I’m a member of a union that includes both office and field workers. It works well for all the big, common negotiations. We all want better wages, healthcare, retirement, hours, etc. But when it comes to working conditions, we have clear differences. The most recent example of “return to work” shines a light on this.
The field workers, understandably, don’t give a shit about “return to work”. Some even resent the office workers for having the ability to work from home. Meanwhile, some office workers will likely quit without the ability to work from home. My company has recently decided to completely remove the ability to work from home. In response, the union is completely split on how to react.
How should I approach the internal discussions? I’m hesitant to advocate for pushback because not everyone will benefit. On the other hand, no resistance at all feels like a concession of worker’s rights.
TLDR: Work from home taken away. Should a union pushback?
I think through your argument and question you provide a false definition or perceived difference and others here respond based on the false premise of this difference.
The difference between “blue collar” “white collar” is not whether the one is working inisde an office/lab/building or outside in the field/machine room/dock etc. The difference has to do with the hierarchy of work/production itself. Whether you are doing the actual work that is part of production or overseeing the work done by others. Whether you are a secretary, a truck driver, a lab analysis technician, or a stock room clerk is not what makes you white collar. To oversee and direct the work of others doing work is what makes you white collar, even if you are in the field, whether you wear a suit or blue overalls doesn’t matter. I even had worked in a machine shop many ages ago where the owners themselves (2) would wear blue overalls and come to the shop and actually work the machines and tell new comers how to do something right, or how they wanted it done. Meanwhile there were people who wrote code/programmed machines to do mass-production (3d printing they call it 40y later) and never wore blue uniforms, they sat on a desk, read blueprints and typed in codes.
In some work settings those who are “managers” and oversee others’ work can terrorize them to do it right or do more or face unemployment, they do evaluations and if they don’t like your face or think threatened by you as knowing more than they do, especially when you prove them wrong, and will burry your future of raise or promotion. Those are problematic when they are in union as they act as snitches of the bosses and are really never on the side of the worker.
There can be engineers, material scientists, expert machinery technicians in the field, with construction boots whose only office may be a trailer parked in the mud. The bosses (owners) can not live without them, but their actual role of getting work done correctly or snitching on who is lurking and who is not, is a different issue.
Who tells you what to do and what to not do, who threatens you with having work tomorrow or not having any, or how necessary it is to put in overtime (sometimes for free) or don’t expect to work too long or at a higher pay, or in a better position, are they in the union?
Work for home is some bullshit notion that never did and never will work. The pathology of the capitalist is to actually see the army of the exploited and their managers on their means of production, not invisibly having work done off-site. There is “out-sourcing” for those things that can be done off-site. It is almost as a test to see who and when are essential and with the production can do without. So if your boss says take this task and do it home and bring the results in (or mail them in), it is a trap for being able to do without you. Those that physically must be at work are always more secure than those that work from home. Say people working on IT who must have access to the systems that need to be available for those lurking at home on their pijamas. If the servers are down and don’t respond there is not much you can do remotely to reset them or solve the problem.
There is much of capitalism producing and reproducing psycho-pathology that results from the insecurity of the bosses, which of course is caused by class struggle. They have no illusion there position in wealth and power is never secure, everyone around them can benefit from their demise. In this respect they want to see faces, they want to employee people who are actually useless in production but assure them their ownership and operation is secure. So they pay extra for some white collar thugs to maintain a buffer zone between the exploiter and the exploited. They want someone else to be mean and nasty to workers so they don’t have the emotional weight of doing it themselves.
Umm. Sorry, didn’t mean to provide flase definitions or anything like that. I was unsure how much information I wanted to share for the sake of anonymity. But let me provide additional context.
The “company” is an Irrigation District. Its a non-profit, community owned, public utility company.
By blue collar, I meant field workers. Linemen, operators, etc.
By white collar, I meant office workers. Engineers, technicians, and clerks.
All of those people are in the union. The managers (non-union) are pushing for removal of WFH. The managers are mostly chosen by the board of directors, who are elected every 5 years by the customers.
I guess by the “correct” definitions, everyone I’ve been talking about is blue collar?
