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Blue collar, white collar.. my observations in the US and what about other cultures?

laminar-flow

Stainless
Joined
Jan 26, 2003
Location
Pacific Northwest
So when we decided to get married almost 40 years ago, her CPA pop asked me how I was going to support her daughter since I was nothing but an aircraft mechanic with no college... He died in debt, and I'm doing just fine.

Having worked in aircraft instruments, as an A&P, and then starting my own small business as a design engineer / prototype machinist, I guess I have worn both collars.

In engineering meetings I have seen managers and engineers treat machinists as dumb metal cutters. Many times I had to inform them that machinist are not as dumb as they may think and encouraged engineers to consult with machinist when designing things. I do.

I suppose the wisdom is that if you work with your hands you are blue and if you work with your head you are white? Or if you get dirty you are blue and not dirty white? ...whether one washes hands before or after the restroom? I knew an oral surgeon once. I guess he was white collar but he worked in peoples mouths all day. I would prefer an old road diesel truck to someone's mouth.

I sure wish management and engineers would respect machinist more.

A friend, who is an 737 captain was once telling me that I was blue collar. So I presented some examples and he said, chef = blue, accountant = white, machinist = blue, scientist = white, department manager = white, bus driver and he said blue. Then I let him have it. I asked... Airline Pilot...?

So my question is, in other countries do machinist and mechanics have a similar lack of respect that I have noticed in the US?
 
One of the best mountain rescue helicopter pilots I know does pre flight briefings referring to himself as the 'bus driver'. I respect anyone who does a difficult job well and would suggest to differentiate white and blue collar is just silly. How bout competent or not?

Lucky7
 
The older the culture the worse this problem is.
It is here in North America but not as bad as Europe. When I was teaching high school in the 1970's I was visited by a retired teacher from Quebec. He taught shop like me but in Quebec in an English language school. He told me that the French language schools had no shop programs because the French Canadian parents thought manual arts were beneath them and did not want their children in those streams. The French culture back east is much older than English culture out here in western Canada.
I remember working with a 21 year old welder fresh out of school. He and his mates shared the rent on a house. They all worked at places like Wal-Mart and Costco making minimum wage while my welder made 20/hr. When they went to the bar the girls would get friendly and Ray told me he never felt so secure when the subject of work came up. The girls would gravitate to his buddies when they said they were "produce associate" or similar title. As soon as he would quietly mention that he was a welder they would start to ignore him. The gold diggers had reveal themselves. LOL
The idea of class and blue collar white collar is unfortunate but people are always trying to keep up or beat their buddies with a nicer car of flashy clothes.
 
The place I served my time at was a huge multi national outfit. The site I worked at employed 3,000 people.
Just a few examples of what was wrong -
There were several car parks at the site. The lower you were ranked in the pecking order the further away you parked your car. The office staff were right outside the main building, we were 10 minutes walk away from the shop. The directors drove up to the main building and just abandoned their car, some lackey came out and parked it for them.

The toilets ( restrooms in the US I suppose) were marked " Men " and " Women " in the shop. In the offices it was " Ladies " and " Gentlemen ".

Funniest of all were the canteens. There were about 5, all varying in rank. In ours, the lowest, you had bare tables and you had to bring you own knife and fork. You also had to queue ( stand in line ) to get served. My first wife worked in the office. They had table cloths on the tables and salt and pepper on the table but they still had to queue.

Junior management ( Foremen and junior Office types ) had their own dining room with more or less the same set up but a better choice of food on offer. They still had to queue at the hatch but obviously the queues were much shorter.

Senior management ( Sales and Finance mainly plus our Works Engineer ) had the better choice of food but also they had their own dining room with nicer range of table cloths and cutlery, better still they had waitress service. Carafes of water on the tables.

The directors had their own series of separate dining rooms, oak panelled and beautifully tricked out with real silver cutlery, wine on the table etc. Real chefs in full whites with the big floppy hats prepared their food.

I know this because as young apprenticeI I got the job of repairing the potato peeling machine and I got lost in the maze of rooms and kitchens. As I was looking around trying to find the room where the machine was the head chef found me and gave me an almighty bollocking for being somewhere I shouldn't have been.

Regards Tyrone.
 
I have no association with or endorsement of communist ideology and provide the following as historical commentary:

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
-Carl Marx

"Comrades, your needs for today are as follows:...".
-Vladimir Voinovich


Honestly though I came to the Marx bit on mulling over a idealized society which I believe is in fact found in many modern nations.
“To our ability” is realized though that leaves out the elements of choice over vocation and how that choice influences social standing.

