Mike Rowe and "Dirty Jobs"

By Matthew Dunn

Recently on Real Time with Bill Maher, television host Mike Rowe appeared.  Mike Rowe is the host of The Discovery Channel show, Dirty Jobs.  The premise of this show is that the host visits various regions around the country and shows really disgusting work that some people do.  The point of this show is to show the types of things that ordinary people have to do, in order to make our lives comfortable. 

                On the episode of Real Time, Mike Rowe talked about his initiative to support the skilled trades and hard work.  He said that the worst advice in the world was given to him by his high school guidance counselor to pursue a college degree.  He also said that there was a poster that had a picture of a college graduate and a picture of a dirty blue collar worker and it said underneath to work smart and not hard.  A picture of this poster can be seen on Rowe’s website http://profoundlydisconnected.com/.  The message of this poster is that blue collar work is degrading and difficult and college will lead to better jobs.  He believes that this is a problem, because now we have many people going to college, but we have a shortage of people who can work in skilled trades.  By promoting the skilled trades, presumably he is trying to solve unemployment problems in the United States. 

                I take several issues with Rowe’s point of view and his television program.  First is Rowe’s personal background.  The recently cancelled Dirty Jobs, was about hard working Americans doing difficult, dangerous, but beneficial work.  So what is Mike’s background?  He went to college and then got a job doing a very dirty job of being an opera singer.  He then went on to work for the very dirty industry of home shopping and voice over work.  If you are expecting us to do work, that you yourself did not want to pursue, I learned in college that makes you a hypocrite. 

                My second issue is basically with this old adage that Americans don’t want to do those jobs.  People want to go to college and pursue more creative careers and they neglect blue collar work.  Well that may be true for a lot of people, but I’ll bet there’s a tremendous amount of unemployed people in this country right now, who would be willing to work in any number of Mike’s “Dirty Jobs”.  If companies need people to do their jobs, they could go to any big city and find a tremendous amount of people who would work for them.  If they don’t have the skills, why doesn’t the company pay for their training?  Oh, that’s right because they want the schools to do their work for them.  So, basically the purpose of schools is to give a handout to corporations in the form of workers?  Mike gave the example of Caterpillar Inc. as one of the companies that couldn’t find workers.  Caterpillar Inc. is a billion dollar company, I’m sure they can afford to train some people. 

                One of the things that Mike forgot to mention is how poorly many dirty jobs pay.  Dirty jobs often are considered the lowest of the low, not because of the work that is done, but because of the pay.  I bet you have tons of people signing up to do the dirtiest jobs in the world if the pay was good.  There is no job dirtier than a sanitation worker, especially in New York City.  In New York being a sanitation worker is considered a good job.  However, a New York Times story about a sanitation worker who passed away recently reveals that he was making around $58,000 yearly around his time of death.  That’s not that much considering the work and how important it is to society.  Yes, they get a pension and can retire after 20 years, but how long do you think people can do that work?  Having them only work 20 years also gives people an incentive to retire and open up spots for new people.  The New York City Sanitation Department also has a notoriously long waiting list for jobs.  Guess people want to do dirty jobs after all. 

                Lastly, maybe people don’t want to go into the trades because those aren’t very good jobs.  Much of trade work is seasonal, and if you talk to many people who work in the trades, you will a lot of people who have been out of work.  Also a great deal of trade work is not only dirty, but dangerous.  Unless you are going to pay enormous sums of money, I doubt you are going to find many people who want to do work requiring them to put their life on the line.  That’s part of the appeal of Dirty Jobs in the first place.  To show us how the other half lives, and to be grateful that we don’t have to do that work.

                So since Discovery Channel has cancelled Mike’s show I recommend he start a new one.  This one will be called Shitty Jobs.  Mike and his crew will do work like working in a fast food restaurant, or Wal-Mart, or health care aide in nursing homes.  Not only will they do this work, but then at the end of the episode, they will get the same pay as the people who did the job, probably no more than $10 an hour.  That wouldn’t be reality television,  that would be REALITY.  I’m sure this will be a step down from Mike’s position on Dirty Jobs, where I’m sure he probably made more an episode than the people on show made in a year.  Something tells me, Mike probably isn’t going to want to do that for long.