Is it just possible that there are fewer people who consider themselves working class now?

[Skidmore]

Manufacturing jobs were shipped systematically overseas and replaced with service sector jobs for the past two decades. Everybody who could got to wear a tie to work and vanity titles were bestowed and positions labelled as managment so that corporations could sidestep meeting various obligations for employees. Everyone had the chance to be a hothouse variety boss. Add to that thdevelopment of business models which permitted employees to become "owners" of the company they worked for--Enronization. As union memberships declined, workers who would have otherwise been covered by a union contract negotiated individually for their own contracts, something that used to be reserved for management level employees. Perhaps the problem with organizing workers has less to do with apathy then the fact that there is a larger portion of the workforce who have come to see themselves a part of management. Just putting this out there for people to mull over because I think that the way workers view themselves has changed over the course of time.

[readmoreoften]

1. People don't consider themselves working class because the term "worker" has systematically

been removed from our vocabulary and replaced with "employee" (a passive term), "partner" (ha!), and "associate". Moreover, increasing numbers have been reclassified out of union positions and renamed "manager" and even "student." Nurses are put on a rotating schedule where everyone does a little paperwork so everyone is a "manager" and no one is eligible for unionization under the NLRB. More and more work university is farmed out to matriculated students who grade and teach independent courses, but they aren't "workers" they're "students"--as if someone can't be both.

Lastly, the over-identification of industrial workers with "the working class" has left people confused. They think they're not workers because they work in the service industry: baristas, teachers, salesclerks, stockers, telemarketers. But they are indeed workers.

[Hannah Bell]

8. or "consumer"!

[Greyhound]

2. Last time I read it (about 2 years ago), 91% of American identify themselves as 'middle-class'.

The rich think they are 'middle-class' because they know people with more $ than they, and the poor think they are 'middle-class' because they know people with less.

'Workers' are the people we look down on.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. Absolutely true. Today, 90% of jobs are beneath the self image of 90% of people. n/t

[OnlinePoker]

4. I guess it comes down to what the definition of "working class" is.

This is one I found on answers.com

n.
The socioeconomic class consisting of people who work for wages, especially low wages, including unskilled and semiskilled laborers and their families.

http://www.answers.com/topic/working-class

If it goes to income, Walmart greeter would definitely classify as a working class job, but plumbers would probably come in as middle income earners.

[Hannah Bell]

9. is your primary income source a job working for someone else or a SS, UE, or welfare

check from the government?

you're working class.

working class is the class that lives by their labor, not by their capital.

the middle-class *is* working class.

[OnlinePoker]

10. So by your definition, people in middle and even upper management of companies...

...because they work for someone higher up the food chain and also do labor in their fashion are also working class?

[Hannah Bell]

11. if they live by their labor, they're working class. being a courtier to the king

doesn't make you royalty, just a higher-paid lackey with delusions of grandeur.

lose the king's favor, lose your comfy lifestyle.

[doc03]

5. Work is not valued in our society today. A steelworker at my

plant that drives a high-lift is now a Plant Transportation Specialist, a Janitor is a Service Technician and a person that runs a jackhammer is a Operating Technician I. Give me a freakin break.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Yes, we are all "middle class" now

We are working class, blue collar, union household. But many of my hubby's co-workers think they ARE middle class, and not blue collar.

[supernova]

7. "hothouse variety boss" = +100

Nice turn of phrase.

:thumbsup: