Working Class : Challenging Myths about Blue-Collar Labor [1 ed.] 9781588269775, 9781588267566

Citation preview

Working Class

Working Class Challenging Myths About Blue-Collar Labor

Jeff Torlina

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2011 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU  2011 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Torlina, Jeff. Working class: challenging myths about blue-collar labor / Jeff Torlina. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58826-756-6 (hbk.: alk. paper) 1. Blue collar workers. 2. Working class. I. Title. HD4901.T67 2011 331.7'9—dc22 2011000465 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

vii

Preface 1 The Meaning of Work

1

2 The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

23

3 How We Came to Devalue Blue-Collar Work

43

4 Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

59

5 Conceptions of Class Hierarchy

83

6 Occupational Prestige

97

7 Making Sense of Working-Class Attitudes

113

8 False Dichotomies:

The Importance of Experiential Knowledge 9 Reclaiming the Value of Labor

127 147

10 Recasting the Image of Blue-Collar Work

163

11 Conclusions and Implications

179

Appendix: Methodology and Data Bibliography Index About the Book

191 209 219 222

v

Preface

THIS BOOK TOOK MORE THAN TWENTY years to write, and it could

not have been done any other way. My interest in the topic began in the mid-1980s, when I took college classes on social stratification. I learned that broad categories of people held common values and shared similar lifestyles because they did related work and possessed comparable economic resources. As my professors explained, lifestyles and life chances are largely determined by people’s class positions. I was taught that the particular circumstances associated with each social class translated into large groups of people having varying degrees of privilege and constraint, but also different degrees of sophistication, intellect, creativity, and other qualities. As I studied the social class system, my research generated more questions than answers. The textbooks that I read described working class people in unflattering terms. Differences between the working class and their middle class counterparts were described as deficiencies, with implications of inferiority. The skills and activities in which my working-class family members and neighbors took pride were described negatively in the research literature. In order to resolve the discrepancies between the academics’ definitions of working-class life and the understandings expressed by the working-class people that surrounded me, I became fully invested in both walks of life. I eventually earned a Ph.D. in sociology and attained an academic position at a university. I also became a skilled craftsman in the construction trades, working in the industry for nearly two decades. Developing dual careers took a long time, but it provided insights from both perspectives, and it allowed access to knowledge and attitudes that are only available to members of each group. vii

viii

Preface

My questions about class inequality led me to focus on work, because the type of work a person does is so closely connected to the class with which one is identified. Blue-collar work, that is, manual labor, became my specific focus because of the centrality it has to the prevailing conceptions of class inequality. This raised several questions: What are the inherent rewards of blue-collar labor, which is frequently dirty, difficult work? How do blue-collar workers understand their place in society? Why don’t others, as scholars and members of the larger society, see what they see? The negativity with which the working class is regarded is a powerful means of legitimating class inequality. Of the many injustices faced by those of the working class, one of the greatest is that others rarely take the time to listen to them and to understand their perspective. They have much to contribute, which leads to a final question: What are the consequences of turning our backs on the country’s working class? These are the questions that underpin the book. * * * My efforts could not have landed here without the help of many wonderful individuals. Two in particular stand out in the support they gave to the writing of this book. Robert Hauhart spent many hours reading and critiquing a previous draft. He pointed out when my logic was unclear and when the themes of my argument were confounded. Robert’s collegial friendship over the past few years helped hone my thinking so that I could finally express my message clearly. Lynn England’s wisdom and broad expertise make him an ideal mentor, and his sage insights, compassion, and peaceful demeanor have helped me develop as a scholar. Lynn has collaborated with me on several projects, and out of that collaboration came important passages in this text. Particular among them is the section “Acknowledging the Words of Workers” in Chapter 7. I thank him for allowing his words and ideas to contribute to this discussion. Both Robert and Lynn provided advice for improvement that could not be fully implemented in this text. This project is stronger because of their advice, but the errors and shortcomings remain completely my responsibility. I am also grateful for the work and support of Andrew Berzanskis at Lynne Rienner Publishers. Without him, this book would never have been written. Dennis Marshall, a freelance copyeditor for Lynne Rienner Publishers, deserves much credit for the final prose. Those who guided me when I began this project more than two decades ago ought to be acknowledged as well. Only now that I am university faculty and have students of my own do I fully appreciate the sacrifices made by James

Preface

ix

Zetka, Steven Seidman, and especially Karyn Loscocco. They may not even remember me, but I can never forget their guidance and inspiration. Lastly, I dedicate this book to the thirty-one men whose interviews inform my arguments. Each of the men were guaranteed anonymity as a condition of the interview, otherwise they could be included as coauthors.

1 The Meaning of Work

BLUE-COLLAR WORK IS MISUNDERSTOOD. Its meaning has changed over time so that its nature is identified differently by various groups that have contrasting relationships to blue-collar occupations and to manual workers. Today’s society is marked by the disappearance of the large numbers of manufacturing and agricultural jobs that were once the backbone of the economy. As blue-collar jobs are outsourced, we have witnessed the decline of the labor unions and trade organizations that used to champion not only workers’ interests but also their image. The loss of working-class institutions has left few voices to speak highly of workers, and popular culture now displays contempt for “dirty” jobs and those who do them. As the philosopher-mechanic Matthew Crawford recently lamented,1 US society has turned its back on the blue-collar trades and now pushes young people into college, rather than instilling skills and appreciation for physically productive vocations. Contemporary images in popular culture degrade working-class people,2 due greatly to the negative depiction of their manual labor. As Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft shows, however, there is an undercurrent in working-class communities that defies that negative identity. Those who perform manual labor recognize it as satisfying and deeply meaningful. Consider a recent example: On August 6, 2007, a horrific cave-in at the Crandall Canyon coal mine in central Utah killed six miners. Ten days later three other men died in a second cave-in while trying to rescue the original six. As the national media and government agencies swarmed into the area, community members created a website, crandallcanyonvoices.com, to communicate information, provide support, express feelings, and explain their perspective on the disaster. The residents of this small mining town realized that outsiders would define

1

2

Working Class

their jobs and their industry in ways different from their own, so they attempted to present their viewpoint on the tragic events and their occupations through the online forum. In the aftermath of the disaster, and knowing that coal mining has a negative image in the minds of most Americans, one of the miners posted his feelings about working in the mine: “I love my job. I don’t have to do it. There are a lot of jobs I could take but I love mining. It has its risks but there are jobs that are more dangerous. I am a coal miner. I am good at what I do. Unlike many people who sit in their cubicles all day miserable, I really like going to work most days.” Another miner posted, “I worked for the railroad when I was young, but the day I quit and went to work in the coal mine, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”3 There is a paradox in the words of these men. Their statements were made in relation to the catastrophe that killed several of their coworkers and injured many others. This disaster was only the latest to kill miners, and it would not be the last. Not only does coal mining take the lives of workers with an alarming regularity, the work is dirty and strenuous. If that were not enough, it also takes place deep underground, where the working conditions test psychological strength as much as physical capacities. The love for the job that these miners express is difficult for many people to understand. How can men declare satisfaction, commitment, even love for work that is dirty, taxing, and potentially lethal? The answers are complicated. It is something one truly needs to experience to understand, but in the chapters that follow nearly three dozen blue-collar workers will do their best to explain it through formal interviews in which they were asked the same question posed by sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd in their famous Middletown study published in 1929: “Why do they work so hard?” That question began the research for this book, but the inquiry quickly became fixated on the many different ways that work was central to the laborers’ identities, to their self-esteem, and to their worldviews. Rather than the depictions of subservience, alienation, and meaninglessness that describe blue-collar work in social-science textbooks, it became clear that these workers were proud of their trades and their products. They felt important in their skills and their efforts, and many of them regarded manual labor as the essential ingredient to an honorable and meaningful life. This book will explain why working-class people find blue-collar work rewarding and meaningful, in spite of its stresses, dangers, and physical challenges, but the book is more deeply concerned with the difference between the workers’ expressions of satisfaction and the way sociologists define their situations. It is understandable that those who

The Meaning of Work

3

have never lived in working-class communities or had blue-collar careers would fail to comprehend the motives and rewards of manual work. Unfortunately, that has not stopped researchers from making explicit and implicit claims about it. It is even common for intellectuals to assert that they understand the workers’ situations better than the workers themselves.4 Such perspectives can be frustrating to working-class people, as the Utah mining community articulated on its website in the aftermath of the cave-in: “Residents are currently watching certain political leaders haggle over the Crandall tragedies and the future of the coal industry without the proper knowledge needed to guide their assessments in a fair and constructive manner—knowledge which comes from living in a coal mining community and working within a mine.” Sociologists do not influence the lives of working-class people as directly as “certain political leaders” may, but their impact is felt, even if less directly. Science has power in Western society, and the theoretical conceptions of blue-collar work grant legitimacy to the negative images of working-class people in the broader popular culture. Media images that portray the blue-collar worker as, in the words of Michael Parenti, a “laughable buffoon” 5 are endorsed by those theories, providing the stereotypes with the authority of science. Sociologists did not cause the prejudiced view of the working class, but they give it empirical support. The assumptions of inferiority in the working class further justify, or make sense of, circumstances that degrade working-class people. When blue-collar jobs are exported overseas, there is a tacit acceptance that such jobs are not necessary or desired. When wages fall for production workers, it appears reasonable. When family farms go out of business, few people are alarmed. Seemingly rational social policies promote or condone the loss of working-class neighborhoods and institutions. The destruction of urban and rural economies and communities is seen as simply the cost of progress. The treatment of working-class people by teachers, by police, by judges, by employers, and by strangers encountered on the street is shaped by negative connotations that are confirmed in the social-science literature because theoretical generalizations of blue-collar work focus only on its negative components.

The Importance of Work

Work is one of the central institutional experiences in human life. It is much more than simply a means of earning money: it impacts where people live, how they live, and, for many people, why they live. Americans

4

Working Class

typically spend more time on the job than in any other single activity. Their identities are tied to their occupations in psychological as well as in social terms. By any measure, work is a very important part of existence. Work is also an important concept for determining status and identity. It has always been crucial for sociology. Work was the central concept for Karl Marx and another foundational theorist, Emile Durkheim, who made the division of labor the principal variable in his most important research project.6 In the twentieth century, work became the primary indicator for social-class membership. Harold Kerbo, a noted expert on class inequality, explains that working-class—which he makes synonymous with blue-collar—describes people of “low skill levels” who hold mid-to-low positions: Working-class or blue-collar people occupy mid-level to low positions within the occupational structure. Working-class occupations are typically characterized by relatively low skill level, lower education, and a lower degree of complexity, as well as manual instead of nonmanual labor.7

Other stratification scholars concur. For example, Pat Ainley states that the sociological definition of class “follows conventional distinctions between manual and nonmanual work.” 8 Leonard Beeghley asserts, “The essence of middle-class life is to do nonmanual labor.” 9 “Manual labor,” Beeghley says, is “the essence of working-class life.”10 The association of work with class membership makes the depiction of blue-collar work crucial to the portrayal of the working class in general. When working-class and blue-collar are essentially the same concept, the characterization of blue-collar work connotes the same traits in those who perform manual labor. When blue-collar work is not fully understood, it distorts the identity of working-class people. Sociologists have been good at describing the disadvantages of blue-collar work, such as how it is exploited, but they have generally paid little attention to workers’ personal connection to their manual jobs and how they are rewarded or satisfied. Those who prefer working in a dark, dirty, dangerous coal mine over a cubical in a comfortable, safe office building are a riddle to social researchers. Leading theories fail to adequately explain why manual laborers express love for their jobs. When blue-collar work is seen only for its negative aspects, it directly translates to the negative portrayal of working-class citizens. Working-class life is multidimensional and therefore impossible to explain in simple terms. Like all class positions, there are wide-ranging

The Meaning of Work

5

experiences that may be positive in some ways, while negative in others. This is true for blue-collar work itself. Theories of blue-collar work typically focus on structural factors but disregard the cultural meanings of work. This is useful in some ways, but it provides an incomplete picture. We must take a deeper look at what it means to do blue-collar work. There are many shortcomings in manual jobs: they can be dangerous, they can be difficult and dirty, and they can be exploited. But there are also positive aspects of blue-collar work. The conception of blue-collar work is too often limited to its deficiencies, while the satisfying dimensions are ignored or marginalized. The standpoint of blue-collar workers presents a more complex story. Their jobs are far from ideal, but the values of working-class people make their jobs meaningful and rewarding in many ways. In the name of scientific accuracy, and to correct the distortions through which workingclass people are seen by middle-class society, the gap between the meaning of work for manual workers and the meaning of work in social theory must be narrowed.

A Fresh Look at Blue-Collar Work

This book is part of a growing movement in the scholarly literature to reevaluate blue-collar work and its place in working-class life. Recent scholarship compliments long traditions of class analysis in sociology by highlighting aspects of working-class jobs and lifestyles that provide rewards, meaning, and identities in ways that are not often granted in professional occupations and communities. Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft (2009) persuasively argues that blue-collar work is a source of dignity and a meaningful expression of intellect, skill, and importance. Mike Rose’s The Mind at Work (2005) eloquently shows that blue-collar work is at once exploited, exhausting, dirty, dangerous, insecure, and frustrating, but that it is also a source of honor, knowledge, identity, pride, and relationships to things larger than the individual.11 Rose also shows that blue-collar work demands intelligence in ways that are rarely acknowledged by scholars. There are multiple dimensions of blue-collar work, both in terms of what workers put into their jobs and what they get from them, yet both of these authors criticize dominant scholarship and popular culture for narrowly focusing on the negative dimensions. Rewards of physical work are often overlooked, allowing white-collar society generally to consider manual labor a source of stigma and oppression.

