Degrees of Separation
As Economy Shifts, A New Generation Fights to Keep Up
In Milwaukee, Factories Close And Skills, Not Seniority, Are Key to Advancement An Ex-Welder's Computer Job
By GREG IP
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 22, 2005; Page A1
MILWAUKEE -- In 1957, Wayne Hall, then 24 years old, responded to a help-wanted shingle outside Badger Die Casting on this city's south side. He started work the next day, and, over the years, rose from machinery operator to machinery inspector to chief inspector. He helped organize a union, got regular raises, enjoyed generous pension and health benefits and, eventually, five weeks of vacation. At age 72, he is retired and can afford to travel with his wife to Disneyland and Tahiti.
It was a typical Milwaukee factory worker's escalator ride to the middle class. His stepson Ron Larson, 58, thought he'd ride that escalator, too. He was wrong. In 1971, Mr. Larson went to work as a welder in the fabrication shop of a factory across the street from Badger that made rock crushers and other heavy equipment. By 1981, he was earning roughly as much as his stepfather. But he was laid off that year. Mr. Larson has held many jobs since -- tour-boat operator, trucker, air-conditioning repairman. Except for one year, he has yet to earn as much as he did at the welding job. Today, he works as a computer support technician, but the contract job runs just six weeks and he doesn't know if he'll still be working after that.
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The gap between poor and rich in the U.S. has widened over the past 30 years. But people born to modest circumstances are no more likely to rise above their parents' station. The divergent fates of Mr. Hall and his stepson -- and others in this blue-collar city -- illustrate why it can be hard to move up. Industrial jobs that offered steady escalators of advancement for workers, even if they were only high-school graduates, are vanishing in America. In their place are service-economy jobs with fewer ways up. Unions are scarcer and temporary work more common. In newer service jobs that have come to dominate the U.S. economy, a college diploma is increasingly the prerequisite to a good wage... Milwaukee was once dotted with factories where thousands worked for good wages -- making electrical generators at Allis-Chalmers Corp., beer at Pabst Brewing Co. and truck bodies at Heil Co. It was the fictional home of TV working girls Laverne and Shirley. The city, says John Gurda, a local historian, was "not just egalitarian but proletarian": It had Socialist mayors from 1910 to 1960.
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Milwaukee, like the whole country, has experienced a polarization in incomes in recent decades. In 1979, the wealthiest 10% of households in the city earned about six times as much as the bottom tenth, according to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Center for Economic Development. In 1999, they earned nearly 15 times as much... In the 1990s Mr. Larson, who holds a high-school graduate equivalency degree, taught himself to use computers and worked for 18 months in technical support at S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., the home-cleaning-products maker, in nearby Racine, Wis. In 2000, he made $53,000 and finally surpassed his 1981 welder's salary after taking inflation into account. The next year, his contract with S.C. Johnson ended. His wife, Kathy, whose father owned a truck and distributed candy to local stores, worked two decades at Kmart before she was laid off. She now makes $8.05 an hour stocking shelves part-time at a supermarket and struggles to work enough hours to keep her health insurance. The couple has run down Mr. Larson's 401(k) retirement plan from $240,000 to almost nothing. Early last year, he filed for bankruptcy.
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A few weeks ago Mr. Larson got a new posting as a help-desk consultant, paying $19 an hour, this time for up to six weeks. While he and his wife hope it lasts longer, they have learned not to get their hopes up. "Years ago, he'd say, 'I found a job, it's forever,' " says Ms. Larson. "Now you can't think that way anymore." The jobs that Mr. Larson has cycled through have rarely offered much opportunity for advancement. The same is true at many health-care employers and others that are hiring in Milwaukee these days. Without formal classroom education and certification, employees can spend years stuck on the lower rungs of the job ladder, as Nikitha Williams, a 30-year-old nursing-home aide, has learned.
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Write to Greg Ip at greg.ip@wsj.com
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http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111939582597865857,00.html
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