English 1A
Professor: France
10 Nov 2014
Making it in America
The article is about a meeting between Adam Davidson and a young but skilled worker in a factory, Madelyn. She’s a single mom, very young, and has ambition in her job and also in her life. She loves her job and always tries her best to adopt new technology. Her dream is going back to school like her parents and grandparents told her to do but her life with 2 kids is holding her back from that dream. This is a fact not only for Madelyn but also a big challenge for some young workers as well. Not only the dream of coming back to school but also many other difficulties effect to her goal of life. That is the time when Madelyn can become a Level 2 worker. That means she will stay in the same wage for long time and her life will have more difficulties.
At the time Madelyn had a job and can maintain it for long time in compare with her peers, that is a good thing. It seems to be a lucky but in fact Madelyn had tried hard. Her first job, she helped company saved money and minimized product damage by having both the precision and non-precision work done in the same place. The second reason is Madelyn is cheaper than a machine. When the factory wanted to replace workers by machine or robot they realized that using Madelyn ic cheaper than buying a new machine, that’s why she could have job.
The phrase “making it,” as Mr. Davidson uses it, refers both to manufacturing as an industry and to workers’ economic aspirations. His assessment is sobering, yet optimistic. The U.S. remains a top manufacturing venue. Later on, most of the factories from the US move out to some other countries where the labor work is much cheaper so it becomes very difficult to keep a job. The factories still in the US replace workers by new technology. In contrast, Germen and Japanese companies seem to run quite different models from US companies. They treasure their employees and don’t lay off them as easily as the