That’s how I’d use blue/white collar, too.
iriyan does raise an interesting question, though: are there any workers in either camp who are also managers? Maybe gang leaders in the linemen? Or a chief engineer who instructs you and a few technicians/clerks? These people, if they exist in your org, will be most used to people doing what they say. Are these the loudest voices in the union, too?
I think you’re right to point out a difference between the role of different workers (some to do the work and some to manage those who do the work). And this probably is crucial in working out how to build solidarity in a union.
That said, I wonder if blue collar / white collar does map onto the concepts of proletariat / professional-managerial class? Are these consilient? It seems like there are two separate thought-systems / models here. Similar to the difference between ‘working class – middle class’ and ‘proletariat – bourgeois’. They both have their uses (‘proletariat – bourgeois’ is perhaps more useful) but they don’t really align and the terms are not generally interchangeable.
I’ve always seen blue collar as referring to manual work and white collar to office-type (mental?) work. To say that the small-business-owner-plumber is ‘white collar’ when they’re down in the sewage everyday with their employees doesn’t feel right to me. And I’d say the plumber’s self-employed accountant would be white collar, even if they don’t have any employees to instruct. At the same time, the plumber would likely be petite-bourgeois and the accountant would be petit-bourgeois/professional managerial class. And both (possibly along with the plumber’s employees) would be labour aristocrats. Assuming the workers are in the imperial core.
Think of a biologis, working at a lab, wearing a white robe and being in a nearly sterile environment, alalyzing sample after sample. They are not managing anyone, neither is their opinion on other workers weigh in firing, demoting or promoting anyone. A teacher or professor on the other hand is managing students, and can be abusive due to the power she/he holds on them (pass/fail them).
A plumber, or an electrician can work alone, they are self employed (meaning they work for a different boss in every site they go to work at) but are they above workers, maybe industrial plumbers working for a large manufacturer/constuction co. In some repair work due to the nature of the work one may need an assistant because 2 hands are not enough, or are not long enough, … (AC installations).
So what boils down as the difference among them is the authority they exercise within the workplace. The higher in hierarchy the more their interests are closely resembling the owners’, the lower they are the more likely they are to be in alliance at least with workers struggles.
More good points. And I largely agree with the thrust of your argument:
Blue/white collar, though, do not seem to be relational categories in the same way as proletariat/bourgeois. The two don’t seem to be compatible as they come from distinct systems of thought. Blue/white seems to be bourgeois in the same sense as working class/middle class.
Blue/white collar seem to be defined in relation to the type of work, whether the work is manual/mental. They are fixed, binary categories. As you point out, they can be helpful but they are flawed. This is probably because they’re not dialectical.
Historically, blue collar would have been a rough synonym for working class and white collar would have been a rough synonym for middle class. Workers in the field or factory would wear blue shirts because they would look cleaner even when muddy or oily. Workers in the office could wear white shirts because they weren’t going to get oily or muddy.
This bourgeois approach to class doesn’t have much explanatory power, except as shorthand. Attempts to make them more nuanced will always be limited because they’re fundamentally non-dialectical.
Whereas proletariat/bourgeois are dialectical. Defined in relation to the means of production, we can identify strata within the proletariat. The lower paid proles might shift between prole and lumpen. The higher paid proles might shift between PMC (professional/managerial) and labour aristocrat. These might earn more and have more security than the lowest strata of the ruling class, the petty bourgeois. And some people might be in more than one category.
Blue collar/white collar can be useful. This can be seen in the OP’s post. The type of work can dictate a different culture and different day-to-day interests (distinct from the differences between prole/labour aristocratic interests). But blue/white collar does not map on to dialectical concepts of class.
Additionally, there may be an office worker (white) or a joiner (blue) who has no power in their own workplace (because they’re at the bottom of the ladder) but who is also a landlord or owns stocks and shares, outside work, making them petty bourgeois, indicating that blue/white are not interchangeable or compatible with dialectical concepts of class.
Reducing dialectical concepts of class to a bourgeois binary of blue/white collar will lead to confusion because it strips the nuance from the dialectical categories. This is what makes it difficult to place the plumber who owns a small business. They are 100% blue collar if they’re still on the tools. But this tells us nothing (and is designed to tell us nothing) about their relation to the means of production (i.e. they’re a blue collar boss).
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