6

Working Class

This book adds dimension to the analysis of blue-collar work through interviews with working-class men. It uses the interviews, which were grounded in ethnography, to critique the concepts of work and class as they are used in social research. This book is, in fact, written by a mason with seventeen years experience in the construction trade. The interviews were formal, semistructured, and tape-recorded, but at the same time they were conversations between fellow workers, rather than interrogations between upper-middle-class scientists and men of the working class. These particular workers cannot represent all working-class people, but they collectively make a strong case that there are highly consistent values and attitudes among a broad cross section of blue-collar workers that define working-class jobs and lives in positive ways. The interviews with a wide variety of workers from construction trades and from factories present a convincing challenge to the theoretical image of blue-collar work and workers that are used in most sociological research. The dominant conception of blue-collar work is not altogether wrong, but it is incomplete. Blue-collar work is defined according to only a few characteristics, but it is actually a multidimensional experience. The prevailing definitions of work and workers deny the many ways that work has meaning and how it influences the identities of workers. From the perspective of the workers, the manual trades are a source of dignity and satisfaction. When blue-collar workers are allowed to explain their outlook on their class position, they clearly recognize the stigma that white-collar classes apply to their status, but they also describe why they disregard that partisan judgment in favor of their own viewpoint, which sees their standing as honorable and important.

Class-Based Cultures

The world is viewed differently by working-class and professional-class people. What is important, honorable, and desirable may be understood according to different standards. Just as hobbies, tastes, manners, language, and so forth are often different between shop-floor workers and white-collar managers, work has different meanings for the two groups. Charles Sabel explained in his 1982 book Work and Politics how bluecollar workers have little concern for the things office workers will fight to defend. Likewise, the things that define fulfillment and dignity in blue-collar work have little importance for white-collar managers.12

The Meaning of Work

7

The act of producing raw materials through extractive industries and agriculture, as well as physically transforming those raw materials into finished products, is remarkably meaningful in the lives of those who work in those fields. Other manual jobs require that workers physically engage with their subject matter. The conditions of that work shape the values and living standards of working-class people. Moreover, successfully engaging in those occupations requires that workers value the principles of craftsmanship in their trade or field, that they have a willingness to take on the physical and mental challenges of that labor, and that they engage in the community of their peers. The result is a subculture in which values, norms, identities, and worldviews are shared among those whose lives revolve around blue-collar labor. A distinct workingclass culture is not as strong today as it was a hundred years ago, but working-class values still lead working-class people to desire the things found in blue-collar work. A working-class worldview presents many reasons for investing in, and obtaining meaning from, blue-collar work, even though it might not be appreciated by other classes. White-collar labor, too, has a requisite set of attitudes, values, identities, and views of the world that make sense of the demands and living standards associated with white-collar work. A subculture emerged among those who collectively live and work in white-collar circles. That professional-class culture recognizes attributes of white-collar work in positive terms. The two cultural experiences—white-collar/blue-collar— are different in many respects and they therefore require sets of ideas that are also different in order to make sense of those divergent experiences. The professionals who shape the images of working-class people in social theory and in the media present those depictions from the standpoint of their culture. The portrayal of working-class people in social research and in popular culture reflects a cultural logic that does not accurately apply to working-class experiences. The behavior of working-class people does not always make sense to those who do not share their cultural logic. Professionals tend therefore to squeeze their explanations for blue-collar workers’ actions into their own logical framework. Actions and motives of working-class people, which may be rational from the perspective of working-class culture, are construed by professionals in negative terms. The individuals who historically have made up the social sciences came from the professional class.13 That explains why blue-collar workers are described negatively in early scholarship.14 A classic example is Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s influential writing on scientific management.

8

Working Class

Taylor describes the most suitable laborer as “so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type.”15 In more recent decades, scholars from the working class have entered the academy and have brought an important alternative perspective to the study of society. The nature of science, however, makes it resistant to new perspectives. Scholars engaging with the discourse of their discipline must confront traditional theories and do so in the language already established by their predecessors. The result is that even working-class researchers must use the prevailing conceptual framework if they are to be accepted by the established community of scholars. Devalued conceptions of working-class people are thus perpetuated over time, even by those with working-class origins. Professionals have applied their values to the understanding of social-class differences. Working-class lifestyles and occupations are defined negatively partly because professionals regard them as distasteful. Growing up in a professional household leads people to prefer whitecollar jobs and to value lifestyles associated with those positions. There is an assumption inherent in theories of social class that blue-collar work is inferior to white-collar work. The theories reflect white-collar values. Theorists fail to realize that the working class possesses alternative cultural understandings for blue-collar work and working-class lifestyles that define those experiences as meaningful and rewarding. The next chapter begins to present those cultural understandings that were communicated in interviews with blue-collar workers. The following is a brief selection of those factory and construction workers’ statements as an illustration of their positive connection to their work.

Workers’ Attitudes About Their Jobs

Like the miners who express enjoyment for their blue-collar jobs, all but one of the thirty-one men in this sample said they enjoyed their blue-collar work. A brief selection of statements from the sampled factory and construction workers will give a feeling for this. A thirty-seven-year-old shipping/receiving worker said: “I enjoy it. It is what I like to do.” A fiftythree-year-old pipe fitter from a silicone factory said: I am rewarded in every way I can be. Fiscally, they pay me good. I am rewarded mentally; I am occasionally mentally challenged—a job that has not been done, this is new; we don’t know what is going

The Meaning of Work

9

to happen; can we do it? Physically, I like to get in there and do it. I like nothing better than going home and feeling great. They pay me to take a shower. I take a shower before I go home, before I leave. I say, “What a country!” We always joke around. It’s great. A twenty-nine-year-old union mason’s laborer did not like the fact that work tended to slow during the winter months. With that exception, he said, “It’s great.” When asked if he ever wished he had a different job when things were busy, he replied, “No, no. Nope. I like it. I enjoy it. I enjoy the hard work. It keeps your body fit, and your health—it does.” Another construction laborer, thirty years old, nonunion, and working with concrete, also said he enjoys his job: I’m happy with what I’m doing. I’m still doing it [since his junior year in high school] . . . because I wake up in the morning and I don’t feel unhappy and I feel happy that I’m going to work. I don’t dread getting up and I have a smile on my face. . . . It is my job. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know, I just get up every day and do it. I love it. Yet another union construction laborer, with the job that is lowest in the construction-site hierarchy, discussed his enjoyment of the work. At sixty-three years old, he admitted that the enjoyment of work is rarely there for him anymore because the physical demands place a toll on his aging body. Until recently, however, he reported his love for the job: “I just really thrive on hard work. I really liked it. Like I said, it sounds foolish, it’s just the way I felt.” A welder at a locomotive factory who has an engineering bachelor’s degree from a prestigious university explains, “Yes I do keep on going back because it is something I enjoy. I enjoy welding. I enjoy the precision part of welding—the really technical part of welding I enjoy.” A different welder from another factory revealed some of what he liked about his job: “I like welding. Like when the hood comes down, it is just you and the fire, you know, and the sparks. You can see the puddle of steel. When you are welding steel, it is like water. The art is to control the puddle. You can watch it move as you are progressing up the plate. Plus, I think one of the things that attracted me to welding is I always grew up believing in honor. I used to read about knights in armor. The welding hood is a lot like a knight’s helmet. I mean, this might sound weird, but I guess that is how I got into it. That is what I like about it.”

10

Working Class

A worker in the short shop of a sawmill insisted: “I love it, absolutely.”16 A thirty-seven-year-old union member who operated heavy construction equipment went further: WORKER: I have to admit every day, I can probably count on one hand the days that I actually never wanted to go to work. I really enjoy my job. I love it. AUTHOR: The attitude is that everybody that does blue-collar work hates it and wouldn’t want to do it, that kind of thing. WORKER: No, that’s the farthest thing from my mind. . . . I am getting beat to death [from the jarring of the excavation machines]. As much as I enjoy the work, I think that there is an easier way to make more money . . . but there is only so far up the ladder you can go as an operator. You have to get into foreman, which means I have to give up the equipment, which I’m not going to do. I enjoy it too much. An assembler in a locomotive factory said, “I build choo-choos. I like it. . . . Honestly, I never imagined a job could be this good. Really!” A winder in a turbine manufacturing plant who went from high school right into the factory said, “I enjoy it. I enjoy getting dirty.” He said getting dirty was proof that he “did something.” A forty-nine-year-old man who had recently left his factory maintenance job to farm full-time also reported liking his factory job—a job he took specifically to pay the mortgage on his farm. “It just happened that I really did enjoy the work and was appreciated there.” A fifty-two-year-old carpenter, when asked if his job had become routine or monotonous after thirty-three years, replied, “No, no, I still enjoy getting up and going to work. I do.” This man reported having a difficult time when he first began his construction job at nineteen. After about a year on the job things changed for the young man: And I began to enjoy what I was doing. In the beginning it was very stressful. I’d come home at night and wonder, “There is no way I can do this. I don’t have a clue what is going on, but at this point this is what I need to do.” And then six months later I’d come home and say to my wife, “I want to tell you what I did today. I was four floors up and we were setting these gigantic beams, walking on a twelve-inch concrete wall, and I felt wonderful doing it.” And all of a sudden you become a part of this and people gave me responsibility quickly and I enjoyed the responsibility.

The Meaning of Work

11

A thirty-two-year-old carpenter/supervisor said, “I’m happy with what I do. Like I’ve been saying all along, you’ve got to want to do what you do and if you don’t like what you do you shouldn’t be doing it.” These men exemplify the typical experience of workers in this sample: they report that their blue-collar jobs are rewarding. The only men to express any reservation were two assembly-line workers—a predictable response for that job category, according to Robert Blauner in his 1964 book Alienation and Freedom. Even these men, however, reported rewarding aspects of their jobs. The bulk of Blauner’s data for his research on alienation in factory work was quantitative, resulting from secondary analysis of a survey that included “three thousand bluecollar factory workers in sixteen different factory industries.” It contrasts with the qualitative nature of the data reported in this book, which identifies multidimensional aspects of work’s meaning. The data herein reveal the work of the men interviewed to be anything but alienating. There are aspects of blue-collar work that the men report as negative, but the overall assessment of almost all was positive.

Working-Class Definitions of Blue-Collar Work

The following are depictions of blue-collar work that emerged from the interviews with the workers. The list is not exhaustive of all the potential meanings associated with blue-collar work, but it is representative of consistent themes from the interviews and it adds dimension to existing descriptions of blue-collar labor in the sociological literature. The characteristics of the work that are well documented elsewhere, such as the negative dimensions, are not discussed, but they should not be forgotten. The following portrayal of work emphasizes things that challenge the prevailing image of blue-collar jobs, but previous, less-influential research has also documented each point. Supportive evidence from published research is acknowledged in later chapters. Blue-collar work is complicated. The first thing to make clear before discussing the meaning of blue-collar work in working-class culture is that it cannot be understood in simplistic terms. Not only is work multidimensional, with its meaning understood according to a number of factors, but it is also both negative and positive—often at the very same time and in a variety of ways. Sweeping generalizations characterize the distinction between white-collar and blue-collar work in the social-science literature. There is little recognition that jobs are sometimes rewarding and some-

12

Working Class

times unfulfilling—that positive aspects of a job may sit alongside negative attributes. As is often the case when thinking about social issues, the complexity of work is typically ignored in favor of reductionist definitions of situations. It is the role of theory to simplify reality into generalizable categories, but in the case of work and other closely related concepts such as social class, this has failed to acknowledge alternative cultural standards. Blue-collar work is rewarding. There is a long tradition in social-science research that defines blue-collar work as rewarding in extrinsic ways only. Work is important for earning money, but influential researchers have determined that there is little reward in blue-collar employment beyond the paycheck. This notion is challenged head-on by the workers presented in the next chapter. Although many accounts of manual workers extolling the rewards of their work exist in the sociological literature, that research has not influenced the way blue-collar work is regarded in most sociological research. Failure to incorporate the workers’ perspective into dominant paradigms about blue-collar work has led to the interpretation of positive orientations to manual jobs as a function of cognitive dissonance or false consciousness. When workers claim to enjoy their work and to find it meaningful and rewarding, researchers cannot explain those responses with theories that define blue-collar work as meaningless and lacking in intrinsic value. They therefore cram their findings into the explanatory categories they have crafted from the logic of their own class perspective. If workers report enjoyment in their blue-collar jobs, researchers often assume they must simply be trying to fool themselves into believing that their labor-intensive, subordinate, meaningless jobs are worthwhile in order to retain some sense of dignity in oppressive circumstances. The a priori assumption that there is nothing rewarding in blue-collar work is an obstacle to understanding working-class culture. To understand how workers see the world, researchers must be willing to listen to the workers and to take their logic seriously. Blue-collar workers prefer blue-collar jobs. They prefer doing work that directly creates tangible, useful products through physical effort, skill, and knowledge. Working-class values do not appreciate the things that professionals find appealing and meaningful in their white-collar labor. The blue-collar workers represented in the next chapter and in Chapter 4 may or may not respect their white-collar counterparts, but they do not want their white-collar jobs and in many cases do not want to live like

The Meaning of Work

13

them. Stratification theory depends upon a model of the occupational prestige hierarchy in which white-collar occupations are generally recognized as superior to blue-collar occupations. This reflects the standards of the professional class, not the working class. For the sample of blue-collar workers in this study, taking a white-collar job would be considered as a step downward, not the upward mobility presumed in social research. Blue-collar workers have power. Manual labor is not necessarily subor-

dinate to management or other white-collar supervisors. Managers are supposedly in charge, but formal authority chains are often inconsistent with the actual, informal reality at the point of production. College-trained managers often do not understand the jobs they oversee. White-collar workers with no experience on the job must depend upon blue-collar workers to complete tasks via their own knowledge—knowledge that typically can only be learned on the job. Blue-collar workers commonly have little direct interaction with white-collar managers. When they do, they often feel resentment toward ignorant managers who give orders without knowledge of what the job entails. When orders for completing a task come in the form of blueprints, experienced workers frequently must modify them to remove design flaws. White-collar managers have authority in theory, but in practice the system of production often depends upon the authority of the blue-collar workforce. Manual labor is also mental labor. Blue-collar work is not mindless.

It is a false dichotomy in theory that envisions mental work and manual work to be mutually exclusive, dichotomous categories. Blue-collar workers use their brains far more than the stereotypes suggest. Predictions that the mental aspects of blue-collar work would be completely eliminated have not been realized for the majority of blue-collar laborers. This leads to the next point. Blue-collar workers are connected to their trades and their products. For both factory and construction workers in this study, blue-

collar work is not alienating. The disconnection between workers and their products has not occurred to the extent that theorists have suggested. De-skilling may have occurred in many blue-collar jobs, but skill and experiential knowledge have not been eliminated. Even when much of the production process has been mechanized, blue-collar workers still must interpret changes in situations and make adjustments accordingly. Workers identify with the products they help create, even when their role in the production process is indirect. They show a thorough under-

14

Working Class

standing of the entire production process and they see themselves as an integral part of it. Blue-collar workers understand the social hierarchy differently than white-collar professionals. It is obvious to the blue-collar workers

that professionals look down on them, but workers disregard that as ignorance. They have respect for blue-collar work, much more so than for white-collar work. At the same time, they understand that the economy requires all kinds of jobs and all kinds of workers. Professional positions do not deserve the disproportional compensation they receive; and although some of those positions may not be admirable or desirable, these blue-collar workers did see white-collar jobs as a necessary part of society. White-collar occupations and white-collar people are different—not necessarily better or worse than blue-collar. Conceiving the social-class system as a vertical hierarchy in which the working class is inferior to the white-collar classes reflects a biased understanding of work and a narrow conception of social class. When work is understood in its complexity and when working-class values are acknowledged, the linear, hierarchical model for social-class inequality falls apart. It merely reflects the biases of the professional class. Of course, white-collar work has advantages at some levels, but at others it falls short of the blue-collar experience. Furthermore, working-class people may not regard white-collar work as appealing from their logical and moral perspectives, which in many important ways leads them to define blue-collar positions as superior to white-collar positions. The theory of a hierarchically stratified social order is disputed by the bluecollar workers represented in the following chapters. Blue-collar work is rewarding and meaningful in many ways, and some distasteful aspects may be part of that. The negative attrib-

utes of a job can be as complex as the positive dimensions. For instance, some of the hardships that must be endured in the performance of bluecollar work can be seen as a positive reflection upon male workers’ gender identities that include images of strength and toughness. And not only for men: for women, too, bearing the physical and mental stresses of manual work can be an indication of commitment and responsibility. (Data for this study excluded women, which is rationalized at the begin of Chapter 2.) Doing at least one’s share of the work when on a crew creates bonds of respect among coworkers. Overcoming challenges may reflect highly upon the skill of a worker, and it may also signify that a

The Meaning of Work

15

job is worth doing. A difficult job done well sets the worker apart from those who could not meet the challenge. Strenuous work is also a way for people to put “part of themselves” into a product. Positive outcomes from the negative aspects of a job may exist beside the recognition that some jobs are simply hard or unpleasant— that they must be done and overcome if progress is to be made. In such cases, the job takes on a sense of importance. The negative dimensions of work are often the source of pride. Typically, blue-collar work leads to tangible outcomes, and the onerous parts of a job may just be something to accept in order to get the job done. In other cases, a job’s negative attributes may be all bad (e.g., the insecurity of employment, vulnerability to outsourcing, and declining compensation); the distasteful dimensions of blue-collar work cannot be denied, and no job is perfect. Both aspects of a job must be accepted—the gratifying, rewarding parts alongside the disappointments. The traditional methods of science have presented challenges for fully understanding blue-collar work. Work is positive in some ways and negative in others, but sociologists in the years following World War II were trained to analyze their data as though it gave support to either one general explanation or its opposite (or a series of mutually exclusive alternatives). The deductive reasoning of the social sciences at that time led to sweeping generalizations that described society in black-and-white terms. Researchers approached their evidence as showing that work was either intrinsically rewarding or that it was limited to extrinsic rewards. Middle ground was not considered. Researchers’ deductions also imposed top-down explanations for behavior when inductive strategies would have revealed the complex reality of blue-collar work. The propositions listed above are not meant to negate the depiction of manual labor in the research literature that declares the opposite to be true. The negative depictions of blue-collar work may be accurate in some ways, but the real world is more complex than that narrow theoretical depiction. Furthermore, researchers were motivated to analyze society according to the most sophisticated scientific methods available. The advanced statistical procedures that were made possible as computers transformed social research were poorly suited for understanding the complexities of issues regarding people’s attitudes and orientations to work. The mathematical equations with which researchers examined their data looked impressively precise, but the data were gathered and interpreted in ways that distorted reality. Multidimensional experiences such as work are difficult to capture in one-dimensional survey questions. Multidimensional

16

Working Class

variables were also transformed into indexes to meet the requirements of statistical analysis, which further narrowed the complexity and imposed biases into the research process.

Empirical Grounds for the Thesis

The research methodology and the sample of blue-collar workers presented below are more fully described in the Appendix. What follows here is a summary of the research process. The evidence for the claims about blue-collar work was gathered by participant observation and semistructured, open-ended interviews throughout the 1990s near a midsized city in the northeast United States. Throughout 1991, there was systematic participant observation of the occupational culture of a small, family-owned, nonunion masonry company that poured concrete foundations, laid block and brick, and poured concrete floors in the residential construction industry. Work dried up during the economic recession of that year, and observation shifted to a residential framing company for several weeks until work resumed with the masonry company at the end of that summer. A total of twenty-one construction workers, all white men, formed the sample population. An interview schedule wasconstructed from the field notes in order to gain further insight into the patterns that developed during the observation stage of the research. Men—specifically, men17—with jobs in construction or factories were asked to interpret the patterns recorded in field notes. It took several years to conduct thirty-one open-ended, semistructured interviews. The author continued working with the masonry company throughout most of the research process and beyond. Throughout that decade, tremendous economic hardships made it necessary for the author to take work in supplemental occupations—tree care, dairy farming, numerous construction-related side jobs—as well as teaching evening courses at the nearby university and other colleges. The distractions slowed the pace of research, but they also combined to provide knowledge and an identity that was vital to representing the interviewer as a person of similar background to the men being interviewed. The researcher’s working-class identity was not put on—was not an act. The fact that the workingmen in this sample were being interviewed by a man who himself was a mason gave them confidence: they knew they were speaking with someone who shared their experience and was committed to his trade.18

The Meaning of Work

17

The sampling frame included any male blue-collar worker from either industry. This created a broad representation of blue-collar jobs in each category, and a broad range of age, skill level, and background. One of the misunderstandings of blue-collar work extends from the stereotype of manual labor as a job on a factory assembly line. It is unclear why, but perhaps because Karl Marx wrote of the transformative influence of machinery on labor in the mid-nineteenth century, researchers have frequently run to the nearest auto plant or similar factory to talk to assemblyline workers as representative of blue-collar workers in general. The result has been a generalization19 of typical blue-collar work as alienating and meaningless. Data for this research included only two assembly-line workers, but that number is consistent with the percentage of factory employees who work “on the line” as reported in previous research that, even before deindustrialization, when US manufacturing was in its prime, was only around 5 percent.20 The representation of assembly-line workers may have also been influenced by the type of products created in two of the larger factories included in the sample—locomotives and industrialsized turbines. In these plants, assemblers did not have a work station at which products moved past them as, stereotypically, they do on an assembly line. Rather, workers performed their tasks on and around an object weighing up to hundreds of tons that was fixed in one place. Snowball sampling techniques, beginning with encounters of convenience, were used to find informants from a diversity of job classifications, trades, skill levels, and work experiences within each industry. Interviews took place in a variety of settings. Confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed. The characteristics of the sample are summarized in the Appendix, Table A. Ethnographic studies of blue-collar workers most commonly base descriptions of the working-class experience or of working-class culture on case studies of specific occupations or groups.21 It is unclear if their findings are occupationally specific or if they can be generalized to the greater working-class population. This project sought to overcome that problem by investigating two separate blue-collar occupational categories that have been described as the two ends of the blue-collar occupational spectrum: factory work and construction work. These jobs are typically depicted as differing in levels of autonomy, skill, and intrinsic rewards. Interviews of construction workers and factory workers indicate that, with regard to several themes, the two groups possess remarkably similar orientations to work. In the interviews, it is usually difficult to discern between the opinions of the factory workers and the construction workers

18

Working Class

or between workers at different places in the authority and skill hierarchies. Data gathering was halted at thirty-one interviewees when, after accounts provided in interviews fit with findings from the field work, the consistency of their stories did not change regardless of the differences in their work situations. The author admits that saturation in data was a welcome rationalization for finding closure in the drawn-out research process. It is argued that the similarity in responses to interview questions, whether the subjects worked as laborers or craftsmen, were company owners or employees, were young or old, were union members or not, and whether they were highly educated or high-school dropouts, resulted from a shared working-class experience. This study argues that the consistency of the attitudes expressed by the variety of blue-collar workers reflects their internalization of a commonly held working-class culture. Findings differ from past research on the meaning of blue-collar work for several reasons. First, the open-ended, semistructured interview design allowed for multidimensional responses that are not captured in surveys. The ethnographic research design allowed the workers to explain their circumstances and their attitudes about them in their own words in order to clarify the contextual logic for their feelings. Second, blue-collar work was not preconceived as negative or meaningless. That the interviewer, a concrete mason, shared an occupational identity consistent with the working-class informants allowed interviewees to recognize the researcher as “one of them.” The sociologist Lawrence Ouellet has argued that perceived differences in occupational status between blue-collar workers and researchers has led to inaccurate responses from working-class individuals when the interviewer is identified as middle class.22 Moreover, sociologist Mike Savage revealed that professional researchers’ biases and theoretical categories may negatively influence the interpretation of interview data from working-class informants.23 The working-class men did not have to wonder if their statements would be misconstrued. The interviewer spoke the same language as the interviewees, and if there ever were suspicious statements, they were quickly questioned.

Implications for Theory

The meaning of blue-collar work in social theory is not positive. It is regarded as the primary indicator of membership in an exploited and inferior class. Working-class culture is understood as shallow and unsophisticated. Blue-collar work is typically understood as tightly con-

The Meaning of Work

19

trolled, meaningless, de-skilled, simplistic, and grueling. Researchers have created a devalued identity for blue-collar workers that then is used to support a simplistic, linear model of the social hierarchy that reinforces that negative identity. Stratification theory clearly states that the working class is inferior to—beneath—the white-collar classes. Negative connotations of blue-collar work are the basis for regarding workingclass people as inferior. This negative imagery is challenged by the words of the blue-collar workers—those who are briefly quoted above and others to be revealed in the following chapters. Their narratives do not fit the theoretical model that places the working class at the bottom of the social hierarchy. This finding calls for a rethinking of the way work and social classes are defined in social science. The depiction of the social-class hierarchy as linear and vertical is directly questioned by the workers in the sample. They make a strong argument that their jobs are intrinsically rewarding, that they are in control over much of the production process, that they do not want white-collar jobs, and that they have little desire to share the lifestyles of white-collar professionals. They show that there are positive as well as negative aspects to their jobs, and also to the jobs of white-collar workers. All types of work are important in the economy, they say, and all types of people are necessary in society. They make a strong case for depicting the social hierarchy in horizontal terms, where differences between stations are acknowledged but where social positions are not ranked as better or worse. The standards for judging which group is above another are too complex to generalize across class boundaries and thereby settle upon a consistent depiction of superiority and inferiority. How can these blue-collar workers express such positive connection to their dangerous, dirty, difficult work? The positive association with their blue-collar work defies the logic of people in professional environments. The logic of popular culture suggests that there is something wrong with the people who perform physical labor, but these workers claim there is something wrong with the belief system that devalues what they do. Of course blue-collar workers are exploited under capitalism, but so are white-collar workers. There is a stigma that is reserved for jobs that are physically taxing, that are dirty, and, ironically, that produce the tangible things that everyone needs. Blue-collar occupations that create essential products are looked upon with disdain. As the miners, the construction workers, and the factory workers convey, however, those who create useful products through physical effort, skill, and experiential knowledge do not always see things that way. There is an alternative cultural logic in the working class that recognizes the dignity

20

Working Class

and importance of blue-collar work. Rather than dismiss this logic as cognitive dissonance or false consciousness, we need to listen to working people who find their jobs rewarding and honorable. The chapters to come expose the difference between the standpoint of working-class people and the way they are understood by social scientists. Social theory defines blue-collar work in limited, negative terms, while the blue-collar workers themselves see their jobs as positive. The interviews do not refute the fact that manual labor is disrespected, or that the work is often dirty, wearisome, and unpleasant, but they make it clear that the negative aspects are only part of the story. Most researchers approach blue-collar work from a theoretical perspective that is marred by faulty logic, erroneous assumptions, and inappropriate methodologies. Revision of this perspective is long overdue. As the flaws in its tenets are revealed, it forces a reevaluation of the longeststanding ideology in the social sciences. The scientific backing for the idea that some groups are inferior to others is a major obstacle to reducing economic and other types of class inequality. This book will not, and should not, bring about immediate change in sociological theory or class inequality, but by incorporating working-class viewpoints into the theoretical understanding of work and class, the legitimacy of beliefs that justify negative treatment of blue-collar workers is undermined. That is an important step in a positive direction.

Notes 1. Crawford (2009), Shop Class as Soulcraft. 2. Michael Parenti (1992) makes this clear in his Make Believe Media. He devotes all of Chapter 5 to the negative imagery surrounding working-class people, indicting the television and motion-picture industries for taking sides in class war. Barbara Ehrenreich (1990) addresses the issues similarly well in Fear of Falling, 107–120. See also Woollacott (1980), “Dirty and Deviant Work,” and Hauhart (2008), “Blue-Collar Comedy Tour.” 3. Cited in England et al. (2009), “Identity, Community, and the Crandall Canyon Mine Disaster.” 4. The Hidden Injuries of Class (1973) is a good example: Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb judge working-class people’s statements of pride and satisfaction in their work as simply an attempt to mask shame over lowly, blue-collar status. Further discussion of this in Chapter 7. 5. Parenti (1992), Make Believe Media, 71. 6. Durkheim (1984), Division of Labor. The importance of work in Karl Marx’s theories is seen throughout his writings, from The Communist Manifesto through “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844” and “Wage Labour and Capital” to Capital.

