Kern County, Oil, And The Fight To Keep A Blue Collar California

Kern County, Oil, And The Fight To Keep A Blue Collar California

Share to Linkedin The current Bakersfield Museum of Art exhibit, "The Sound of Bakersfield" celebrates the music of ... [+] the post World War II decades in which Kern built its blue collar economy and middle class. Kern officials now are fighting to maintain both. Kern County, California stretches over 8100 square miles in the south Central Valley, an area larger in size than some states. Over the past half century its proud blue collar economy has been built on real goods that Americans have valued: a wide range of agricultural staples, food processing and manufacturing, and most of all energy, oil and gas. To travel to Kern today is to see the threats to this economy, and especially to the middle class jobs it has generated. It is to see a county whose officials, elected and appointed, are fighting to keep a blue collar and middle class presence, against the headwinds of global economic forces and California's own state policies and politics. *** Teresa Hitchcock, 60, is the director of the Kern Workforce Development Board, the entity charged with job training and placement of workers, especially unemployed and low income workers. Hitchcock has deep roots in the County. Her