"LIKE SPINACH TO POPEYE"
By Alan S. Brown

It’s hard for John Ratzenberger to maintain a cheery disposition about manufacturing. Yet Ratzenberger, who played know-it-all postman Cliff Clavin in the television sitcom Cheers, is not sitting around and crying in his beer about it.

Instead, he co-founded Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs, a foundation dedicated to introducing young people to manufacturing and trade careers.

It will not be easy. In 2009, his foundation surveyed a cross-section of American teens and found that more than half had little or no interest in a manufacturing career. Another 21 percent were ambivalent.

It’s a point of view shared by adults as well. “I’ve talked with guidance counselors. Their attitude is that it’s a failure if you don’t send kids to college,” Ratzenberger said.

Ratzenberger heard the same talk growing up in Bridgeport, Conn. The city once boasted 500 factories, but many were already closing as he grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. “Even in Bridgeport, we were told, ‘If you don’t study, you’ll wind up in some factory.’ Lots of people looked down their noses at factories and manual labor,” he recalled.

John Ratzenberger (center image); his foundation’s activities include manufacturing camps for young people.

Ratzenberger, whose father was a truck driver, laughs that he lived on the wrong side of the tracks. Yet his neighborhood was vital in one important way: “I was surrounded by people who made, built, fixed, and invented things.”

Although Ratzenberger graduated from nearby Sacred Heart University, he worked blue-collar jobs while he attempted to break into acting. He operated a tractor at Woodstock. Two years later, he left for London, where he supported himself by framing homes.

In the U.K., Ratzenberger became an improvisational theater standout and took an occasional bit part in movies. His moment came in 1982, when he joined the cast of Cheers. The show ran for 11 seasons.

In 2004, a decade after leaving Cheers, he began hosting Made in America, a Travel Channel documentary series about American manufacturers. The show covered operations as diverse as 3M, Campbell’s Soup, Caterpillar, Chris-Craft Industries, Harley-Davidson, and Trek Bicycles.

Something clicked as Ratzenberger made the rounds of American factories. “I went to about 300 factories and realized that as a nation, we’re functionally illiterate in manual skills,” he said.

“In the last 25 years, schools have eliminated all their shop courses. Where would our kids learn manual skills? When was the last time you met a kid who built a tree house? That’s where all these skills start. You build something or fix a bike, then you fix a car or build a boat.”

Without a steady influx of young people, factories are having trouble finding electricians and other skilled trades people.

“I found out that kids were graduating high school and couldn’t read a ruler. One company asked applicants to mark 1⅜ inches on a picture of a ruler. So many couldn’t do it, they had to change it to a multiple choice question. They had to start a program to train employees to use such basic tools as channel locks, screwdrivers, and vise grip pliers,” Ratzenberger said.

Ratzenberger started Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs to turn things around. His celebrity helped him deliver an often surprising message. “I told a bunch of guidance counselors that modern factories are clean and computerized, and that workers earn good salaries with health plans and pensions. They had no idea,” he recalled.

He concedes that highly publicized layoffs have given factory jobs a bad reputation. Yet as Baby Boomers enter retirement, he foresees shortages of skilled workers. Welders are among the most difficult jobs to fill in North America, he said, yet no one is teaching kids how to weld.

Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs also funds 40 camps and events where kids can experience building for themselves. “We organized one in Montana for five- to 12-year-olds,” he recalled. “We had carpentry kits set up. They were there for eight hours, and when we said it was time to leave, three started crying. It was the first time any of them had ever built anything.”

Ratzenberger paused, then said: “Manufacturing to the United States is like spinach to Popeye. It’s Western Civilization we’re talking about—and it’s based on someone’s ability to put a nut and a bolt together.”