The Meaning of Work

21

7. Kerbo (2006), Social Stratification and Inequality, 208; emphasis in original. 8. Ainley (1993), Class and Skill, 70. 9. Beeghley (2005), Structure of Social Stratification, 183. 10. Ibid., 213. 11. Rose (2005), The Mind at Work. 12. Sabel (1982), Work and Politics. 13. See Reissman (1959), Class in American Society, 176, 361. Reissman writes: “The study of class is generally a middle class preoccupation.” 14. Kerbo (1996), Social Stratification and Inequality, adds: “Because most social scientists are upper-middle-class (at least in education and occupational status, if not always income), in the past they have tended to present an overly negative picture of the lower middle class and working class. The working class especially has been viewed as authoritarian, bigoted, and harsh with family members”: 240. 15. Taylor [1911] (1998), Principles of Scientific Management. 16. The short shop is the last stage of the lumber milling process, before the unusable scraps are ground into sawdust, in which the last valuable pieces of wood are cut from the remaining parts of a log after all the construction-quality boards have been taken. 17. Masculine-gender prescriptions have been identified as important elements in descriptions of the meaning of work; this study therefore controls for gender by sampling only men. Further research must be done to understand the meaning of blue-collar work for women (see the Appendix). It is interesting that the association of masculinity with blue-collar work has been so well documented: scholars must acknowledge manual labor as intrinsically meaningful in at least this regard. Many scholars still regard working-class masculine-gender prescriptions as a type of “cognitive dissonance” that provides blue-collar workers with psychological compensation for their subordinate status. 18. My surname, Torlina, is Italian (though ethnically I am German). My Italian name allowed me greater acceptance in my trade, which in the region is dominated by Italians. The owners of the company in which I worked were proudly Italian. However, all but four of the construction workers interviewed were of other European ethnicity. 19. Ouellet claims in Pedal to the Metal (1994), 12, that studies of workers and their orientations to work have commonly focused on those at the extremes of the occupational spectrum, such as assembly-line workers, who do not represent the experience of most workers. Robert Blauner (1964) suggests in Alienation and Freedom, 5, that “if the most alienated workers are viewed as typical workers, it is no wonder that there is a persistent tendency to view manual workers in general as alienated.” 20. The 5 percent figure was Blauner’s estimation of the percentage of bluecollar workers in the entire US labor force who work on assembly lines: Alienation and Freedom, 5. A similar report was made by Melvin Kohn in Class and Conformity (1969): “The degradation of work on the assembly line is far from typical of industrial occupations today. Even in automobile plants, most men do not work on the line”: Class and Conformity, 194. Kohn cites, cf., Walker and Guest (1952) and Chinoy (1955).

22

Working Class

21. For example, see Paap (2006), Working Construction; Lucas and Buzzanell (2004), “Blue-Collar Work, Career, and Success”; Metzgar (2000), Striking Steel; Ouellet (1994), Pedal to the Metal; Finlay (1988), Work on the Waterfront; Halle (1984), America’s Working Man; Cockburn (1983), Brothers; Pfeffer (1979), Working for Capitalism; and Burawoy (1979), Manufacturing Consent. 22. Ouellet (1994), Pedal to the Metal, 14–15. 23. Savage (2005), “Working-Class Identities,” 929–946.

2 The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

BLUE-COLLAR WORK CAN BE TAXING on physical, mental, and emotional levels. It can be dirty, dangerous, and subordinate. Especially from a professional-class perspective, blue-collar work may look unappealing. Despite the negative images of blue-collar work in the professional and managerial classes, and with varying levels of enthusiasm, working-class people reproduce their class position in the occupational structure every time they show up to work at their blue-collar jobs. Understanding what work means to those in the working class who perform blue-collar labor will help explain how the social-class structure is maintained across the generations and why such workers do not look elsewhere for employment despite the stigma attached to their means of earning a living. Sociologists have reasoned that working-class people are forced into manual employment because they lack the resources necessary for working in white-collar jobs. Many people undoubtedly accept blue-collar work because of a lack of options, but for many others the reasons are more complicated. Regardless of why they went into their jobs, the workers still express a positive connection to their work. Even with the hardships, they define their work positively. The meaning of blue-collar work, in the words of blue-collar workers themselves, defies a common and long-standing assumption about manual labor—that it has little intrinsic value for workers beyond the paycheck it provides. The first insight by researchers to shake that narrow conception was that the physical challenges of blue-collar work fulfill masculine-gender prescriptions. For working-class men, blue-collar labor is an avenue for displaying qualities of strength, skill, toughness, and other stereotypically masculine identity traits. For that reason the decision was made to control for the gendered meaning of work by

23

24

Working Class

interviewing only men. It was thought that more than one gender in the sample would complicate the analysis by obscuring the connection between work and other meaningful aspects. The intrinsic meaning of work in terms of gender could not be ignored, but more than twenty years ago when this research project was begun there was still widespread denial that blue-collar work was meaningful beyond its instrumental rewards. Excluding women from the research is now regretted. The focus on men impairs this study’s generalizability to all members of the working class, but the case is still strong that the meanings by which workingclass men understand blue-collar work define blue-collar jobs as worthwhile options for earning a living. Moreover, positive images of bluecollar work are expressed by the working-class individuals in this study. They share the pride and the positive attitudes regarding their work with others in their spheres of interaction. It became apparent that blue-collar work is rewarding in multiple ways, and the association with masculinegender roles is only one among a variety of dimensions in which manual work has meaning. The values that define manual labor in positive terms are instilled at an early age in working-class families and communities. An eighteenyear-old future construction worker1 reported learning the value of hard work from his grandfather: “It was like if we didn’t work he didn’t look up to us. I mean I’m sure he still would have loved us because he’s got five granddaughters, too, but the granddaughters hang out with Gram [the women were not expected to work with the grandfather]. The grandsons, they’re with Pa the whole time, and you’re working.” A sixty-three-year-old union laborer learned to be a worker “mostly from the farm [where he grew up]; there just isn’t no easy work.” He explained that his parents were hard-working people, his wife’s parents were hard workers, and he has attempted to instill this value in his son. He’s a mechanic, you know. He’s doing the things like following in my footsteps in a way, but he’s mechanically inclined. But he’s got another job that not too many people want; you’ve got to go in and lay in the dirt and the grease, I mean half of the people today would look at that and that would be all they want to see—you know? I mean they might—he gets satisfaction out of it, but that’s something that is born into him. He’s a mechanic. It’s the way it is. But he’s the same way; he had to do a lot of work around here [the interview took place in the man’s home] and he still does. He cuts wood, he does this and that, so he’s following on the same way, and he likes work, too.

The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

25

A twenty-six-year-old concrete laborer also mentioned that his parents influenced his work ethic: I think [it was] my father, he worked for Ford Motor Company. He started working [there] when he was twenty-eight years old. It was something that was passed on to me—not genetically or anything like that—but maybe it was just that we had a lot of hard-working guys in the family and maybe it was passed on through that. And I had a lot of respect for my father because my father worked in a factory and of course a factory in the summertime gets to be like a hundred and twenty degrees. My father did work very hard for us. . . . I know he was a hard-working man and he always provided for us the things we needed. Maybe it showed me some type of incentive. I just appreciate working hard. I just appreciated that God gave me a body and I don’t think it was meant to sit on a chair. I don’t know why. If I thought my body was meant to sit on a chair, I don’t think I’d have legs. These statements show that a positive association with physical work was learned from parents and other respected adults, instilling values that lead to satisfaction from blue-collar work. Almost all of the men interviewed claimed to enjoy their work. Notably, the two assembly-line workers were the only ones to deviate from this claim. In order to add meaning to his job , one of the assemblyline workers became active in the union, in the fire company for the plant, and in safety programs. The other line worker reported to be just putting in his time. None of the informants were unrealistic enough to say that there were no negative aspects of their jobs; nor did all claim that they would continue to work in their jobs if they were wealthy enough not to work, although some men did. A sample of their statements is helpful here in explaining what it is about blue-collar jobs that these men find desirable.

Sense of Accomplishment

One of the things about blue-collar work that sets it apart from whitecollar work is the obvious, tangible outcome of the work. Often the result is a useful product that can be seen and that stands as a testament to the efforts of an individual. Many supervisors and managers play an important and necessary role in the production process, but the creation

26

Working Class

of a product with one’s own hands and, oftentimes, through serious physical strain and discomfort creates a personal, sometimes intimate, attachment to it. Factory and construction workers alike spoke of the satisfaction they received from seeing their accomplishments as one of the things they liked most about their jobs. A carpenter gave the sense of accomplishment as a reason for enjoying construction work: WORKER: That is why I like construction, because I like to be outdoors. AUTHOR: Is that the only reason? WORKER: No, it’s because I feel a sense of accomplishment when I do things. AUTHOR: Could you explain that a little bit? WORKER: Well, you’ve got to have, you take a pile of lumber, come to the a job site and see a foundation and a pile of lumber and then in a week—well, for me usually two weeks— you’ll see a house. And you say to yourself, “Now is that a nice house or is that a cob house?” and I try to do a nice job on the house so I try to make everything nice. . . . So when you give him a finished product that you are totally pleased with you feel a sense of self-accomplishment. You feel good about yourself. You’re feeling good about accomplishing something and at the same time making money at it. A union laborer aged sixty-three used similar words to express what many other workers did: “It was a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day, to look up there and see that it [scaffolding] was stocked up. That there was satisfaction.” When discussing what it was about blue-collar work that he found enjoyable, a painter, forty-five, replied, “I think it was a sense of being able to see your accomplishments; being able to make something out of virtually nothing or to improve something that’s existing and to stand back and say, ‘Yeah, I did that.’ It’s a challenge. It always gave me a good feeling.” A second carpenter, too—a fifty-two-year-old—extolled a similar feeling: But one thing I’ve learned over the years is there is nothing like walking away at the end of the day and turning around and being able to see what you did. . . . You can turn around and actually see

The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

27

what you did. Well, there were times, you know, it’s just a hard day—gosh, it was a hard day. And you just come home and you’re beat. You come home, get some cold water or get a cold beer, whatever you do, and you just sit down and fall asleep. But once the project is complete you want to share it with someone. You want to take them, someone that you care about or that cares about you, you want to take them back and say, “I would like to share this with you. Look at this!” Whether it took a week, a month, a year, or a day. And the biggest thing that I have right now that means to me any degree of importance is that I am very proud of everything I’ve ever done in regard to the work field. I would take anyone anywhere, any time, any place and show them what I did because I know it is still going to be there and it is right. I have a very personal pride in everything I do, and it is really, I guess it is part of my mainstay, part of my core of living. A thirty-seven-year-old excavation-equipment operator had a similar story: The main thing is, like I say, at the end of the day I can look back and say I did something that made, that is going to be there a long time whether it is building a high-rise or a hydroelectric plant, . . . but I look back at the end of the day, whatever we’re doing, like laying pipe, tearing up the road, I look back and say, “I did that. I cut that slope, I cut that rock slope, or I deforested [laughter] three acres of ground—stripped it.” I mean it’s there thirty, forty years down the road I can come back here and I’ll be able to take a look at the work that I did. . . . To me every time I drive down the road I’ll be able to see, it will remind me of something I did. A final example came from a thirty-two-year-old carpenter. As he sat in his truck with the interviewer on his lunch break, after it had been established that he liked his job he was asked: “So what do you like about it? Why is it something that you like to do?” After thinking for a moment, he replied, Well, being that we are sitting in front of a job site, you can sit here and look at that [the newly constructed house] and for probably the next, it could be for a hundred years, somebody is going to come by and say, “Yeah, it was a good job.” Of course, somebody could come by and say it was a bad job—who knows what’s going to

28

Working Class

happen in a hundred years from now. But we’re still, people still go and visit the ruins in Rome, they go visit the pyramids. Somebody did all that work, and that’s a lot of work. . . . I mean, you can sit back and say, “I had something to do with building that house.” There it is. It’s a mark. Sure, your name is not written on it, but there it is. Somebody is very happy that they have a nice house to live in. It gives yourself pride that you can make somebody happy. Factory workers also reported satisfaction from producing products that they could see. An assembler from a locomotive plant was proud that he and his colleagues at the factory built the Amtrak trains that could be seen around town. He said, “Yeah, they’re the ones we built. They’ll go over a hundred miles per hour. And we also have the SD90. It only goes seventy-five but they’ll pull a planet. These things are like two hundred thousand pounds; these things pull really hard. And then the new Amtraks, the Amtraks that you’re seeing now are the ones we built.” A baker who works on an assembly line for a mass-production bread-and-confections corporation told how proud he was to see his company’s cakes and pastries in the supermarket, at least until the local founder of the company sold out to a multinational conglomerate, and quality deteriorated. A retired printer from a paper plant spoke of the packaging that he would see on the grocery store shelves that he took part in printing: WORKER: We printed a lot of cereal boxes. We printed Arm and Hammer baking soda. We had a cracker box, I can’t think of the name of it now. Hartz Mountain was one of our biggest customers, you know, flea collars, dog food. All different sizes; do you know the Chiclet box? AUTHOR: Was it neat to say, “Wow! I did that. I printed that.” WORKER: Yeah, I will stop into a grocery store and look. If you look at a Hartz Mountain job, just look at the colors to see if they stay true. In discussing the sense of accomplishment from the work they do, some factory workers did not limit their remarks to the products that their factories put out. Not only did their work contribute to a useful end product, the following two men told of their work being useful within the factory. A factory welder spoke of taking raw material and making it into something useful. He said, “Because you actually see what it is. Like I am building a frame right now and I started off with a bunch of steel parts.

The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

29

Now there is like tabbing pads on them for pieces to be bolted on. They are going to wind up putting a motor on this thing. It is going to have chains hanging off of it. What the thing is going to do is it is going to have cardboard boxes being fed on a conveyor. This thing is going to pack the boxes and then tape them for shipment. They will be using it somewhere.” A pipe fitter, too, mentioned work of his that was used in the factory: WORKER: Let’s say I am working with steel today. I am taking steel and punching holes in it, welding on dog tails and stuff for strength, putting on a ladder. When I was all done I took a bunch of scrap steel and made a platform. I put up a platform so somebody could get on top of the tank and not fall off and get hurt. So my job will be there for thirty or forty years. It is not like putting a ladder on a side of a building and [then] taking it off. That wouldn’t be any accomplishment to me. Every day for thirty or forty years they can walk on the platform that Jack built. That’s just the way it is. AUTHOR: So you like having something there that you can recognize? WORKER: Yeah. I go by it every day. I did that job, I did that. I drive around the plant saying, “I did that.” Making a product that is useful and visible was important to the workers cited above. It is, as one man said, “a mark” that stands for something worthwhile done with one’s energy and time. It was also found satisfying to be able to produce something that can be recognized as quality, showcasing the men’s skills and efforts. As another man said, it brings honor to one’s life. Another admitted it was part of his “core of living.” These men are only examples; all of the interviewees gave evidence that their job was satisfying on some level because of what they make and how they make it. This, however, is only one dimension of blue-collar work’s meaning being satisfying and noble in the lives of those who perform it.

