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July 9th, 2020 | by NEWCAThere has seldom been a better spokesman for the construction trades, and other so-called ‘dirty jobs,” than Mike Rowe and now he’s returning to the show that made him famous and good old-fashioned hard work cool again. The Discovery Channel has launched a reboot of the show at a time when many Americans find themselves unemployed and searching for work that won’t be suddenly evaporate because it has been labeled “non-essential.”
The rebooted show, “Dirty Jobs: Rowe’d Trip,” premiered on July 7 and will air Tuesdays at 8pm CT. In a recent interview with Fox & Friends on the Fox News Channel, Rowe explained what is at the heart of the show’s message: “I think the big message is there's dignity in all work but if you have a skill, if you truly have a skill that's in demand, they can't take that away from you and you'll always have a measure of job security.”
At one point, show co-host Steve Doocy pointed out how the COVID-19 situation had hit workers in the restaurant and food service especially hard and wondered if the same was true for the many careers Rowe had highlighted throughout the original run of “Dirty Jobs.”
“In some ways, it’s opposite-ville, you know, Guy’s (Fieri) world is the restaurant world, and those guys truly took it in the neck, in my world. Uh, we were celebrating people who were mostly out of sight and out of mind…But part of what we learned about looking back into the compendium of dirty jobs…is so many of them are thriving. So many of them have been working 70, 80 hours a week. And it really does open up an interesting conversation about what is essential and what is not,” responded Rowe.
When asked about how to entice potential workers into fields, like the construction trades, that are viewed as dirty jobs, Rowe offered these insights, “Well, there's a long list of stuff, but you just said, the beginning thing is appreciation. And I know that's squishy and I know that's hard to quantify, but the best thing that dirty jobs did, the biggest positive unintended consequence of that show was challenging people to imagine a world without the UPS driver, without the infrastructure folks, without who's ever responsible for letting this internet connection work. So we can talk about this very thing. Fostering that level of appreciation is job one, because if you don't have that, you're simply pushing the rock up the hill.”
Rowe then shared that his foundation was giving away $1 million this month, in tandem with the relaunch of the show, to help people who want to learn a skill “that’s actually in demand, not an aspirational skill, not a wish fulfillment, but more welders, more steamfitters, more pipe fitters, more mechanics, more heating and air conditioning, guys and gals, uh, more electricians. Those jobs are wide open. And if you want to talk about job security in the coming days, months, weeks, and years, that's the area.”
You can watch the interview and read the accompanying story here.