Politicians and others who claim to speak for disadvantaged groups of people love to throw out the weary canard that there would be so much less this type of trouble or that if only good jobs were available.
It’s been no secret – high-paying manufacturing jobs are out there for the taking.
Welders and machinists were just two of the jobs mentioned on Friday at a Workforce Solutions Summit sponsored by U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Chattanooga, at Chattanooga State Community College.
James Barrott, director of the Tennessee College of Applied Technology, said trained workers in those fields – and others – have their pick of jobs when they finish a training course like ones offered at Chattanooga State.
Sometime in the last half century, students began being told that college was the only place to get ahead, that manufacturing jobs were for losers, that blue-collar jobs would never pay the rent. Technical high schools closed, skilled labor was laughed at and students – ready or not – were mainstreamed into colleges.