Importance of the Job

Another dimension of work’s meaning is its importance, both to society as a whole and within the workers’ companies and industries. The men expressed their awareness of being a part of something larger than themselves—something valuable. Even when filling a role within a

30

Working Class

large corporation, their contribution was important, and sometimes essential. The blue-collar workers realized that they were the ones who physically make things happen in society. Several men made the point that managers and designers would be nowhere without the laborer that performs the work. Although this study was limited to factory workers and construction workers, many in the sample expressed empathy for those that do difficult, dirty, unrespected yet necessary blue-collar work such as garbage collection and janitorial work. As one worker commented, “I wouldn’t want to go pump out septic tanks, but if no one went and pumped out septic tanks we would have a ton of shit floating around, right?” The supervisor of a construction site made the point: “If you don’t deal with computers they say you’re not going to make it in the twentyfirst century, but somebody’s still got to build this house. Somebody has still got to sweep the floors. Somebody has still got to . . . hump the lumber or . . . I mean, the dirty work is still going to be there. No computer is going to do the dirty work! Somebody is going to have to do it. Who is going to do it? Somebody is going to like it. Most people, I mean, most people who do this like what they do.” Whether or not society acknowledges their work, men consistently took pride in their work. A forty-six-year-old welder from a factory said, “I join metal. I am a carpenter with steel. It is pretty much what it is, you know. I build stuff. Like I said, I have also done repair. I built locomotives, I have built turbines, I have repaired trucks, tractor-trailers, repaired them. I have done construction welding. You know, like iron work, walking steel.” When he said, “I build stuff” this man meant that he was part of the workforce that puts the world together. He did not take for granted that workingmen and workingwomen were personally responsible for putting together the buildings, the cars and trucks, the streets and sidewalks, the clothing—all of the things we see and use. He saw his own role in that process as important. A shipping-and-receiving worker at an air-compressor factory, too, was aware of the importance of his job in the workings of his company. “It’s like, you’re the bottom line,” he said, speaking as though to others at his job site: “‘You guys make it all work and get it to me and I’ll make sure it gets from me to the other side of the world.’” A maintenance worker from a felt factory knew his work was appreciated as important within the factory: If you build a catwalk twenty feet up in the air making somebody else’s job a lot easier they would be really thankful that you did that. And, you know, you build something up there that somebody’s got

The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

31

to walk on, they’re so thankful that I welded it instead of somebody else because then they might not feel comfortable standing on it. I’ve welded things that people work on all day long that might weigh five hundred pounds, mixers that have torque on them . . . you know. People would work on it for years and they would be glad that I was welding and not somebody else because they trusted my welds and things like that. There’s some pride. Others spoke of being part of a work crew or company that performed vital services for other workers in different trades or different industries. Two masonry laborers reflected on the importance of their work for the rest of those constructing a building. One of them commented, “I feel that concrete is the most important because it’s the footing. It’s the basis for your whole building. That’s why they call it a footing. It’s the beginning.” The other added, “Everything comes down on us. We start the whole thing. If we screw up, everybody is screwed up.” Not all of the trades can say that the entire building rests upon their work, but all work crews in the construction of a building justify their job’s importance. If they do not do their part correctly, the building’s occupants will not have heat, light, water, or some other essential utility. The shipping-and-receiving worker saw the role of his company and his department as critical in keeping the wheels of industry turning. “I’m the end result before [a finished product or part] goes out the door. You could have, ‘I’ll use [the Service Department] because they send a lot of things out of the country on a notice like this [snaps fingers]’— because they’ll say, ‘We’ve got a machine break down and they need a rotor assembly. They’re working on it now. We get it done today, ship it out tomorrow, we can have it in Australia in three days. They’ll say, ‘Get all your paperwork, your test paperwork. Have everything you need to me by Monday.’” A winder from a factory producing turbines felt he and his colleagues were very needed. His company is a leading producer of turbines for electricity-generating plants. In an era when robotics are increasingly used on assembly lines, this man stressed the continued need for skilled workers: You’ve got to have the human factor in there because robots can’t see cracks. They may be able to detect cracks but they don’t know if something is going down, right or wrong, like let’s say the ripple spring is starting to bust up, right? If it is going down wrong the robot is going to just shove it in there and pass it, so you’ve got to

32

Working Class

have the human factor with the touch and be able to say [knocks on the table] it is sealed and then be able to look at the top of it and make sure it is—there is just too much human factor with [building generators] that you can’t do it with a machine. You can’t just stick a bar in there, wedge it in, and then expect it to pass. Things happen. Shit happens, where the bar goes in, slips, gets scratched up; you have a chance for a short or what they call a high pop failure. The company this man works for had eliminated as much of the labor force as it could. The fact that a machine had not replaced the winder’s job was testimony to its importance. In describing his contribution to the assembly of a turbine, he noted that this is an era of expanded dependence on electricity. “Like the commercial on TV said, we lit up Tokyo,” he remarked. Several men mentioned that their products and industries were crucial for the greater social good. Making reference to the tax structure, a thirty-one-year-old concrete laborer said: “I think the majority of bluecollar workers definitely pay the bills for this country, and definitely do the work. If there was no one to do the work, it [society] just wouldn’t work.” A carpenter in the construction industry, too, argued that not only is building important at an individual level, it is important societally as well. He reasoned, “The economy pretty much revolves around housing starts. You figure how many people are actually employed due to the housing industry, whether it be residential or commercial, and it will affect [the entire economy]. The [number of] people that are employed by the housing industry is phenomenal.” A union-member operator of heavy equipment was working on highway construction at the time of the interview. He, too, saw his job as important for society. “You know,” he said, “you can have all the nice cars and make two hundred thousand dollars a year and drive a RollsRoyce, but if you haven’t got a road to drive it on you might as well have an old Willys Jeep, because you’re not going to go far.” The pipe fitter, whose work helped keep running a factory that was producing silicone, spoke at length about the omnipresence of the factory’s product in the modern world. Silicone, he said, is used both in consumer products and by industry; it is used in everything from house paint to breakfast cereal to shampoo. “What it does is make your hair slippery. Silicone! But who is going to [knowingly] put silicone in their hair? That’s the way it is. We have gone through the Iron Age and the steel era; now,” he explained, “this is the silicone era.” None of the workers interviewed showed evidence of detachment from the items they helped to produce. The pipe fitter quoted above does

The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

33

not work in production, yet he is personally attached to the products of the factory. Workers saw the importance of the product they helped create and they saw the role they play in the production process to be crucial to the overall economy. Many factory workers displayed a clear knowledge of the entire production process. One, a worker in an insulation factory, described the plant’s entire system, not simply his position on the assembly line. Even at the level of safety for generalized others who will use their products, workers conveyed the sense that performing their jobs well was an important task. The welder from a locomotive factory said: “You’re talking about families, kid’s lives. You’re talking about actual people’s daily living and people’s safety and people having to get somewhere in a big, big hurry. You need to make a product that is going to withstand a lot of the weather conditions, a lot of the abuse that goes on. . . . If it wasn’t for skilled people, how could they make such a product? With the Amtrak Corporation, and the Amtrak trains we just got done with, the corporation says that those are the best ones they have ever seen.” The feeling of importance that goes with these bluecollar jobs gives the men that perform them legitimacy in their own eyes. It is one of the factors that make these men proud of and satisfied in their blue-collar activity.

Challenging Work

Blue-collar work is often challenging, and some of the men spoke of that as something that makes their work rewarding. A construction laborer spoke of the toughness needed to do his job—not just physical toughness but mental toughness as well, to “take it day in and day out.” The silicone-factory pipe fitter made his job sound terrible by most people’s standards: acid burns; choking, drying dust; heavy labor in tight quarters or on top of 260-foot-high columns in wind-chill temperatures as low as forty below zero. “Not everybody wants to work like that,” he admitted, but there is another side to it. “There are people out there where this is a challenge. We say it is like eating an elephant—one bite at a time. It’s a challenge. It’s a nice place to work.” A machinist who owned an automotive machine shop spoke of challenges that enriched his job as tests upon his skills, not his body. He spoke of some of the most complicated cylinder heads and the difficulty of setting multiple valves within a thousandth of an inch. “A thousandth of an inch is basically about a third of a piece of paper, thicknesswise,” he said. After twenty years experience, he claimed that it is

34

Working Class

“not that difficult” to do the job right, but he pushes himself for speed and how many valves he can set at one time. This self-imposed challenge adds excitement to his work and at the same time increases the profitability of the business, if the job turns out correctly. A factory maintenance worker spoke of the challenges he had welding and fabricating machines in a felt factory. The challenges made the job interesting, as well as pushing his skill level. The development of his skills was one of the things for which this man was most grateful after working in the factory. He had recently left the factory, taking the skills he had learned on the job with him, which increased his potential in the job market as well as making him more capable as a farmer, the occupation for which he left the factory.2

Pride in Workmanship

Laboring in an occupation that others have defined as demeaning obviously demands a different set of principles by which to relate to a job than that which applies in professional occupations. We have seen above that there are things about blue-collar work that make it enjoyable and meaningful. But while pride in a product is important, simply working hard and well is recognized as an even greater source of pride. The word pride was almost always reserved for reference to the level at which a man worked and the degree of skill he had mastered. The men took pride in what they produced, but they used different words to describe that feeling. It is interesting to note that willingness to perform difficult, unpleasant work and to excel at it is revered in blue-collar circles. In an environment where all aspects of the production process are seen as necessary, occupying a position at the bottom of the authority hierarchy does not signify that an individual is or ought to be looked down upon. The men in this study pointed out that, as far as status went, the position they held was not as important as how they did the job. The thirty-two-year-old carpenter/supervisor said, “You have to have pride in your work . . . pride in getting paid to do a job right.” An electrician added, “A sense of pride comes out of doing good work. It is doing one thing and doing it well. . . . But it is just pride in what you’re doing, and it gives you a good feeling to do what’s right.” To these men, doing a job right—even a low-status job— was what mattered most. Time and again the workers echoed this theme. A factory welder summed it up, “I think you should take pride in any work that you do. I think that is a principle, to take pride in the work that

The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

35

you do. If it is sweeping up the floor, you know, get all of the dust that you see. It is a way of life. It is not the actual, particular task involved, it is a principle. You should put your heart into whatever you do. Whether it is getting into a fight, getting a piece of ass, working, you know. Just put your heart into what you do. What does the Bible say? ‘Do all things heartily unto the Lord.’” This principle, to do the best job you can regardless of the job, is a significant motivator for the production of blue-collar work. Because that principle is widely accepted in a blue-collar environment, workmen can participate in arduous, unpleasant, dirty work without being looked down upon by other workers. In fact, the job may be taken on with honor, and if it is done well, the worker has a right to take pride in completing the task. Professionals may define such work, and those that perform it, in negative ways, but working-class values give respect to those who do difficult, dirty work well. “I think everybody’s work is a reflection of themselves” was a comment from a house painter. “If you look at a person’s work, you can tell a lot about that person. You really can.” Even repetitive physical work is seen to reflect the person doing it. The winder explained, “I take a lot of pride in the work that I do because I know what I can produce in one day. . . . The part that I think about the most is that when we are working on the floor we want the job done right. We want [the bolts] tight, we want the nuts torqued down to [the proper specifications] so we don’t have to worry about them spinning off and hurting somebody, because it comes back on you.”

Independence

Some of the sampled workers spoke of the independence that their skills gave them as a positive aspect of their situation. Entrepreneurship is not a realistic option for most Americans, but blue-collar workers who are skilled craftsmen, especially in the building trades, have that potential. Once a trade has been mastered, a worker can start his own company if he chooses to work for himself rather than remain an employee. Onequarter of those in this sample owned their own business. A thirty-yearold mason, owner of his own company, enjoyed the freedom of being his own boss. As he said, “Just to have the skill to do this, to know that really you don’t need anybody actually; you know, I don’t need to work for no company or no corporation.” A painter had begun his business working on newly constructed homes after the corporation where he had

36

Working Class

worked as an equipment purchaser closed its operations in the region. After successive jobs with businesses that also eliminated his position or closed their doors, this man decided that working for himself was the only thing he could rely upon. Painting was an option that gave him some control over his livelihood. He provided an account of many other blue-collar workers with similar stories: An amazing amount of them [tradesmen who similarly worked in housing developments] were people that had the same scenario happen to them that happened to me. They start out working for a larger company. [The siding installer] worked for GE, again; he worked there for eleven years and a lot of the guys he worked with were laid off—without a job. So he looked around and saw [the power company] is doing the same thing. The telephone company, steel companies are closing up, the [nearby] Ford plant, which used to be a great job if you could get in, well they’re all gone. Everything is closing up. These big companies are all downsizing and there really isn’t any security anymore. So a lot of us got the point where we realized the only security you had was in your own drive and your own ability and, not so much by choice, almost by necessity, got into the trades. A mason’s laborer who had gone out on his own, using his masonry experience to build retaining walls and patios in what was a kind of landscaping business, added, “I like the fact that I’m my own man and I have the responsibility. Sometimes that responsibility can cause a lot of worries, but it’s good in that I see the fruits of my own labor and I get the credit for it rather than somebody else.” The painter also spoke of the freedom he had over his schedule by owning his own business. He had worked on machinery in felt factories and been partners in a welding business before starting his painting company. He explained: I do work seven days a week, but that’s from probably May to the end of October. Christmas time I take two or three weeks off. I take a week off at Thanksgiving. My kids are out of school during the holidays; my wife works half days during the holidays and I can take off a month if I want. I go out to Aspen to see my buddy and go skiing. I take a month in February and do whatever I want, so I elect to do what I do because in the holiday time and in the winter time I want that time off so I make it up right now in the

The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

37

summertime. I don’t have to work seven days a week; it’s more or less my election to do that. He added that if he wanted to take the next day off, he could begin work early and stay late. He found the flexibility of his job to be an asset. Independence was also important in other ways. Some of the bluecollar workers said they were able to work on their own homes and repair their own equipment and machinery without being dependent on others, whereas they figured white-collar workers, lacking knowledge or ability, must hire blue-collar people to work for them. “That’s how my stepdad is,” said a concrete laborer. “He’s smart at his [white-collar] job, but he has no common sense toward anything else and he has to make big money because he has to pay someone to come and fix everything.” Having mechanical and construction knowledge not only gave several of these men freedom from relying upon others but also not being at the mercy of someone who could take advantage of an ignorant person. The concrete laborer pointed out, “Do you think my stepdad could come here and put that addition on this house that I’m doing for my girlfriend?” One of the positive things that a sawmill worker listed was that the shop he worked in was “in the woods.” He said: “I know I could get on the big asphalt highway somewhere and go work in someplace with a lot of other buildings around, but I don’t know . . . there is something about working in the woods that’s nice.” Similar to the construction workers who choose construction so they can work outdoors, this man has been able to select his environment. Additionally, his preference for blue-collar work also gives him the freedom to wear what he wants without conforming to a professional appearance standard. He explained, “And I’ll tell you another thing I like about sawmill work or in general what I like about being a laborer or whatever is: if you want to let your hair grow, you let your hair grow. If you want to let your beard grow, you let your beard grow. Your clothes are not what’s important. You dress for the weather and after that, ‘See ya!’” Independence from a dress code or an expected white-collar “look” was valued by many of the men. This seems to be symbolic of freedom or independence from conformity. “They look like clones,” a laborer remarked about the white-collar workers he encounters. He continued, “I can go there [to work] with long hair. I don’t have to have my shirt dry-cleaned, my shoes shined. . . . Look what they have to do in the morning. They have to get up every morning, take a shower, shave, and put all these clothes on, you know. I don’t even know if my girlfriend would like me if I did that.”

