Michael Yates writes: "I do not think tht workersin the Mexico Ford plant are skilled at all. Work in an auto plant requires very little skill with very few exceptions. that's why Ford could move in the first place. High productivity (from the technology) and low wages from the huge pool of surplus labor."
One direction this thread is taking is an exploration of the "human skills" workers *have* in contrast to the "official skills" the jobs demand. This is important, and I hope it is continued.
But there is another direction worth exploring also: the contrast between current bullshit in the media, state legislatures, etc about how the new technology demands a more "highly skilled workforce" and the historical fact that new technology has always resulted in *deskilling* of the work force.
One important concern at the present is the way in which this tendency is beginning to penetrate sectors of the working class who in the past have been (falsely) considered both by themselves and others as *not* working class but "professionals." I am thinking particularly of public school and junior college teachers, but also of the bulk of faculty in most (not all) 4-year universities. Here it is not that the technology in fact displaces the "old skills"; rather, it forms a smokescreen behind which those "old skills" and their products can simply be abolished. I think the ruling class (or some of its intellectuals and some of its politicians) learned in the 60s that it could be dangerous to offer working-class students any sort of "general education." Don't teach "slaves" to read.
Carrol Cox