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three_stories_tall t1_j9y4d1s wrote

Csx has a project where they pay their employees to go to high schools one day a month and promote their job shadow program to seniors. Guaranteed $30/hr job when they graduate. Some kids get into it but never take the job.

Every city sponsored construction project will hire know nothing laborers if they live in the city. Usually there's a giant banner at the gate. That pays $18/hr and you will learn a trade by the end of the project. Usually only one or two guys will show up.

Opportunity is there for the taking.

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BigVikingBeard t1_j9y754d wrote

Okay, great, a scant few physical labor opportunities are there. Not everyone is cut out for physical labor / trades. Not everyone wants to or can be an electrician, steam fitter, welder, carpenter, whatever. Can it be a decent career? Sure. Is it for everyone? Fuck no.

That's before even getting in to the atrocious work/life balance culture that the trades foster, especially outside of unions. You want to tell me that 40 and beyond hours a week of manual labor with limited or no vacation time, shitty healthcare, a culture of companies getting mad if you take time off for being sick, nevermind having to work around a shit load of insanely racist dipshits is particularly appealing to an 18/19yo black kid from the butterfly?

And that's not even getting in to transportation costs and/or the time investment if they have to use our shitty public transit of getting to these jobs.

White people in the L have white collar jobs available to them that pay better, have better work/life balance, better Healthcare, and so on an so forth.

And either way, it doesn't change my point. The kids are still growing up with deeply ingrained cultural cynicism towards life, towards their still ongoing oppression. Those few jobs might lessen the slope of Sisyphus' Hill, but it definitely doesn't remove their struggle.

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pin-head-Larry t1_j9yf8f1 wrote

You must think really highly of blue collar workers calling them racist dipshits

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BigVikingBeard t1_j9ygpfz wrote

I'm a fucking union electrician, dipshit. I see the shit every fucking day.

You must've never worked a blue collar job if you think my comment is in some way inaccurate.

The amount of white dudes wearing some flavor of either obvious dog whistle bullshit all the way through to rebel flag hardhats plastered with Trump bullshit is legion.

Why the fuck would a bunch of black kids, who already have to deal with societies constant daily racism, want to go to a job site to work around people who make it a fucking point to wear their very very special snowflake fashy bullshit?

That's not even getting into the absurd amount of racist bullshit that gets scrawled inside every fucking portapot on a construction site.

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Kush_gawdd t1_j9yk5gm wrote

Someone hung a BLACK BABY DOLL by a noose on my jobsite in 2021. It was in sparrows point md.

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