38

Working Class

Not Just the Money

Blue-collar workers often make more money than the majority of whitecollar workers. Four of the men reported making around $60,000 per year (in the late-1990s). One man reported taking home $1,000 a week. Others obviously were compensated with high wages, but the amount of their annual income did not come up in the interview. Most workers, however, earned an average income and could raise a family in relative comfort, though with little room for extravagance. Chapter 4 quotes men who claim to have chosen a blue-collar job over other occupations that paid more money because that work was what they enjoyed doing. One construction laborer went so far as to state that blue-collar, as opposed to white-collar, work was the only type of occupation that carried with it the potential for intrinsic satisfaction. The only reason for taking a white-collar job, this man argued, was the money. This man’s entire family—mother, stepfather, older brothers, and a sister—all had white-collar jobs, and he did not see any of them as having the rewards that his job offered, although they made more money than he did. A rewarding job that he enjoyed was more important for this laborer than a possible increase in income at an office job. Another laborer, a thirtyone-year-old man working in concrete masonry, echoed this feeling. Asked if life may be easier with a white-collar job, he replied: It might be easier but that ain’t meaning I’m going to be happy. I’m looking for happiness. I’m only going to take this path once. I feel that I would rather be happy. I might not be rich and I might be struggling from paycheck to paycheck, but I’m not going to take none of that shit with me, because I’m having fun. I’m happy. I feel that it is all I need to do. . . . I’m happy at what I do, so I might as well enjoy it. I know I’m not driving around in a Mercedes Benz, but that guy in that Mercedes Benz might not have half the happiness I have with my wife-to-be and her children and my children. You know? We have a common living; our needs are not greater than our paychecks. With only one exception, the sampled men said—some more passionately than others—that they enjoyed their work. Several men, reflecting on the possibility of doing other work for more money, said they did not want to change occupations because the positive rewards their job gave them went beyond money. The pipe fitter had voluntarily

The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

39

taken a step down in pay to work his current position. “My foreman’s job, when I worked thirteen years ago [1982], made thirty-five thousand dollars working thirty-seven hours a week. It was huge money, even by today’s standard; add it up. I wouldn’t want it anymore. It just didn’t pack the punch.” The construction supervisor also preferred to remain in his job rather than seek a different line of work that might pay more. He said, “So I know how much I’m going to make pretty much and I’m happy with that. I don’t need a five-hundred-thousand-dollar house and I don’t need a forty-thousand-dollar Cadillac because my job doesn’t pay that way. If I want a job that is going to do that I’ve got to go somewhere else and do some other kind of job that is going to pay more.” The men cited above want more than a paycheck. They want to do something that is meaningful and that they enjoy. They know that there are jobs that pay more but they do not want to give up their current jobs simply to make more money. There is a condition, however: that they are making enough to meet their needs in their present occupation. Two of the most recently mentioned three men spoke of limiting their needs and aspirations to those that fit their incomes. Lawrence Ouellet, in his 1994 book Pedal to the Metal, wrote of a financial threshold at which people can begin to choose which type of job they have. Below that threshold people must accept whatever type of job they can find to meet their needs.3 Sometimes people cannot afford to be choosey and must accept work that is less than stimulating or enjoyable on an intrinsic level so that they can pay their bills. Extrinsic needs take priority, at least up to a certain point, over intrinsic needs. A locomotive assembler, asked if his job was stimulating or “mind numbing,” said: If it was [mind numbing] I wouldn’t stay there. You know, I’ve been in mind-numbing jobs that I’ve stayed at until I had found something [better]. I think with this one I’ve actually got a future. . . . Like I said, any job—just about any job—is worth keeping if you have nothing else better. If you are working with the right people, or for the right people, you know, you can make it pleasant. And the thing is, if you are a person who is curious by nature—most are— you’re going to have personal growth in that job from the people around you. . . . But this job, this particular job, happens to have a lot of growth, a lot of it. There are a lot of interesting things about it as well as the money being adequate. It is not the most money I’ve made but I’m really the happiest that I’ve ever been.

40

Working Class

The men above find more reward from their jobs than the paycheck, and they have chosen to stay in those jobs despite their perception that they could earn more in a less-satisfying occupation. They have chosen their jobs for more than financial concerns, but the liberty of choosing satisfaction over income level depends upon having options that maintain their basic needs. For example, one of the factory workers, a machinist in an automotive machine shop, admitted that he had wanted to “get into computers,” but the shop he works in seems to be the best bet for long-term security. “Factories [he meant specifically large factories] are going to be going, and everything is going to be service oriented. So cars are going to be around forever,” he reasoned. “If cars aren’t, you still have got the heavy machinery. I’m putting myself in a position where I can be employed for a long time.” While he said that he liked his job, he described it as “stimulating enough.” Even the man working in the sawmill, who said he enjoys his job and that it is where he “is supposed to be,” still said that he hasn’t “been able to find anything steady that pays better.” He was looking for something better when he took that job, and he was still open to something better if it presented itself. The job was less than perfect to this forty-nine-year-old, but he had found that he must make sacrifices in order to live near his home in the woodland countryside. It was clear that before having the luxury of choosing an occupation that satisfies in ways other than money, minimal financial requirements must be met (or there must be fulfillment of some other perceived need, such as working near to family); however, having said that, the men definitely maintained, using logical reasoning, that there was more meaning in their work than the money. A sixty-three-year-old union laborer who made the comment “I never felt like I was overpaid” was asked if there was something more than money that made his job meaningful, and he replied: That’s what it is. It was the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of doing a good job, and I suppose a little of that was a little gung ho—that you were doing something that everybody else couldn’t do. I mean, imagine . . . if you take your ironworkers [he had not personally worked as an ironworker]: you go up and walk around on the steel, you know, ten stories up. Let’s face it, not everybody could do it. I know I couldn’t do it. They make a decent living but there again, you could say that, too—what are they in it for? That is a good question. I’m sure they could make a living without put-

The Promise of Blue-Collar Labor

41

ting their life on the line every day, but they do it because maybe they like the challenge. Maybe they, maybe that is a lot of it; I never really thought about it. Maybe a lot of it is knowing that you are doing something that most people either wouldn’t do or couldn’t do. Such statements refute influential researchers who have claimed that there is nothing redeeming about blue-collar work except the paycheck—a topic pursued at greater length in the next chapter. Such scholars miss important motivational aspects of blue-collar labor. A factory welder said: Realize that it is not just for the money; that is not why you do it. You also do it for honor, integrity, you know, things like that. Those things mean a lot to me. . . . It ain’t the money. It is honor. It is about honor. I mean, when you go to work for somebody you say that you are going to do the job. So you do the fucking job. You know, you don’t go crying. You just do the fucking job. There is no reward for doing the job. The reward is a feeling that you have inside, because that thing [paycheck] that you get every Friday, that is definitely not the reward. You’ve got to be doing it for something. If you are just working, I don’t know, if somebody is just working for money—just money, period—I mean in that case I would just as soon be a fucking pimp or drug dealer. I would make more money and I would do less work.

Discussion

The meaning of work to each of these blue-collar workers is multidimensional. Often, several rewarding characteristics of their work are going on at the same time, in different combinations for each person. There is no simple explanation for why a job is enjoyable. It must be emphasized that none of these men described their jobs as flawless. It was normal for the workers to express disappointment with aspects of their jobs, even while extolling the jobs’ virtues. A thirtyseven-year-old union excavator went to great lengths to say that his work was dirty, hot, and destructive to his joints. He had undergone multiple surgeries to repair damage to his back and his knees. He spoke of the discomfort of operating the heavy equipment in subfreezing tem-

42

Working Class

peratures and the stress of working near obstacles: simple mistakes could kill people or cause expensive damage. He then expressed his love for his work, calling it the “perfect job.” Blue-collar labor may not be positively defined in white-collar circles, but working-class culture defines blue-collar work as honorable and rewarding. White-collar workers are not wrong for preferring their occupations, but neither are the blue-collar workers wrong in finding satisfaction in making tangible, useful products through physical effort, using skills that take years to master. The discussion now turns to the meaning of blue-collar work as defined by prominent social scientists— views that stand in stark contrast to the descriptions above.

Notes 1. This young man was not yet a blue-collar worker; he was included in the sample because of his desire to become one. An honor student in high school, he was college bound. His chosen major was construction management, where he sought to learn about the entire construction process before becoming a career construction worker. 2. This man was interviewed because his desire to leave blue-collar work for farming reflected what Blau and Duncan’s model would define as “downward mobility.” His choice to leave his factory job demonstrated that the theoretical hierarchy of occupations does not necessarily reflect the values of the working class. The only reason for working in the factory, this man claimed, was to earn money to pay for his farm. Several of the men in the sample had grown up on farms and all regretted being forced to leave the farm for other blue-collar work. Scholars define their change in employment as upward mobility, but the workers do not see it that way. To them, moving from the farm was regrettable. 3. Ouellet (1994), Pedal to the Metal.

3 How We Came to Devalue Blue-Collar Work

THE WORKING-CLASS MEN SPOKE OF many ways that their work has meaning and that their jobs are satisfying and beneficial for the individual as well as the community. The image painted in social science, however, rarely acknowledges the positive aspects of blue-collar work. There is research that shows how blue-collar work plays a positive role in working-class people’s lives, but the more typical conception of bluecollar work is very negative. Part of the reason for this is the strong theoretical influence of Marxism, which emphasized the exploitation of blue-collar work. Part is explained by the misunderstandings of researchers whose observations of working-class behavior were interpreted from the cultural perspective of the professional class. Another factor has been the convention of deductive logic in scientific research, which has directed researchers to overlook the complexity of workers’ motivations. Stratification research, too, has been prominent, absconding with the issue of class and transforming the concept into a narrow index, thus changing the focus to one of the relative place of classes in the social hierarchy. Hence, only the characteristics that indicated rank were widely discussed. There is a history of denial by academics of the multidimensional meaning of blue-collar work. Matthew Crawford has recently done much to dispel the fallacy that blue-collar work is without intrinsic rewards. People are beginning to question the meaning of work in which tangible things are not produced. The self-conception as consumer rather than producer is not healthy for the individual or for society. There is a renewed concern for local economies and communities built upon productive industries and productive labor. Public discourse is

43

44

Working Class

beginning to question the policies that in the United States have eliminated so many blue-collar jobs. These trends are constrained, however, by the powerful ideology that devalues blue-collar work. Social science provides strength for this belief system by championing the image of blue-collar work as void of intrinsic value. Consciously or unconsciously, the dominant theories of social inequality promote an inferior identity for working-class people. One example of the way manual work is defined as meaningless comes from a 1980 book on work and occupations edited by Geoff Esland and Grame Salaman. In one chapter, the rewarding aspects of work are completely denied in an article titled “The Meaning of Work.” This scholarship cites scientific research as conclusive evidence that blue-collar work is meaningless in every way except for the paycheck it provides: Generations of the working class . . . have made a “realistic” adaptation . . . by relinquishing, or by never bothering to take seriously, aspirations towards intrinsic satisfactions. Much evidence [the author cites Goldthorpe et al, 1968; Lockwood, 1966; Davis and Taylor, 1972] points to there having always been a tendency for major sections of lower-level employees to see their work in purely instrumental or “extrinsic” terms, meaning by this that they see it only as a means to the consumption of goods and services outside work (or some other extrinsic reward) and that the work itself has no intrinsic meaning and satisfaction for them.1 The above quote was summarizing the results of a campaign in the 1960s and 1970s by some prominent sociologists to establish working-class occupations as barren of intrinsic value. Of course, other researchers questioned that narrow characterization,2 but the devalued conception of blue-collar work fit with the dominant paradigm of the day, which claimed that the uneven distribution of rewards in the social-class hierarchy was beneficial to the smooth functioning of society. Identifying bluecollar work as merely alienated drudgery for simple-minded consumers justified the relegation of the working class to the bottom of the class structure in social theory. The timing of that research agenda was important for establishing it as the dominant paradigm in social science today. At the time when researchers were collecting evidence for their theory that blue-collar work was meaningless, social science in the United States had not yet

How We Came to Devalue Blue-Collar Work

45

faced the postmodern critics who revealed the hidden biases that are inherent in the research process. Academics still perceived science purely as the objective pursuit of universal truth, impervious to the biases held by researchers. By the time sociologists began seriously to question the impact of scholars’ predispositions when they proclaimed their scientific truths, the analysis of social class had been transformed by the advent of computer-assisted statistical analysis. This required that messy, multidimensional, abstract concepts like social class be made operational as indexes suitable to linear-equation modeling. The devalued conception of blue-collar work that came out of 1960s research was built into the measurement process through the biased construction of socioeconomic-status indexes (see Chapter 5). As a result, the assumption of blue-collar inferiority became an entrenched supposition in social research. With the apparent precision of statistical analysis that reproduced consistent depictions of the stratified social order, sociologists turned their attention to less-certain aspects of social life. Sociologists lost interest in debates over social class, and the negative meaning of blue-collar work was institutionalized in the theoretical canon and methodological standards of sociology. Social class was once the prime concern for the discipline of sociology,3 but other aspects of identity such as gender, race, and sexuality have now entered the sociological consciousness. At the same time, the profession has become comfortable in thinking that social class is all figured out. The conventional depiction of the social-class system as a vertical hierarchy, with the professional class at the top and the working class at the bottom, is ingrained in the dominant theoretical framework. The conception of blue-collar work as meaningless, alienated, and subordinate is barely questioned in the stratification-research literature. There are, however, positive signs of change. In the book on the working class that Michael Zweig edited in 2004, What’s Class Got to Do with It? he opens with the statement, “The long silence about class in the United States is finally coming to an end”; and a growing field of class analysis—identified as working-class studies4—is trying to alter the narrow understanding of the working class. But there is much work ahead before this group will seriously challenge the hegemony of conventional stratification theory. While there already are many examples in the research literature that reflect the positive association of bluecollar work in working-class culture, the old, negative definitions of blue-collar work still make up the unrivaled paradigm behind theories of class inequality.

