Bethlehem to Burgers: The Forgotten Man in Western Pennsylvania

Blue-collar workers experienced a torrid time in the United States during the period of deindustrialization of the 1970s and 80s. No greater area was hit than the Western Pennsylvania region by these changes. As someone who used to live in this part of the country, I can tell you that the sentiments in this article and these experiences are still there today. I very much remember hearing and seeing the impacts of this change in practice in small-town Altoona, Pennsylvania.

When looking at the article, the theme was about blue-collar workers being forced into other fields due to deindustrialization. As Gabriel put it in the piece, there was a direct relationship between the “displacement of industrial workers and the growth of the new service economy” (pg.185). While other parts of the country experienced significant amounts of unemployment, this part of Pennsylvania experienced poverty at levels above the national average. This impact economically took its toll on these communities because the skills of steel workers are “stubbornly rooted in the old economy” (pg. 192). The collapse of the industry also meant that the benefits many of the workers would have received dissipated. Welfare itself was also cut during this time with a conservative governance structure that intended to cut programs of this sort. This meant the social safety net decreased at the same time as the move towards deindustrialization occurred creating a unequivocal economic disaster. Unfortunately for these workers back then and today they were unable to, as our journalist friends say, “learn to code”.