Noah wrote about the “man camps” of North Dakota for the Good Men Project, but I decided I would talk about it as well, because it’s interesting.
The quote that struck me the most within the NYT article was the following, from an oil fields worker:
Even after the recruiter told him the job was in the oil fields of North Dakota, where subzero temperatures in the double digits are common in the winter, Mr. Ervin didn’t waver.
“At this point in my life, I didn’t care,” he said. “It was either sink or swim, and I thought I’d try the swim part.“
These men are motherfucking heroes.
There is kind of a sad nobility in their work: many of them are family men, in their thirties and forties, with wives and children back home that they never see. Providers, in the most tragic sense. Men are supposed to provide, not just culturally, but institutionally: blue-collar jobs are very gendered. Male-dominated blue-collar jobs tend to be paid more than female-dominated blue-collar jobs; however, they also tend to be less safe and have other unfortunate working conditions issues– such as being states away from your family. Far too often, working-class men are trapped in a choice between keeping the lights on and sacrificing their health, their time with their children, or even their lives.
The men get weeks off in which they may see their families: however, working those weeks can earn them more money, which all too often their families need. So the men quite often do not see their families for months so they can pay their debts, keep their homes from foreclosure, send their children to Disney World.
It’s important when we talk about workaholism or the importance of spending time with one’s family not to erase the existence of class privilege. A middle manager could theoretically choose to cut down on his hours and be there to watch his children grow up; for a lot of working-class men, that option is not available. Looking at the low pay available for most female-dominated blue-collar occupations, many families will decide that they can’t afford for the father not to work as many hours as he fucking can… or even to stay in the same state.
Of course, I don’t mean to valorize working-class breadwinners– a lot of them are not exactly good people, for definitions of not exactly good people that range from “actually don’t care about their families that much” to “fucking abusive.” Pedestalizing the poor is common among well-meaning upper-middle-class progressives, and I do not intend to fall into that trap. As Sady Doyle says in The Percentages, talking about The Working Class tends to erase the actual working class people, who are quite often not the nobly struggling people with real American values, but kind of assholes. Because people are kind of assholes!
Nevertheless, the breadwinner who loves his family is an essentially tragic figure. He wants to take care of his family: because he loves his children, he wants to give them everything that he can. But in order to give them everything he has to work hours that mean he may never even see them. Loving his children means a life of missed soccer games and not helping with homework and children who essentially grow up strangers.
Thanks to feminism, women have a lot more opportunity to work outside the home, and in a lot of working-class households, now both men and women are breadwinners who never get to see their children! Yay! This is the wrong kind of motherfucking equality, people.
And when the huge sacrifices are called for… when you have to travel states away and live in a tiny room… a lot of times, it is men who’ll make it. Partially because the jobs that call for those huge sacrifices tend to look for men anyway (many of them require, for instance, large amounts of upper-body strength), and partially because everyone expects that men will be the providers (which leads to an institutional preference for men for those jobs).
I’m not sure what the solution is. (Yes, radicals in the back, we could overthrow capitalism.) As a garden-variety democratic socialist, I’d probably recommend a stronger social safety net, a higher minimum wage, shorter hours, strong unions, et cetera et cetera look at the Socialist Party of the USA website if you want to know my political opinions. But given the rightward tilt of United States politics, it looks like the only thing we can be able to do right now is to honor these men as the heroes they are.
About ozyfrantz
I’m pretty sure they would prefer a change in working conditions over my esteem, however high.
I don’t think we should overthrow capitalism, but one of the driving forces behind the working decisions you describe is conspicuous consumption. Another is deregulation. Still another is globalization.
Given current political gridlock, the best way to support those men would be a national shift towards local economics and a modicum of austerity. Granted: austerity, even a modicum of austerity, tends to be unpopular, and can also contribute to a loss of economic momentum, therefore contributing to even WORSE working conditions.
But still: the more people bicycle to work and buy local food, the less gas going to food and personal transportation, meaning less demand for oil, meaning no need to drill for oil in the Dakotas at such a rate.
@ozymandias:
“I’m not sure what the solution is. (Yes, radicals in the back, we could overthrow capitalism.) As a garden-variety democratic socialist, I’d probably recommend a stronger social safety net, a higher minimum wage, shorter hours, strong unions, et cetera et cetera look at the Socialist Party of the USA website if you want to know my political opinions. But given the rightward tilt of United States politics, it looks like the only thing we can be able to do right now is to honor these men as the heroes they are.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
If something like that was implemented, work conditions would improve as a result, because workers would have more freedom to refuse dangerous work under poor conditions for low pay.
It could replace welfare, unemployment insurance, social security, progressive taxation, and the minimum wage.
Replacing welfare with basic income would eliminate the welfare trap. It would allow entrepreneurs and artists to pursue their passion without worrying about basic needs.