46

Working Class

How the Sociological Stereotype of Meaningless Blue-Collar Work Was Created

It is illuminating to examine the process whereby blue-collar occupations became generalized as meaningless work. The most influential claim that such work was meaningful only in instrumental terms was in The Affluent Worker studies of Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechhofer, and Platt. Early in their 1968 book, the first of three volumes on working-class attitudes and behavior, they report a wide range of orientations to work in interviews of a diverse sample of highly skilled, relatively skilled, and semiskilled factory workers. In a variety of questions that rarely measured the rewards and satisfaction felt by the workers directly,5 workers were asked how they liked their jobs. Most workers in the sample highlighted at least some intrinsic rewards as among the valued aspects of their jobs. As in my Chapter 2, assembly-line workers were the ones to express the least degree of satisfaction with the meaningful content of their work. But even while the researchers documented workers’ expressions of satisfaction, they dismissed the workers’ varied experiences and feelings about their jobs to conclude that the workers in general were instrumentally oriented to their work. In 1968, those sociologists proclaimed: The primary meaning of work is as a means to an end, or ends, external to the work situation; that is, work is regarded as a means of acquiring the income necessary to support a valued way of life of which work itself is not an integral part. Work is therefore experienced as mere “labour” in the sense of an expenditure of effort which is made for extrinsic rather than for intrinsic rewards. Workers act as “economic men,” seeking to minimize effort and maximize economic returns; but the latter concern is the dominant one.6

British sociologist Mike Savage provides an explanation for why these careful scientists dismissed the variety of attachments to work that the workers expressed in their interviews. In his 2005 review of the field notes used in the Affluent Worker studies, Savage suggests that the researchers’ “advocacy of a deductive approach to sociology” led them to place workers’ statements into theoretical categories that were narrowly constructed and mutually exclusive. Savage illustrates this through passages from the second volume, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (1969), in which Goldthorpe et al. were scrupulous in noting that when talking about class there was “a considerable amount of diversity . . . respondents were sometimes rather vague and confused in their formulations.” . . . Rather than

How We Came to Devalue Blue-Collar Work

47

inductively seeking to make sense of this complexity, they treated Lockwood’s three working-class images of society as ideal types, and considered how far the interview material could be read to indicate the predominance of any one of them. This led them to their famous argument that “there was within our sample of affluent workers a marked propensity to regard social class as primarily a matter of money.”7

The conventions of positivist sociology directed researchers to deductively associate their data with one or another hypothesis without much concern for explaining the factors that did not conform to the generalizations. At the time, scholars commonly interpreted data in sweeping terms, either in support of one extreme explanation or in support of its alternate (null) hypothesis. In this case, the sociologists reasoned that blue-collar work was important only in instrumental ways because the importance of earning a wage was the most consistent factor in the workers’ explanations for why they work. The varieties of other meaningful factors that accompanied the paycheck were discounted because they were not as consistently discussed. Researchers did not start out focusing on only blue-collar orientations to work. In their 1929 study Middletown, Robert and Helen Lynd state: For both the working and business class no other accompaniment of getting a living approaches in importance the money received for their work. It is more this future, instrumental aspect of work, rather than the intrinsic satisfactions involved, that keeps Middletown working so hard as more and more of the activities of living are coming to be strained through the bars of the dollar sign.8

In the years following World War II, however, the instrumental orientation to work of which the Lynds spoke became associated only with blue-collar jobs. At the time, the dominant theoretical paradigm provided a functionalist logic that suggested that the lower pay and lack of respect associated with most blue-collar jobs meant that those positions did not have strong importance or high demands for skill and training. Some scholars claimed, “It is only at the manual levels of the occupational hierarchy that people may have to sacrifice all other potential sources of satisfaction in order to gain significant economic rewards. Managers, for instance, usually have more rewarding work on all aspects, including pay.”9 As if they were looking for evidence to support the contention that blue-collar positions were inferior, scholars made dramatic theoretical leaps when interpreting data. They matched their data to their theoretical

48

Working Class

conception of the social hierarchy in which working-class was inferior. Robert Dubin’s 1956 research on industrial workers was a widely cited study used to justify the image of workers as only motivated by instrumental concerns (also cited by Goldthorpe et al. in their Affluent Worker study). Dubin found that the typical factory worker “has a well-developed sense of attachment to his work and workplace without a corresponding sense of total commitment to it.”10 The industrial workers reported that their work was meaningful, but also that their jobs were not the only thing that mattered in their lives. From that Dubin arrived at a more extreme conclusion: “It is immediately suggested that the emotional impact of work and the work environment seems to be remarkably low in terms of general life experiences. Not only is the workplace relatively unimportant as a place of preferred primary human relationships, but it cannot even evoke significant sentiments and emotions in its occupants.”11 Dubin’s simple finding that “nine out of ten of those studied clearly indicated that their preferred informal human associations and contacts were found in the community, among friends, and in the family” rather than at work was enough to allow other researchers to deduce that blue-collar work was completely meaningless beyond the paycheck it provided. The logic for jumping to such extreme conclusions was, again, based in the positivist model for social research that promoted deductive reasoning. According to the positivist paradigm, empirical analysis was used to support or reject theories, expressed as hypotheses. The hypotheses were constructed to measure the data against ideal-type categories. The data were interpreted as supporting either one explanation or another. As an illustration for how this was done, consider how Marxist theory defines a person’s primary identity as dependent upon the person’s place in the relations of production—that is to say, on the job. From there, it could be assumed, class consciousness would lead blue-collar workers to realize that their political and personal interests were grounded in the connections made with fellow blue-collar workers. From a Marxist perspective, it is reasonable to expect that workers, if they are conscious and aware of their true interests, would identify most closely with their fellow workers. A hypothesis could be made that states that workers would consider their closest personal relationships as extending from their employment. Dubin’s survey data did not support this position, so the alternative hypothesis was accepted—that workers have absolutely no connection to their jobs. The Marxist explanation for worker behavior was rejected, or at least it was determined that the workers lacked a true consciousness. The deductive reasoning that was promoted by social science of that day did not leave room for the complex explana-

How We Came to Devalue Blue-Collar Work

49

tions that emerged from the subjective accounts of research subjects. Logical deductions of researchers that were based in extreme hypotheses made for extreme explanations for workers’ orientations to their jobs. For example, Curt Tausky’s 1969 article “The Meaning of Work Among Blue Collar Men” applied the sweeping conclusions of the Affluent Worker research to US factory workers. Tausky reported no direct data indicating how industrial workers spent their paychecks, yet he asserted that “one important link between men and work is the emphasis on consumption at high levels.”12 Tausky’s secondary data said nothing about the intrinsic satisfaction from blue-collar work, but in the article’s final statement the author claimed that “the economic payoff from work may frequently be the main focus of concern rather than rewards stemming from prestige or intrinsic content of work . . . even in work which does not in itself provide satisfaction.”13 In this statement, Tausky culminates a three-step theoretical leap from (1) acknowledging that earning an income is an important feature of work to (2) defining workers as motivated by commodity fetishism to (3) the conception of blue-collar work as void of meaningful rewards. Tausky’s deduction was based on the following: three-quarters of the sampled blue-collar workers said they would rather receive “better than average pay as a truck driver” than “less than average pay as a bank clerk”;14 the same percentage also did not care about getting a promotion if they could be sure that their “income would go up steadily” in their current positions. Tausky assumed that these findings indicated that the only thing workers cared about was wages. He did not consider that working-class men might not want to work as a bank teller. By assuming that working as a white-collar bank clerk was more rewarding, more meaningful, and more prestigious than driving a truck for a living, Tausky deduced that working-class men simply did not care about intrinsic rewards from work. Moreover, he interpreted the findings to mean that the only thing motivating blue-collar workers was money. He was further convinced when workers said they had little concern for leaving their current blue-collar jobs for a job—perhaps a white-collar job—that had a more celebrated job title. What is more, Tausky deduced that the 74 percent of managers who said they would like a promotion even if it meant no pay increase15 suggested that white-collar workers devalued monetary rewards in favor of intrinsic satisfaction. These are shocking theoretical deductions, but without a theoretical model that recognized value in blue-collar work Tausky proceeded to “characterize almost three out of four [blue-collar] workers as consumer oriented”16 because they reported preferring blue-

50

Working Class

collar over white-collar work. His erroneous reasoning advanced theories that singled out consumer orientations among the working class. At the same time, he also asserted that the primary motivation for whitecollar workers was intrinsic rewards. The presumption that blue-collar work has no intrinsic value drove the current of scholarship on social class in the 1960s and beyond. The link between meaningless work and an inferior status for working-class people is provided by Melvin Kohn. His 1969 Class and Conformity still informs stratification theory today, broadly stating the negative outcomes from blue-collar work for working-class people: “The conditions of occupational life at lower social-class levels [i.e. blue-collar] limit men’s view of the job primarily to the extrinsic benefits it provides, foster a narrowly circumscribed conception of self and society, and promote the positive valuation of conformity to authority.”17 Kohn juxtaposes the personal limitations created by working-class occupations with the personal development that comes from white-collar work. Citing Seymore Martin Lipset’s award-winning book Political Man (first published in 1960) in which Lipset asserts that the conditions in which working-class people live lead to limited psychological and social capabilities, Kohn states: “The higher their social class position, the more men value self-direction and the more confident they are that self-direction is both possible and efficacious. The lower their social class position, the more men value conformity and the more certain they are that conformity is all that their own capacities and the exigencies of the world allow.”18 Kohn acknowledges that “in both social classes” it is the degree of self-reliance on the job that determines people’s values and orientations, but that does not stop him from making the sweeping assertion that working-class jobs are “constricting” and “limiting,” while white-collar jobs generally foster positive qualities in people. “The conditions of occupational life at higher social class levels,” Kohn explains, “facilitate interest in the intrinsic qualities of the job, foster a view of self and society that is conducive to believing in the possibilities of rational action toward purposive goals, and promote the valuation of self-direction.”19 Scholars such as Kohn, as well as Fox, Goldthorpe et al, and Tausky, represent social science that has defined what it means to be working class in negative ways, based primarily on the allegation that blue-collar work is void of intrinsic meaning. There is little empirical evidence to make that claim, yet social researchers, believing themselves to be unbiased, applied the authority of science to their impression that blue-collar work was

How We Came to Devalue Blue-Collar Work

51

unfulfilling. Interestingly, the theoretical connection of consumerism to the working-class participation in meaningless blue-collar labor can be traced to the Marxist contention that commodity fetishism distracted the working class from social revolution. Scholars still applied similar logic even in the Cold War years when Marxist theory was frowned upon in the United States. Consumerism is obviously more highly developed in professional circles than in the working class, as C. Wright Mills described,20 but his voice did not sway the increasing momentum of theory to define blue-collar work as meaningful only in extrinsic ways. Researchers singled out consumerism in the working class as a motivator for their apparent instrumental orientations to work. They made sweeping generalizations and accusations that exceeded their data, but their premises are still built into the categories of social theory today. History is to blame for these inaccuracies becoming entrenched into the conceptual framework of social science. Structural functionalism was the dominant theoretical paradigm at the time when Kohn, Tausky, Dubin, and Goldthorpe et al. conducted their research. This theoretical orientation understood inequality in the social order as natural and just— the evolutionary outcome of society’s intention to balance its requirements with the social institutions that most efficiently met those needs. The researchers presumed themselves to be superior, and their theoretical outlook acknowledged their privileged position as the result of their superiority. They declared themselves to be “upper-middle-class.” Their research and data analysis were shaped by those assumptions,21 and the narrow, biased image of blue-collar work was established as part of the legitimate truth in stratification theory and, as a result, supported negative images of working-class people in popular culture. Chapter 5 explains how the devalued image of blue-collar work is built into social analysis via the socioeconomic status (SES) index. That is key, because the authority of science rests upon empirical evidence and the survey research that applies the variable SES dependably provides it. The socioeconomic status index ranks social positions according to the biased standards of the professional class that established the narrow, simplistic, negative generalizations presented above. That perspective underlies the dominant definition of the social-class hierarchy in which the working class is inferior. Before this study further exposes the connection between ideology and stratification theory, it is important to present the sociological literature that recognizes blue-collar work as meaningful in working-class culture. A substantial body of research has recorded the intrinsic nature

52

Working Class

of blue-collar work in ways that professionals may not understand. It is now time to introduce this literature to stratification theory to create a more accurate explanation of the social-class hierarchy.

