By Mark Rhoads –
Since the election on Nov. 8, liberal Democrats and their allies in elite media and colleges have talked about their failure and Donald Trump's success in reaching out to "working families." Their definition of a working person is apparently limited only to someone who has a job in a factory.
But what we used to call "white collar" workers with some college or technical school education also work hard to provide for their families. Working hard to earn an education with advanced skills is very demanding and is no less difficult because it is brain work instead of muscle work.
The challenge of keeping jobs in the United States is not only competition with cheaper labor in other countries, but it is also a challenge of modernizing plants and constant vocational training for new jobs that did not exist in the past.
Many jobs of the 1970s and 1980s will never come back because the world economy has moved on. Really honest labor leaders understand that but continue to hold on to the rhetoric of the past as they look for villains to blame everywhere but in the union headquarters offices.
Americans who hold fast to a work ethic for their families can still make new products, but they are different kinds of products than in the past and workers who make them need new skills.
