There is an old story about a surgeon who returned home from the hospital one night to find his sink clogged. He called a plumber, who arrived a few minutes later, cleaned out the greasetrap, and presented his bill for $200.
"Look," the doctor said, "You've only been here about five minutes! That works out to $2,400 an hour. I'm a heart surgeon, and even I don't make that kind of money!"
The plumber smiled and shrugged: "Neither did I, back when I was a heart surgeon."
This tale was told at least as far back as the 1950's, and the fact that it's still funny today makes it worth thinking about. The point is as sharp now as it was then: many people who work with their hands make more money than most people in white-collar jobs. Yet how many more parents want their children to be doctors and lawyers and administrators than want them to be plumbers and bakers and auto-mechanics?
"New collar workers" are people with hard, job-specific skills, such as computer repair, use of computer-driven machinery and robotics, technical salespeople and high-tech wiring specialists usually indirectly involved in strategic planning of business alliance. Also automechanics, cooks, bakers, machine-tool operators, electricians, and, of course, plumbers.
They are in such demand that a dearth of them is in danger of fueling a new round of inflation, and perhaps even slowing the growth of the U.S. economy. And their pay rates are second only to those who find employment in the professions.
White collar workers have traditionally gotten their post-secondary education in universities and four-year colleges. Blue collar workers went to the school of hard knocks, eventually learning their trade through haphazard, on-the-job-training. We are still learning how to train these new collar workers.
Europe, and especially Germany, has a long tradition of this kind of training, and it is the highly trained, highly skilled, highly paid German craftsperson who has responsible for the world-famous quality and precision of German products for a century. A graph in the October 4, 1997, issue of The Economist shows that in the United States, about 35% of the country's 18 to 21 year-olds enroll in colleges and universities; in Germany, only about 12% do so! Yet Germany is world-famous for the skills and quality of its workforce. It is, in fact, their most valuable economic asset.
American industry is crying for people with the kind of training that millions of Germans only nineteen and twenty years old have already finished. Fortunately, since the Germans (among others) have learned how to do this kind of training, and we can learn from their experience, if we only will. There is no secret to what they do. It's called
The German system combines the best of on-the-job-training and classroom instruction. Young people just out of high-school, often as young as 16, become apprentices with a local company. At work, they are given tasks under the direction of a Meisterin their field. Part of the Meister'sjob includes the training of apprentices--it is not something that he does justwhen he has some spare time.
What an apprentice is expected to learn is set by the Federal government in Bonn. There are national standards for each profession or craft. But how he or she learns it is, in large part, left up to the company and the individual Meisters.
As a supplement to his or her work, the apprentice attends school on one or two days per week. These Berufschulenare specialized for apprentice education, and give him or her not only the theoretical training needed for the job, but courses in history, sociology, science and mathematics as well. It is this combination of structured on-the-job-training with continuing school-based-learning that constitutes the Dual System.
Apprentices usually continue living at home. They are paid a training wage by the company, which is usually around 30% of an ordinary wage, and they are fully covered by the company's insurance.
Apprentices usually begin by doing the simplest jobs around the workplace; gradually, they are given more responsibility and more complex tasks. Periodically, they are given examinations, both practical and theoretical, which cover what they have learned in school as well as on the job.
At the end of about three years, the apprentices are given their final examinations. If they pass all parts of the exams, they are certified as journeymen (Gesellen), are licensed to practice their trade, and begin drawing a regular, full-time wage. At this time, the journeymen are typically their late teens, but in skills and maturity, they are often comparable to American young people who are several years older.