Replacing the minimum wage with basic income would reduce the incentive for overwork by people working two or more minimum wage jobs, as well as the incentive for illegal immigration.
Cheap labor subsidized by basic income would encourage full employment, while reducing offshore outsourcing.
The thing is, there will always be unpleasant, dangerous, physically demanding jobs. Even if we had the LFTR (complete with a synthetic fuel plant that is powered by the waste heat) ready to go tomorrow, we would still need need people to work construction, run the commercial fishing fleet, harvest our timber, tend to our water and sewage treatment plants, drive our trucks and trains and be on call to fight fires or tend to a server room. A lot of these jobs require long periods away from home and family. Yet, they are necessary for civilisation.
Also remember, skilled tradesmen are earning six-figures a year to work up there. Unskilled workers are earning as much as I will be when I graduate from university. This is on top of the other expenses the companies incur for their employees. I heard one person (I think he was a welder) talk to NPR’s Marketplace about how his contract with the oil company required them to build a home for him and his wife and kids. This was in addition to paying the ~$100 a day they were paying for his temporary placement in a mancamp and for all of his family’s moving expenses.
Clearly, raising minimum wage isn’t an issue for these men. If anything they have all the power in terms of negotiating with their employers, so I doubt that stronger unions would help the workers either (well, technically, I doubt that most US unions serve their employees, so I doubt that stronger unions would help any employees).
I would even argue that the Dakota’s rightward leaning policies are what allow the oil companies to drill at all. The number of new oil leases on Federal land has fallen under Barack Obama, although the USA’s total production of crude oil has increased. It’s increased drilling on state and private lands that has made up the difference. Although, I will add that better drilling and sensing technologies have also played a key role in this oil boom.
I’m not sure that a middle manager could choose to cut down his (or her) hours. In a lot of places it’s “You will work the 80+ hour/week crunch time, or you will not have a job”. The industry I’m graduating into is infamous for this. Just because a job is well paying and white collar doesn’t mean that you can choose your hours and choose to cut back to spend more time with your family. Beyond that, even if you have a choice, it’s perfectly valid to work the extra hours so that your spouse can stay at home and raise the children. I think it’s distinctly unfair to peanalize spouses who do this under any cirumstances.
I will agree with Ozy on exactly one point and only one point: We should honour these men. Their work and sacrifice literally fuels our civilisation.
Welcome to capitalism. Force people to work themselves to death so they can pay off the bank screwing over yet family and the adverts telling everyone to buy stuff they don’t need.
There are always exceptions to the class-work hours things. Take doctors. Generally middle class and above, but in England they work non-stop for 15-20 years. Lawyers too.
Will, when did 15-20 years become unusual? Most teachers leave Uni around 22/23 and work till 55-65 (33-43 years), similarly with most other professionals – barring lack of job security people just keep working irrespective of class because there isn’t really an option outside of a limited range of professions / inherited wealth.
What Gaius said. There are, and for a very long time have been, plenty of folks working very, very hard to organize unions, fight for workers’ rights and improve regulations and oversight that improve wages and working conditions for blue-collar workers, male or female.
“We can’t do much except /slowclap”? Really? We can’t agitate for better rights for workers, for a living wage, for strong regulatory oversight so that employers don’t treat workers like disposable things, because those right wingers won’t let us? Or is it, really, that we who are white-collar workers and college students and likely to have partners who are the same have the luxury of treating this as an unsolveable problem?
Unions are certainly not without their flaws, but in an environment of at-will employment (which is the default), job-ending injuries and ‘sure, go complain to OSHA if you want your ass fired’, what are the better options? The magic karma of the marketplace?
(And yes, I know I was not actually quoting you directly, Ozy, but that’s pretty much the conclusion of your last paragraph: there’s shit-all we can do except tell the guys how awesome they are, and then go back to watching Cracked videos and looking at lolcats or whatever, because it’s not like whether our employer bothered to set up a safety harness program correctly is going to be any skin off *our* asses, ya?)
What struck me, reading the Times article, was just how *familiar* the story sounded. I had to dredge my brain a bit, though, to find what it reminded me of. It dawned on me moments ago — “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” part of the Little House series, which I loved as a girl. I reread them a few years ago, in anticipation of giving them to my daughter.
For those who didn’t read the series: The books is set in late 19th C. Minnesota and a locust invasion eats all the crops and Pa has to walk 300 miles to find work in the harvest season. The book is narrated by Laura and spends most of it time on her and her mothers’ pov, and I have to admit that neither as a child nor as an adult did I spend a lot of time pondering Pa’s experience.
I have no suggestions or insights to offer, merely an observation: It’s pretty damned sad that, in 2012, we are still stuck with the same effing problems of pioneers in the late 19th century.