I spent the weekend slot trenching our yard for a drainpipe.
Down three feet into hard clay- pickaxe work.
Numbing hard job which I enjoyed but which taxed my will to carry on.
I have always been a fine craftsman so enjoy the higher plane of existence than my brethren who toil like this for their feed.
We are all just tradesmen though.
Could I have climbed out of that trench and been the engineer directing the work, the architect designing it, the businessman for whom it is done or the financier providing the capital for the project..

I used to do some government construction contacts as a young man.
It struck me directly that my station was to erect the buildings in which the others worked to form the society itself.
It was humbling as a young man to set myself so far down in the queue of importance.
I stopped that nonsense years ago.
I don’t define my station in life as lower than any other and don’t permit it from anyone.
 
So when we decided to get married almost 40 years ago, her CPA pop asked me how I was going to support her daughter since I was nothing but an aircraft mechanic with no college... He died in debt, and I'm doing just fine.

Having worked in aircraft instruments, as an A&P, and then starting my own small business as a design engineer / prototype machinist, I guess I have worn both collars.

In engineering meetings I have seen managers and engineers treat machinists as dumb metal cutters. Many times I had to inform them that machinist are not as dumb as they may think and encouraged engineers to consult with machinist when designing things. I do.

I suppose the wisdom is that if you work with your hands you are blue and if you work with your head you are white? Or if you get dirty you are blue and not dirty white? ...whether one washes hands before or after the restroom? I knew an oral surgeon once. I guess he was white collar but he worked in peoples mouths all day. I would prefer an old road diesel truck to someone's mouth.

I sure wish management and engineers would respect machinist more.

A friend, who is an 737 captain was once telling me that I was blue collar. So I presented some examples and he said, chef = blue, accountant = white, machinist = blue, scientist = white, department manager = white, bus driver and he said blue. Then I let him have it. I asked... Airline Pilot...?

So my question is, in other countries do machinist and mechanics have a similar lack of respect that I have noticed in the US?

Why don't you just page Gordon and PDW and ask for a fight about how much better their countries are?? :rolleyes5:
 
there are snops in all cultures. that is people who think they are better than others and there can be hundreds of reasons. even machinist have a pecking order for example programmer, mold maker, tool maker, manual machinist and operator (doesnt matter if the operator can be actually making more money by the end of the year than all the rest, operator often at bottom of pecking order)
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also in some cultures if you have a house mortgage and a car loan you are considered in debt and woman are told dont marry that guy he is not good husband material.
.
in some cultures if a machinist doesnt have a card on him proving he is a trained machinist he get his ID badge taken away and walked out of the shop and told he cant work there anymore. i have seen this in other countries. it might also have been temporary machinist not showing enough respect to permanent machinist and he was being taught a lesson in respect
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also seen shop machinist look down on field machinist or millwrights. or maintenance machinist look down on construction machinist. just saying hundreds of reason people are snops or think they are better or others are not as good they think they are.
 
snops

many are snops or think they are better than others. often its a job security and or high pay rate thing.
.
i have also seen senior machinist not want to train others figuring it will make them less important or needed and or effect the amount of overtime they might be allowed to work.
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basically some prefer not helping others like apprentices become equals in the shop cause they want to be the highest paid or most respected and highest paid in the shop.
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or some fear being laid off so they want to be the most valued in the shop and the last person to get laid off or loose job if things were bad or business slow. thus they do not like training others that might replace them in a few years
 
Tyrone, how long ago was that?

If we are talking about protecting positions...

In 1976 I somehow, just out of high school and hanging around the airport, was hired in the aircraft instrument shop. There were 4 others, the manager, two experienced techs, and another tech. I started on compasses, then airspeeds, then gauges, but never gyros. The two experienced techs guarded those instrument overhauls. I had been there about a year and had not had a "come-back", an instrument I overhauled and was returned with a problem. Then one day I had an airspeed come back with a part rattling around inside. Finally they could "ha-ha he had a come back, ha ha". They had great fun until I opened it up and found that the mechanic re-installing it somehow poked the bug screen loose and into the instrument. Well they were pissed. But what finished me off was about that time I bought an old Luscombe airplane to restore. About a year after that I asked the manager if I could come in on the weekend and overhaul my gyros. So Monday morning the two experienced techs walked in and saw my gyros running on the test bench. And you can just imagine what the rest of my time there was like.
 
