Re:The GM strike is really about the switch to electric cars
by prepend on Saturday October 05, 2019 @06:15PM
(#21168322)
If people aren’t able to change and retrain, I’m not sure what will help them. I’m sure some people are locked in. I’m from a part of the country where people are pretty transient and it’s common to meet screeners who started at 50 or even people at 60 who started doing medical transcription or telework bank support and stuff. I meet tons of people who rebooted and I’ve been meeting them for 50 years or so. And it’s not like I seek them out.
This might also be an example where we have to teach and support and encourage resiliency early in life. I’m sure there are some people who lock their life around their job, but that’s not healthy. Especially if it’s literally a shitty and unhealthy job like coal mining.
But in all the cases I’ve seen so far, most of these people built their whole identities around being a coal miner or an automobile assembly line person. That’s the only thing they know how to do, and the only thing they are willing to do. Nothing less than the exact same thing will suffice.
In the case of widespread intransigence, I don’t see how you can solve this problem. Those people are going to be out of a job, in a career that doesn’t exist any more, having wrapped their entire concept of existence around something that simply no longer exists.
Yes, I agree that we as a society need to take care of them, otherwise we as a society will be paying a much higher price due to the problems they will cause.
We recognize part of this issue when it comes to soldiers who have come back home from war and are now trying to live during peacetime.
We need to come up with better solutions for people who have been obsoleted by the March of technology.