met in Australia a few months back who has spent his lifetime in manufacturing, mostly in engineering products and devices that bring electric power to millions of people, told me that Down Under, when he and his wife attend social events as soon as people find out he works in manufacturing, they change the subject. They don't even ask whether he is the janitor or the CEO. Knowing that he works in manufacturing triggers either scorn or pity – but either way his career is not perceived to be something worth discussing any further. A career in mining, however, is right up there in Aussie culture. Now I have great respect for mining and miners, but how does digging big holes in the dirt rank as more glamorous than making the devices that bring energy to common people throughout the world?
We have government subsidies for just about every aspect of agriculture. Mexico was unprepared for the USA when they signed NAFTA almost twenty years ago. The average Mexican farmer stands no chance competing against an American farmer who can sell at whatever it takes to move his crops, and count on Uncle Sam to make up the difference. I am four square in favor of farmers, too, but how did our culture arrive at the point at which sticking seeds in the ground, chopping weeds and picking corn is honorable work, while factory work is something that needs no protection and is better off shipped out to the most desperate people on the planet?
Grind up the bean from a coffee tree and mix it with a little hot water, and you are granted the title of "barista". Master a CNC vertical machining center to make precise parts for the most advanced aerospace applications in the world and you are called a 'factory worker'. What's up with that? Even worse, more and more often you are called 'unemployed'.
We have TV shows idolizing the guys who pull crustaceans out of the Bering Sea, but the manufacturing shows are about machines – not the people who run them. Willie Nelson, Dave Matthews and John Mellencamp bring in millions of bucks for farmers with their annual Farm Aid – worthwhile I suppose – but I can't find Factory Aid anywhere on my cable lineup.
Somehow, manufacturing work has become accepted as not only unnecessary, but work not worthy of respect, and I can find no rhyme or reason for it. It is not as though we do not respect people who work with their hands and their backs – farmers, coffee grinders, miners, dairy work and crab fishermen are all seen as vital and even cool – and they are, but no more so than factory workers.
How did farmers manage to dodge the globalization/free trade/service economy philosophy that has devastated American manufacturing and become a protected industry – not just legally but socially? The family farm is hallowed ground, but the family machine shop gets tossed on the scrap heap of globalization without a second thought? By what curious logic did the average Australian come to the conclusion that digging a hole in the ground and pulling out chunks of ore is God's work, while turning the ore into the products Australians vitally need is best done in China? Who decided we need a Department of Agriculture – but no Department of Manufacturing?
Anybody out there got the answers? I sure don't.
david foster says
The former CEO of a large auto parts company (pretty sure it was Eaton)conducted an experiment at cocktail parties. Sometimes, he introduced himself as “I run a company that makes car parts.” And sometimes, he introduced himself by saying where he had gone to college, many years ago. He said people tended to be much more interested in talking with him when he used introduction #2.
Now, maybe he just went to weird cocktail parties. Or maybe people were intimidated to talk about a field of which they had no knowledge. Or maybe this is another example of the phenomenon that you mentioned re the Australian guy.
Jim Fernandez says
Great point.
Wow, what a great idea, the “US Department of Manufacturing”.
I’d like to pile on here. If you said you were a doctor I’m sure everyone everywhere would respect you. How well could doctors do their job without things manufactured out of plastic?
mike says
Great point how well could doctors do their job without food?
Andy Wagner says
Department of Manufacturing eh?
Wishes come true, not free.
Phil Christopher says
“Department of Manufacturing” scares me…Can you imagine the regulation that would come from thousands of Federal workers sitting around thinking of ways to tell manufacturers what to do and how to do it, or be fined out of existence? (I know you were being rhetorical, but I had to say it.)
Maybe we can make manufacturing cool with a business oriented reality show on one of the business channels. Maybe a lean manufacturing guru rolls out lean to a manufacturer and (most) everything is on video, edited with comments from the guru, management struggles, etc. I would watch (and learn.)
david foster says
Just to add a little more gloom: someone was telling me about a dating site he frequents which had a survey of women: What are the main attributes in a man which you would condsider absolute dealbreakers?
#1 was “bald”
#2 was “works in manufacturing”
(Good luck with that guy with the degree in Political Science and the career as a barista at Starbucks…)
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David – That clears up things for me considerably since I am 0 for 2 on that count. My life is beginning to make sense now,
Bill
Bryan says
We are all greedy capitalists pigs, didn’t you know that Bill? How can you root for us? The small farmer up here in Vermont who charges $8 for a half gallon of organic raw milk is the underdog, don’t you know. Who doesn’t like an underdog? And if your underdog is losing, then you subsidize him and ensure you get the votes of the underdogs and their guilt-ridden advocates. I thought you had this all figured out Bill?
Yes, I said $8 for a half gallon of raw, unpasteurized, unprocessed milk that you have to go pick up yourself at the farm, which ironically, increases the carbon footprint of that half gallon of milk versus per gallon carbon footprint realized through supermarket distribution.
Joe H says
I think it has a lot to do with the public view of labor and the fights with unions. Manufacturing represents, at one time, lazy union workers who are trying to get a lot of money for little work, AND, bastard managers trying to strip every worker of a fair and honest wage.
Labor disputes damage public image. Manufacturing labor disputes are put in terms that appear to simplify down to “both sides are bastards” similar to when a sports league has a dispute.
You also mention that TV shows on manufacturing focus on the machine, not the person. This is also part of it, going all the way back to Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times – manufacturing is seen as an impersonal activity; and who wants to have a conversation with an impersonal person?
I would also say that a lot of people feel cut off from a vague idea of a more “natural” life, or a life with more purpose and meaning. Manufacturing is seen to be a main reason, due, in part, to early images of manufacturing in the U.S. When criticism is levied at organic farming, etc., this reinforces the idea – the only way to calculate the value of a gallon of milk is NOT only its price and availability (sounds too much like labor! Too much like me!) but the whole context of what is involved in procuring the milk; maybe it’s as much about a drive in the country as it is about the milk? I go to a pumpkin patch to get my pumpkins, even though they cost more and I could easily pick one up on the way out of the grocery store – damn, they are piled head high and cheap!
Lastly, I would say there is an idea, going back to the Greeks, of a hierarchy of value: Artist, Craftsman, Copyist. Manufacture is seen as the lower level – it is just mass replication. (Note that farmers GROW! They bring forth LIFE.). If we could get back to understanding humans as creatures that make things as essential to our nature, and value that, the manufacturer (as well as the craftsman and artist) would be more appreciated instead of the people who make nothing but give orders.
Dean says
Great article. I’m not sure what the answers are, but maybe when “Dirty Jobs” runs its course Mike Rowe can do a new show that celebrates manufacturing.
Emmer says
People who do not work in manufacturing do not know anything about it and rely on the old stereotypes for their viewpoint. The image of factory workers lined up in long rows “spending 30 years tightening the same nut” is still a common misperception. Farming, on the other hand, is misperceived in a much more positive manner. It’s all nature and sunshine and “salt of the earth” family farms. The reality of modern day industrial agriculture is much different and even the family-run boutique farms are full of back-breaking work, long hours, and disasters. If you want people to think more positively about manufacturing, show it in a positive way. Maybe that’s something our lobbyists (NAM and John Engler) should be doing?
Adam says
Bill you really make a good point about why we don’t have an industrial policy, but have an agricultural policy. It is any surprise that our competitors who our outperforming us in manufacturing the Germans, Japanese, and Koreans all have industrial policies. This doesn’t mean that we need a government takeover of our manufacturing economy, but a better governmental framework for our manufacturing sector could definitely be useful especially since our competitors have them.