Go the other direction, I did some time in engineering school and then left and became a machinist. If you talked with a group with engineers and machinist and start talking engineering lingo you alienate both groups.
 
some dating sites women only looking for college educated men with college degrees.
.
or you go to party and others ask what you do for a living and basically can tell you are being looked down on if you mention a blue collar type job.
.
or admitting working for a company making older technology products and being told you will loose job soon or not worth working there. even after 32 years working for old company and collecting $1300./month for rest of my life when i contributed zero to that particular retirement option. kind of a thank you from the old company every month for being willing to work for them for 32 years and ignoring "advice" or "opinions" of other people
 
Why don't you just page Gordon and PDW and ask for a fight about how much better their countries are?? :rolleyes5:

Maybe not better but certainly different in many ways. Certainly enough so there's no need to bitch and whine as much as many.

Re "blue collar, white collar. I'm both. It just depends who I'm talking to.

A proctologist had been in practice for 20 years and had settled into a very comfortable life with his future very secure. So he decided to fulfill his REAL dream and become an auto mechanic.
Having entered mechanic school, the former physician received the results of his first test back with a score of 200%. Confused, he asked the teacher why his score was so high.
“Well”, said the teacher, “The first part was taking the engine apart and you did that perfectly, so you got 50%. The second was to put it back together again and you did it perfectly and got another 50%. The other 100% was for doing it through the tailpipe.”
 
Maybe not better but certainly different in many ways. Certainly enough so there's no need to bitch and whine as much as many.

Re "blue collar, white collar. I'm both. It just depends who I'm talking to.

.”

I don't have a personal problem with you Gordon, matter of fact I even stuck up for you when you were banned. BUT it is really tiresome to hear you go on and on about how great Denmark is.
 
Tyrone, how long ago was that?

If we are talking about protecting positions...

In 1976 I somehow, just out of high school and hanging around the airport, was hired in the aircraft instrument shop. There were 4 others, the manager, two experienced techs, and another tech. I started on compasses, then airspeeds, then gauges, but never gyros. The two experienced techs guarded those instrument overhauls. I had been there about a year and had not had a "come-back", an instrument I overhauled and was returned with a problem. Then one day I had an airspeed come back with a part rattling around inside. Finally they could "ha-ha he had a come back, ha ha". They had great fun until I opened it up and found that the mechanic re-installing it somehow poked the bug screen loose and into the instrument. Well they were pissed. But what finished me off was about that time I bought an old Luscombe airplane to restore. About a year after that I asked the manager if I could come in on the weekend and overhaul my gyros. So Monday morning the two experienced techs walked in and saw my gyros running on the test bench. And you can just imagine what the rest of my time there was like.

I started there in 1965 and I left a year or two after I came out of my time so that would be in 1972. All the bullshit was still going strong then but for reasons connected with products they were making the place closed in the 1990's.

Regards Tyrone.
 
having been warned off their daughters by (IIRC) 3 sets of parents who ''wanted something better'' for their offspring - with one throwing in the word ''cripple'' **(gammy right leg since 12Y/O) to add insult to injury, I can only say the UK is very similar.

Ain't khama a bitch, the **'s daughter found much better than Sami, …...……..only to left pregnant - with him ''having it away on his toes'' never to be seen again.
 
having been warned off their daughters by (IIRC) 3 sets of parents who ''wanted something better'' for their offspring - with one throwing in the word ''cripple'' **(gammy right leg since 12Y/O) to add insult to injury, I can only say the UK is very similar.

Ain't khama a bitch, the **'s daughter found much better than Sami, …...……..only to left pregnant - with him ''having it away on his toes'' never to be seen again.

After she found out that her daughter proposed to me, my future mother in law was the same way. I told her that she was the most useless person I ever met. Then she quit talking to me. I have been married to her daughter for over 42 years
 
The older the culture the worse this problem is.

Yep. Half a century ago I worked in a steel mill in Belgium as a combination bench mechanic and laborer, and I vividly remember the guy who worked in the testing lab coming out of his air-conditioned office and walking past us sweating peons. He got catcalls as though he were a girl. While in retrospect I suppose they may have known something I didn't, the "class envy" was palpable. That and other experiences there made me realize that it would not be possible to get anywhere careerwise, or social-respect-wise, in that society, starting from where I was. It was a major reality check to my young and then-still-idealistic ass. There was just an unbridgeable chasm between blue and white collar occupations.

It's not quite as demoralizing in the US, but at least here I was able to acquire old machines and start a business with the goal of maybe someday being white collar. Some years ago I asked my senior-engineer brother whether I'd be ethically entitled to put "Product Engineer" on my business card or should I stick to "CEO." I didn't figure my liberal arts degree would qualify me to assume an engineering job title, even though I had been filling an engineering function for decades. He surprised me and said definitely put CEO, because that outranks any engineering title, never mind the size of the company. He said that having come up through the ranks from an electronics assembly line, he'd become intimately familiar with the social rankings of industry, and that was a no-brainer.
 








 
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