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The workers don't want it either! (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/gossip@hexbear.net
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If there is one thing the workers can't stand, it is occasionally getting paid to go fishing or crack open a cold one and grill outdoors.

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[–] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

he wasn't that wrong. a bunch of those fuckers reject any offer of retraining and definitely didn't want to learn to code. fucking americans make their jobs their identity and if you say coal is bad that makes them bad.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    reject any offer of retraining and definitely didn’t want to learn to code.

    Because the idea of having 30-40 year old blue-collar men from Appalachia being asked to suddenly learn how to deeply and intimately use a computer while learning an entirely new language form is about the same as expecting them to learn Chinese and be foreign exchange traders. Retraining would make sense in other similar fields. Other forms of mining/extraction or another blue-collar trade.

    On top of that, what would be the point in training them in code? So they can have their skill-set entirely useless in 2-3 years when AI starts doing the jobs for them?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    this was like 10+ years ago, they could've even learned react and made good money and half of 'em retired before the post-covid bubble burst.

    there were better options than teaching boomers to use computers they could've tried but the job-as-identity freaks wouldn't go for it regardless

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I think you're misunderstanding how easy it is to translate those skills and just "make them learn it". They are blue-collar tradesmen at heart and while their line of work directly harms the planet, trying to get them into a desk-job is just nearly impossible. Not entirely, but I guarantee you it's a 1 out of 10 kind of thing with the people I've known whom are into coal-mining. Most of the time, it's a generational family thing less of a "job-as-identity" thing.

    "job-as-identity" isn't exactly being a freak. Making it your whole personality, sure, but there are a lot of people who take pride in what they do and genuinely enjoy doing it. I know I enjoy the trade I am in and losing all access to it and getting told "just code lol" would justifiably make me pissed too.

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