‘Dirty Jobs’ host Mike Rowe backs the trades at Concord summit
Bring
Back the Trades summit organizer Amanda Grappone-Osmer, left, presents a
map of schools that attended the event to Mike Rowe as Governor-elect
Kelly Ayotte looks on. (Photos by Trisha Nail)In 2001, a TV professional in San Francisco named Mike was approached by his mother, who told him that his grandfather had turned 90 years old. She called attention to the fact that he was nearing the end of his life. She told Mike she wanted her dad — a former electrician, plumber, builder, pipe fitter and welder — to be able to “turn on the TV and see you doing something that looks like work.”
Inspired, Mike one day decided to bring a camera crew into the sewers of the Bay Area and hosted an episode of his show, “Evening Magazine,” among the rats, roaches and smells of the tunnels to give an inside look of where waste goes.
That’s how Mike Rowe developed the concept for his hit Discovery Channel series “Dirty Jobs,” he said on a stage adjacent to New Hampshire Governor-elect Kelly Ayotte during the Bringing Back the Trades summit at NHTI.
The
popular TV host shared stories from his two decades advocating for the
trades, praised the Granite State for its manufacturing outlook and took
questions from Ayotte and the public, over 4,000 of whom attended the
event on campus and remotely on Nov. 15.
That
figure is according to summit organizer Amanda Grappone-Osmer, who
wanted to gather the state’s labor workforce and the next generation of
tradespeople in celebration of Grappone Automotive’s 100th anniversary,
working with contractor PROCON and the Community College System of New
Hampshire.
Grappone-Osmer’s
great-grandparents took out a $2,000 mortgage on their home on Nov. 15,
1924, to open what was originally an automobile service station in
downtown Concord, she told Jack Heath, host of radio show “The Pulse of
NH,” ahead of the summit’s kickoff that morning. She chronicled the full
story in a book she’s published, “Grappone Automotive: The Founding,”
first printed a day before the event.
The
summit was linked to Concord nonprofit Bring Back the Trades, founded
by Rye business owner Steve Turner, which seeks to provide scholarships
to Granite State youth in trade school programs. With help from state
officials, the summit attracted students from 54 high schools statewide
as far north as Stewartstown to the live Q&A between Rowe and Ayotte
and a follow-up career fair on the NHTI grounds dubbed Tradeapalooza.
Under
a large tent, just over 80 New Hampshire businesses including
construction, electrical, energy and plumbing firms mingled with schools
and other visitors to give a glimpse of their work and share job
openings.
Some
students also received a collective $105,000 in scholarships that day,
which they were presented with in a ceremony after Rowe and Ayotte
exited the stage.
“We
proclaimed to the United States that New Hampshire is a place that cares
about the trades and is doing something about (supporting them),”
Grappone-Osmer told NH Business Review the week following the summit,
which she said took about 10 months of planning. “I’m hopeful that
(Rowe) chooses to come back and keeps up with our progress.”
She
and other event organizers created a map illustrating the schools that
turned out the day of the summit, which she presented to Rowe during the
live Q&A segment.
“Even though you can’t teach work ethic, you can build a
curriculum around these things,” Rowe said on stage after receiving the
map. “If things go the way I hope, 54 schools will be 5,400 in a couple
of years.”
Rowe,
speaking to Ayotte and the audience, said he feels that today’s youth
and young adults have grown up with the notion that trade jobs have been
minimized and encouraged less in schools than in decades past, instead
being routed toward four-year college degrees.
“My
generation has done a really great job of hiding opportunities that
should not be hidden,” he said. “Sometime in the mid-’70s, we took shop
class out of high schools. We did that for a lot of reasons that made
sense at the time, but that unleashed all kinds of unintended
consequences. One of those consequences was that we removed … the
optical proof that these jobs actually existed.”
That
feeling led Rowe to found the mikeroweWORKS Foundation to motivate
today’s generations of emerging adults to enter trade careers, which its
website says has granted more than $5 million in scholarships since it
was formed in 2008. The foundation also aims to get students into
training programs.
“I’ve
been working with the United Technical Institute for years, and my
foundation has sent probably 300 to 400 people through their diesel
program,” Rowe said.
But
the TV personality said efforts are always ongoing. He shared that he
recently received a call from one of the leaders of BlueForge Alliance, a
Texas-based network of manufacturers that supply the U.S. Navy with
submarines.
“This guy
says to me, ‘Mike, we need to hire 100,000 skilled tradesmen in the next
nine years. Where are they? Can you help us find them?” Rowe recalled,
addressing summit listeners.
“I said I don’t know, maybe, but I’ll tell you where they are:
They’re in the eighth grade, and some are in this room.”
