[EatingWithForks]

Gonna be honest: if someone told me my tech job had been replaced with all its benefits (wfh! office stipend!) and now I have to retrain as a plumber, including back to the shitty apprenticeship system for low pay and low benefits (starting from the bottom again) I would also get really damn upset and resist that. There will be a lot of tooth gnashing on my end even if you pay for my apprenticeship and initial training, I'm still significantly worse off for the literal rest of my whole life.

[kstrauser]

I get why it sucks, but every day someone resists retraining from a dying or dead occupation is a day they’re not getting experience in a new job. In the case of the coal miners, those jobs were gone. No amount of bargaining would bring them back. The mines aren’t going to re-open. The affected people didn’t get to choose between retraining or keeping their current jobs. They had to choose between learning new marketable skills in a classroom or scrabbling through whatever remaining local jobs they could find.

We’re not there with truck driving yet, but to me it seems inevitable. I wouldn’t consider it as a brand new career worth starting today if my intent were to retire from it.

[EatingWithForks]

I'm only arguing that it makes complete sense why people are resisting if someone is telling them otherwise. I would also cling to my livelihood if my alternative was losing my home, my healthcare, my stability. And I'd further be insulted by people offering me retraining programs that don't actually train me to a lateral career. I'm trying to practice some empathy, man.

[grecy]

For sure, but I wonder what you (or anyone) is going to do about it.

Eventually, you simply have to go to work for a roof over your head, food and healthcare.

It doesn't really matter if you like it or not. If you current job ceases to exist you will get another job, or you will die.

[EatingWithForks]

Yes, I'm just pointing out the retraining isn't actually the real alternative people think it is. It's directly lowering the quality of life and destroying the economic future of an entire industry's worth of people and all their families/dependents. This is important to deal with as it is, not with some bs "well we offered them retraining!" as if that means anything.

[dventimi]

> Eventually, you simply have to go to work for a roof over your head, food and healthcare

No, you don't. Plenty of retired people don't go to work and yet they have all of those things.