Letter from Mike Rowe: Learning and Working

Dear Governor Romney,

My name is Mike Rowe and I own a small company in California called
mikeroweWORKS. Currently, mikeroweWORKS is trying to close the country’s skills gap by changing the way Americans feel about Work. (I know, right? Ambitious.) Anyway, this Labor Day is our 4^th
anniversary, and I’m commemorating the occasion with an open letter to
you. If you read the whole thing, I’ll vote for you in November.


First things first. mikeroweWORKS grew out of a TV show called Dirty Jobs. If
by some chance you are not glued to The Discovery Channel
every Wednesday at 10pm, allow me to visually introduce myself. That’s
me on the right, preparing to do something dirty.
When Dirty Jobs premiered back in 2003, critics called the
show “a calamity of exploding toilets and misadventures in animal
husbandry.” They weren’t exactly wrong. But mostly, Dirty Jobs was
an unscripted celebration of hard work and skilled labor. It still is.
Every week, we highlight regular people who do the kind of jobs most
people go out of their way to avoid. My role on the show is that of a
“perpetual apprentice.” In that capacity I have completed over three
hundred different jobs, visited all fifty states, and worked in every
major industry.

Though schizophrenic and void of any actual qualifications, my resume
looks pretty impressive, and when our economy officially crapped the
bed in 2008, I was perfectly positioned to weigh in on a variety of
serious topics. A reporter from The Wall Street Journal called to ask
what I thought about the “counter-intuitive correlation between rising
unemployment and the growing shortage of skilled labor.” CNBC wanted my
take on outsourcing. Fox News wanted my opinions on manufacturing and
infrastructure. And CNN wanted to chat about currency valuations, free
trade, and just about every other work-related problem under the sun.

In each case, I shared my theory that most of these “problems” were
in fact symptoms of something more fundamental – a change in the way
Americans viewed hard work and skilled labor. That’s the essence of what
I’ve heard from the hundreds of men and women I’ve worked with on Dirty Jobs.
Pig farmers, electricians, plumbers, bridge painters, jam makers,
blacksmiths, brewers, coal miners, carpenters, crab fisherman, oil
drillers…they all tell me the same thing over and over, again and again –
our country has become emotionally disconnected from an essential part
of our workforce. We are no longer impressed with cheap electricity,
paved roads, and indoor plumbing. We take our infrastructure for
granted, and the people who build it.

Today, we can see the consequences of this disconnect in any number
of areas, but none is more obvious than the growing skills gap. Even as
unemployment remains sky high, a whole category of vital occupations has
fallen out of favor, and companies struggle to find workers with the
necessary skills. The causes seem clear. We have embraced a ridiculously
narrow view of education. Any kind of training or study that does not
come with a four-year degree is now deemed “alternative.” Many viable
careers once aspired to are now seen as “vocational consolation prizes,”
and many of the jobs this current administration has tried to “create”
over the last four years are the same jobs that parents and teachers
actively discourage kids from pursuing. (I always thought there
something ill-fated about the promise of three million “shovel ready
jobs” made to a society that no longer encourages people to pick up a
shovel.)

Which brings me to my purpose in writing. On Labor Day of 2008, the
fans of Dirty Jobs helped me launch this website. mikeroweWORKS.com
began as a Trade Resource Center designed to connect kids with careers
in the skilled trades. It has since evolved into a non-profit foundation
– a kind of PR Campaign for hard work and skilled labor. Thanks to a
number of strategic partnerships, I have been able to promote a dialogue
around these issues with a bit more credibility than my previous resume
allowed. I’ve spoken to Congress
(twice) about the need to confront the underlying stigmas and
stereotypes that surround these kinds of jobs. Alabama and Georgia have
both used mikeroweWORKS to launch their own statewide technical
recruitment campaigns, and I’m proud to be the spokesman for both
initiatives. I also work closely with Caterpillar, Ford, Kimberly-Clark,
and Master Lock, as well as The Boy Scouts of America and The Future
Farmers of America. To date, the mikeroweWORKS Foundation has raised
over a million dollars for trade scholarships. It’s modest by many
standards, but I think we’re making a difference.

Certainly, we need more jobs, and you were clear about that in Tampa.
But the Skills Gap proves that we need something else too. We need
people who see opportunity where opportunity exists. We need enthusiasm
for careers that have been overlooked and underappreciated by society at
large. We need to have a really big national conversation about what we
value in the workforce, and if I can be of help to you in that regard, I
am at your service – assuming of course, you find yourself in a new
address early next year.

To be clear, mikeroweWORKS has no political agenda. I am not an
apologist for Organized Labor or for Management. mikeroweWORKS is
concerned only with encouraging a larger appreciation for skilled labor,
and supporting those kids who are willing to learn a skill.

Good luck in November. And thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Mike Rowe

PS. In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I wrote a similar letter to President Obama.
Of course, that was four years ago, and since I never heard back, I
believe proper etiquette allows me to extend the same offer to you now. I
figure if I post it here, the odds are better that someone you know
might send it along to your attention.

I liked the points Mike makes here. Education as it today is existing has it's benefits and drawbacks, but expanding the perspective and approach could pay great dividends.