The Job for Anybody?
By Kevin
Hey! Isn't this what we're supposed to say about the service economy?
American youth see manufacturing as a one-way career track toward poor wages....Keith McKee, the director of the Manufacturing Productivity Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, offers another compelling reason: for a long time now, manufacturing has sold itself as the job for anybody, regardless of intelligence.
"This mystique has come about and it isn't a good thing," McKee says. "Manufacturers have done themselves a great disservice because for a long time, they kept saying they could hire almost anybody. Most of those people will never become skilled workers because they're dumb as rocks. If you take a rock and train it, it's still just a rock."
--"Old Myths, New Realities", Tooling & Production, August 2008, pp.56-60. [not yet online]