Rowe
says the right marketing can get prospective tradespeople into those
positions. During an interview with NH Business Review, he said everyone
needs different methods of receiving the same message — one campaign
won’t resonate the same with every young person.
Mike
Rowe chats with Jack Heath, radio host of “The Pulse of NH,” following a
public appearance at the Bring Back the Trades summit on Nov. 15 at
NHTI.
“There’s
only one way to do it, and that is to tell the true stories of real
people from people in those industries that have prospered as a result
of mastering that skill,” Rowe said. “Kids today, their BS meter is
highly tuned, so you’ve got to fish where the fish are. You’re going to
have to go on Reels, on Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube.”
From
Rowe’s standpoint, messaging shouldn’t just come from employers but
also from states. He expressed concern that companies may not always
best pitch their work in job postings, but it’s when job seekers see
examples of that work in their area — like projects with state entities —
that employers have something to show. He’s seen this in states like
South Dakota and Alabama, whose governments have led trade campaigns to
stimulate the workforce for major manufacturers.
“On
a true statewide level, you need public-private partnerships,” Rowe
said. “You need governors who are absolutely on board, and you need the
big skilled trade companies in play, like big construction and electric
companies.”
In New
Hampshire, Rowe said he’s witnessed the enthusiasm for trade employment,
and it’s up to the state to harness it. The state’s next governor being
his fellow speaker at the event made for a fortuitous discussion,
though Grappone-Osmer told NH Business Review that Ayotte’s appearance
was intended to be nonpolitical and determined before the incoming governor announced her campaign in July 2023.
“She’s
a friend of the trades, and she’s done work on that when she was a
senator,” Grappone-Osmer said. “So we thought she was a good,
recognizable person at that point.”
Ayotte
herself referenced this work, sharing that she and Rowe had first met
during her U.S. Senate term when Rowe testified before the Senate
Commerce Committee on a similar topic of inadequate trade education.
Rowe
and the audience didn’t waste the opportunity to acknowledge Ayotte’s
new job and sway her into continuing support for the trades as she
reenters the state house, shaping the Granite State to be a role model
for others.
Samantha
Patjane, standing with mic, asks Mike Rowe if he’s involved with
programs that recruit automotive technicians at the Bring Back the
Trades summit at NHTI Nov. 15.
“Far
be it for me to tell you what to do in your term, but you could be a
real annoyance to a lot of other governors simply by saying, ‘What are
you guys waiting for?’” Rowe told Ayotte, to which she responded
affirmatively.
One
audience member asked Ayotte if she is considering pushing for a state
education curriculum around accessible career-tech education (CTE)
courses and
principles in the S.W.E.A.T. Pledge, a list of 12 statements of lessons
Rowe developed to galvanize workers (standing for “Skill & Work
Ethic Aren’t Taboo”).
“I
think this is so important,” Ayotte said. “It means getting the CTE
programs into the schools with guidance counselors, but also the
S.W.E.A.T.
Pledge
is phenomenal — an ethos for how you live your life. It’s also thinking
innovatively (about) bringing the private sector to the table. There
already are a number of those efforts underway in New Hampshire; we need
to build on them.”
As
two examples, Ayotte referenced a microelectronics boot camp at Nashua
Community College and an accelerated welding training program at
Manchester Community College to support submarine shipbuilding in New
England. NCC’s boot camp was co-created by BAE Systems, and MCC’s
program is partnered with Granite State Manufacturing and defense
contractor alliance SENEDIA.
“The
word has to get out there,” she said. “I’d love to brag to the other
governors about this, because what this will do for our state is grow
our economy, (and) it’ll keep our young people here.”
Fields
like microelectronics fall into a grouping of disciplines many might
call STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), but Rowe
said he finds the acronym “problematic” because it disregards the
creative value of such trades. He said this consideration is also
important to keeping young people in such work and New Hampshire.
“I
think it should be STEAM; I think the A should stand for art,” he told
an NH Business Review. “Because when you take the art of labor, you
diminish it.
You begin to reduce a job to nothing but its various component parts.”
A
commemorative logo recognizes Grappone Automotive’s founding centennial
at the Bring Back the Trades Tradeapalooza career fair. The event was
the brainchild of Grappone family member Amanda Grappone-Osmer.
In
the wake of the summit, that’s also the thinking on Grappone-Osmer’s
mind, whose family established the Gregory J. Grappone Humanities
Institute at Saint Anselm College in 2018. Looking forward, she said
she’s seeking ways of “braiding together the work the Grappone
Humanities Insitute does with all the work we’re about to do in the
skilled trades.”
“The gap between what’s
perceived as academia and blue-collar work, I really feel that’s just a
false narrative, that you have to be one or the other,” Grappone-Osmer
said.
‘We
proclaimed to the United States that New Hampshire is a place that cares
about the trades and is doing something about (supporting them).’