[downwardly mobile] clever move for professionals
Monday, December 25, 2006
The Aslef study follows stories of highly paid professionals ditching their careers to become plumbers and teachers. Aslef said many new drivers were still drawn to the career by a fascination for the railways and came from existing train company staff. But with most drivers now on a 34-hour week and "competitive" salaries, the positions also attracted people looking to maintain a work-life balance.
"I find it fascinating that people who 10 years ago wouldn't have considered train driving are drawn to our profession," said Aslef general secretary Keith Norman. "Train drivers used to emerge from a set pattern - they were technically rather than academically gifted men, often from 'railway families', who came to the job after working in other capacities in the industry."
But what of some menial jobs which really are stressful? Well, even there, all is not as it seems:
When Douglas Coupland coined the phrase McJob in his 1991 book Generation X, it needed little explanation and it’s a term McDonald's has been fighting for years, often applied to the service industry as a whole which accounts for 82% of the total number employed in the UK last year.
The Brighter Futures report says though, that far from being brain-dead dropouts, youngsters in the industry see it this way: 90% show high levels of engagement; 85% said job was better than they'd expected; 83% had seen positive change in themselves since starting work and 74% saw a long-term career at McDonald's.
Of course, low initial expectations could account for this and the survey was commissioned by McDonald's and yet it was independently run. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) disagrees and says the results are flawed. One young male employee concludes:
"While other business wouldn't have given me a chance, I showed I was willing to work and they rewarded that. They realise it's not in their interest to hold someone back who wants to do well." Whom to believe?
"I find it fascinating that people who 10 years ago wouldn't have considered train driving are drawn to our profession," said Aslef general secretary Keith Norman. "Train drivers used to emerge from a set pattern - they were technically rather than academically gifted men, often from 'railway families', who came to the job after working in other capacities in the industry."
But what of some menial jobs which really are stressful? Well, even there, all is not as it seems:
When Douglas Coupland coined the phrase McJob in his 1991 book Generation X, it needed little explanation and it’s a term McDonald's has been fighting for years, often applied to the service industry as a whole which accounts for 82% of the total number employed in the UK last year.
The Brighter Futures report says though, that far from being brain-dead dropouts, youngsters in the industry see it this way: 90% show high levels of engagement; 85% said job was better than they'd expected; 83% had seen positive change in themselves since starting work and 74% saw a long-term career at McDonald's.
Of course, low initial expectations could account for this and the survey was commissioned by McDonald's and yet it was independently run. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) disagrees and says the results are flawed. One young male employee concludes:
"While other business wouldn't have given me a chance, I showed I was willing to work and they rewarded that. They realise it's not in their interest to hold someone back who wants to do well." Whom to believe?
[McDonalds piece based on a report in BBC Online from June 2006 – link now lost, sorry.]
posted by James Higham at 12:40
3 Comments:
Now you'll never guess what my brother jacked in his job in local government to become, will you? I hadn't realised he was part of such a trend.
My first job in Australia was as a member of the army of people employed by Coles Supermarkets, part of the largest private employer in Australia. The work was tedious, but it allowed me to be around to take care of the kids, paid reasonably and the hours meant that my wife could develop her professional career. Shelf stacking was good work for me until I rejoined the professional work force again. The best thing about it was you didn't have to prepare, turned up and worked and then left until the next shift. Very different from consulting, where work never really stops.
The difference between shelf-stacking and train driving, however, is that shelf stacking certainly doesn't pay £35,000 a year.
Working for 40 hours a week, a shelf-stacker at my supermarket (which has high pay compared to most) could earn £13,500-odd a year. Of course there can be double-time for bank holidays, but working all of them could barely earn you that much more!
Shelf-stacking itself is a job that requires a virtually no thought. A sufficiently-trained ape could do it. No shelf-stacker I know likes their job - including those who have done it for nearly a decade - or more!
Whilst I can see how at first-glance not having to think in your job might be nice, after a while it becomes monotonous and excruciatingly boring.
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