The Sociology of Work and Working-Class Culture

There is a disconnect between subdisciplines in sociology regarding the study of work and the analysis of class inequality. That is unfortunate, especially because the type of work a person does is so closely associated with class membership.22 The meaning of work is at the heart of social-stratification theory and the widely held conceptions of the social-class hierarchy, but what blue-collar work means to the workers themselves is either ignored or skewed so that the satisfying aspects are marginalized. Work was the central issue in the theories of both Marx and Durkheim, which have highlighted the issue in social theory ever since. Among sociologists who study work, it is still recognized as “among the most important social institutions” as it shapes the lives and identities of individuals while also reflecting the multiple dynamics of social inequality and technological change. The work that people do is understood as pivotal, shaping “every aspect of life.”23 Researchers in this field recognize that different work experiences create different outlooks in people. It has long been known that blue-collar workers recognize different standards for judging what is meaningful, rewarding, and honorable labor than do their white-collar counterparts. Scholars of work now recognize that, in Amy Wharton’s words, “Work is not strictly an instrumental activity, nor can it be understood only in economic terms.”24 Wharton cites Roger Friedland and A. F. Robertson as they explain: “Work provides identities as much as it provides bread for the table; participation in commodity and labor markets is as much an expression of who you are as what you want.”25 Work shapes identity, and it is defined differently in the working class than it is in the professional class. There is growing interest in the sociological literature about workingclass culture. Scholars report unique cultural expressions among workingclass people that represent an alternative standpoint to that of the professional class. Thomas Gorman succinctly states: “There are distinctive class cultures.”26 The research of Kristen Lucas and Patrice Buzzanell reveal the “alternative constructions of career and success” that are part of miners’ worldviews.27 James Catano describes an alternative conception of dignity and class identity that working-class men maintain in

How We Came to Devalue Blue-Collar Work

53

resistance to middle-class definitions.28 Barbara Jensen reveals “the presence of cultural differences between the professional middle class and working class people” that create “two different notions of what it means to succeed in life.”29 Michele Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men (2000), describes working-class categories of morality that define blue-collar work with honor in ways that are not often found in whitecollar occupations. Rather than regarding white-collar professionals as their superiors, Lamont’s blue-collar informants questioned the morality of professionals, while their own working-class occupations were a source of dignity.30 Lamont revealed the important role of morality in working-class culture for constructing identities and boundaries between classes. Moral priorities were not consistently defined between workers and the professional/managerial class. These conclusions support Charles Sabel’s 1982 description of alternative worldviews between blue-collar workers and their middle-class counterparts that are based upon different standards for prestige and desirable work. As Sabel explains, blue-collar workers value different aspects of work than do white-collar workers. He explains that blue-collar workers work hard and skillfully, but in pursuit of ends that an omnibus notion of success as making it to the top of the middle class heap does nothing to illuminate. Put another way, the evidence suggests that workers may accept gross disparities in the distribution of power and wealth; but they are none-the-less quite particular about what is an acceptable job.31

White-collar workers, Sabel explains, judge performance and status upon criteria that are inconsistent with working-class standards of honor and pride. For decades, ethnographic research of occupational settings has found that blue-collar workers assess the value and prestige of work differently than professionals, often with contempt for white-collar positions,32 but this has done little to challenge the negative understanding of manual labor that is built into theory and research. Much of “working-class studies” is striving to overcome the simplistic assumption of working-class inferiority that is linked to blue-collar occupations, but the entrenchment of these concepts is deep. This institutionalized bias is confronted in Chapter 5, after factory and construction workers recount their impressions of white-collar work. As the ethnographic data pile up against the assumption of universal understandings of class inequality (asserting that all of society looks down on blue-collar work), such assumptions must be reconsidered. When the sampled workers discuss white-collar professions, it is clear that they do not regard “middle”-class, professional positions as

54

Working Class

superior to their circumstances. Mostly they scorn the personal qualities that are admired in white-collar environments and hate to think of giving up their jobs for white-collar employment. While prominent theories of class inequality assume the superiority of white-collar jobs and lifestyles, construction and factory workers regard white-collar work as distasteful and question the culture of white-collar professionals. Their disdain underscores the different ways that working-class and professional-class people think about work and its place in their lives. The meanings of work and status, honor and respect, prosperity and wealth, identity and dignity, rewards and what is important vary across social classes; hence, there is no consistent way to determine if a job is good or bad. The meaning of work is too complex to fit into a clear and simple conceptual framework without imposing value judgments.

Flaws in the Research Process

There are three major reasons that blue-collar work has been so misunderstood. They each involve theoretical paradigms that are flawed. The faith in science that in many ways defined the modern era allowed imprecise theories and methods to shape the conception of manual work. The first flawed paradigm was functionalism. This orienting strategy, as sociological theorist David Wagner describes it,33 guided most social research in the decades following World War II and framed the interpretations of data made by researchers from the 1940s through the 1970s. This theoretical perspective explained that blue-collar workers were not as skilled or important as white-collar professionals. The post hoc reasoning of Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore explained that the jobs with higher pay were the most demanding and important. They asserted in their widely cited 1945 article “Some Principles of Stratification” that “in general those positions convey the best reward, and hence have the highest rank, which (a) have the greatest importance for the society and (b) require the greatest training or talent.”34 With their a priori assumptions that the “lower social positions” are less important, are less challenging, and require less “training and talent,” researchers were guided to define the blue-collar experience in negative terms. A basic tenet of functionalist theories was that there was consensus across society in the basic societal values. This led researchers to downplay the different cultures across social-class boundaries. Their theoretical assumptions justified the dismissal of the alternative worldview of

How We Came to Devalue Blue-Collar Work

55

blue-collar workers.35 Functionalist theory was dominant in the period just before issues of class and work were largely ignored as important concerns for social researchers. As concern about class faded, conceptions of the meaning of blue-collar work as one-dimensional and negative were institutionalized. With the assumption that professional and managerial positions were more important and more demanding of skill, intelligence, and knowledge, conceptions of a vertical social hierarchy went relatively unchallenged; an example would be Blau and Duncan’s 1967 description in The American Occupational Structure, where bluecollar work was placed beneath white-collar positions. The next flawed paradigm was positivism. Positivism presumes that there is a universal truth that can be understood through rigorous scientific methods employed by objective researchers. Scholars failed to recognize the inherent biases in their research of the working class and blue-collar work. Moreover, their deductive reasoning promoted sweeping interpretations of data that discounted the complexity of workers’ orientations to their jobs. The presumption of scientific objectivity in the findings of influential researchers such as Kohn and Goldthorpe et al. made their conclusions of simplicity and meaninglessness in blue-collar work a legitimate foundation for later studies. Marxism provided an alternative explanation for the meaning of work, but this theoretical perspective also regarded manual labor to have been de-skilled, simplified, controlled, and exploited. As stratification research became the major focus, the lack of opposition to this conception of blue-collar work made the negative conception a given in social theory. Interest in the complexity and variety of the meaning of work faded and, as variables such as class were used as narrow indexes, the devalued image of blue-collar work was built into the conceptual framework. The functionalist paradigm that guided much social theory framed the interpretations of data made by researchers from the 1950s through the 1970s. The theoretical orientations that governed scientific research led scholars to dismiss findings that did not conform to their theoretical categories. The standards of research also promoted the construction of narrow, simplistic explanations for social phenomena. Blue-collar work and the working-class experience cannot be explained in simplistic terms. The complexity of these identities and experiences are not represented in the standard depiction of work or of the class hierarchy. But not only is reality more complex than is acknowledged in the theoretical vision of social science, the complexity of blue-collar work itself provides avenues for alternatives to the negative depiction of the working class.

56

Working Class

Notes 1. Fox (1980), “Meaning of Work,” 151. As evidence Fox cites Goldthorpe et al. (1968); Lockwood (1966); Davis and Taylor (1972. 2. For example, Guppy (1982), “On Intersubjectivity” and Guppy and Goyder (1984), “Consensus on Occupational Prestige” challenged the thesis about the instrumentally oriented worker, but, as Kerbo (2006), Social Stratification, has pointed out, this argument had little empirical evidence and therefore gained little traction. 3. Although class has lost some of its appeal in recent times, the concept has historically been argued to be the most important variable for sociology. Stephen Edgell (1993), Class, p. x, states that class is “the most widely used concept in sociology.” Citing Erik Olin Wright, Edgell quotes Arthur Stinchcombe as saying: “Sociology has only one independent variable, class.” Edgell also quotes Anthony Giddens (1976), New Rules, as stating that class is “the most important concept for analyzing social stratification in modern societies.” 4. Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechhofer, and Platt (1968), The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behavior, 38–39. 5. Ibid., 13–24 6. Ibid., 38–39. 7. Savage (2005), “Working-Class Identities in the 1960s,” 932–933. 8. Lynd and Lynd (1929), Middletown, 80. 9. Beynon and Blackburn (1972), Perceptions of Work, 5. 10. Dubin (1956), “Industrial Workers’ Worlds,” 140. 11. Ibid., 136. 12. Tausky (1969) “Meaning of Work,” 49. 13. Ibid., 55. 14. Ibid., 51. 15. Ibid., 52. 16. Ibid., 54. 17. Kohn (1969), Class and Conformity, 192. 18. Ibid., 86. 19. Ibid., 192. 20. Mills (1951), White Collar. 21. Savage, “Working-Class Identities.” 22. Savage’s review of the Affluent Worker data shows that average citizens do not necessarily define class the way sociologists do. He identifies difficulties on the part of interview subjects when they were asked to comment on the make up of social classes: “This was especially true with respect to probing about which occupations fitted into particular social classes. This concern with identifying class boundaries was a staple feature of sociological debates about class, but it does not seem to strike many chords among [the ways] the respondents thought about class”; “Working-Class Identities,” 937. 23. See Wharton (2006), Working in America, xiii, xiv. 24. Ibid., xiv. 25. Ibid.; Friedland and Robertson (1990), Beyond the Marketplace, 25. 26. Gorman (2000), “Cross-Class Perceptions of Social Class,” 112.

How We Came to Devalue Blue-Collar Work

57

27. Lucas and Buzzanell (2004), “Blue-Collar Work, Career, and Success,” 273–292. 28. Catano (2001), Ragged Dicks. 29. Jensen (2004), “Across the Great Divide,” 171, 174; emphasis in original. 30. Lamont (2000), Dignity of Working Men; David Brooks’s Aug. 14, 2007, syndicated column in the New York Times also provides valuable insights, http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/ davidbrooks/ index. html?inline=nyt-per. 31. Sabel (1982), Work and Politics, 80. 32. For example, Roy (1954), “Efficiency and ‘the Fix’”; Pilcher (1972), Portland Longshoremen; Kornblum, (1974), Blue Collar Community; Willis (1977), Learning to Labour; Riemer, (1979), Hard Hats; Halle, (1984), America’s Working Man; Finlay (1988), Work on the Waterfront; Collinson (1992), Managing the Shopfloor; Ouellet (1994), Pedal to the Metal; Applebaum (1999), Construction Workers; Lucas and Buzzanell (2004), “BlueCollar Work, Career, and Success”; Paap (2006), Working Construction. 33. Wagner (1984), The Growth of Sociological Theories. 34. Davis and Moore (1945), “Some Principles of Stratification,” 243. 35. For example, Leonard Reissman (1959), Class in American Society, 171, claims that “middle class values, tastes, and life patterns are the dominating cultural features [of the United States].” Reissman admits that working-class values are different from those of the middle class, but he considered it better to think of them as “variations around a central cultural norm,” 176. Writing in the 1970s, Daniel Rossides (2nd ed., 1990), The American Class System, 415, also describes alternative values and priorities among the working class, but he says: “Despite the pronounced particularities of the working-class experience, however, it cannot be said that there exists anything resembling a working-class subculture. Nothing so poignantly expresses the plight of the American working class as the fact that the working class is subject to the full force of the middle class ethos.”

4 Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

THE NEXT STEP IN EXPLAINING HOW blue-collar workers think about their jobs is to describe how they understand white-collar occupations. Social classes are understood in relation to one another, which makes selfperception dependent upon the identity of “the other.” The sampled workers’ perspective on white-collar professionals is also useful for showing how different classes have divergent ways of understanding their own circumstances as well as those of others. It must be kept in mind that prominent theories of social-class inequality are predicated on the assumption that working-class people agree with professionals that white-collar work holds greater prestige and authority than blue-collar work. When asked to comment on the theory that blue-collar work entails little for a worker to feel good about, a forty-six-year-old factory welder responded:

I think it is just the opposite. I think that when you work with your hands you actually see what you started with. Then you see what you’ve got after you’re done. I think when you’ve got pencilpushing jobs you don’t get that. . . . I disagree [that there is little to feel good about with blue-collar work]. I mean, look around you. It is all working people. Look at all of the vehicles; working men put them together. They are made with steel, plastic, with rubber. Look at all of these buildings; concrete, you know, plaster, sheetrock, glass. Working people did that. This man defined working people as “those who work with their hands.” In his conception of occupations, a white-collar worker does not do real work, and his definition is an important one. However, the welder went 59

60

Working Class

out of his way to say that he did not want to put down people that do not have blue-collar jobs.

Real Work

The welder quoted above extolled the efforts of working people as he looked at the surrounding buildings and passing cars, disclosing that in his mind working people are working-class people. In his thinking, bluecollar workers do “real” work; white-collar workers do not. This view was shared by more than two-thirds of the men. Several reported that white-collar employment was not work at all. David Halle found similar attitudes among his blue-collar sample in his 1984 America’s Working Man, as did David Collinson in his 1992 Managing the Shopfloor: Subjectivity, Masculinity and Workplace Culture. The most exacting words on this view came from a thirty-four-yearold carpenter: WORKER: That’s the definition of work: the movement of matter. That’s the definition in the dictionary, isn’t it? AUTHOR: I don’t know. WORKER: Look it up. Work: the movement of matter. You move matter on that. If you’re not doing that, if you’re a whitecollar worker, you’re not moving matter. You’re just shuffling paper. AUTHOR: So is white-collar work real work? WORKER: No, I don’t believe so. I believe they can probably do away with half of them. I think the world would be a better place. AUTHOR: How come? Describe that. WORKER: Probably because then there would be more people out there producing actual, getting results, know what I mean? A thirty-seven-year-old machine operator put this notion another way: “Every office does something different in a big corporation, but it’s all the same to me. It’s all just paperwork, telephone calls, but you don’t actually, physically, do anything.” Several blue-collar men—including a winder in a turbine factory, an assembly-line worker in an insulation plant, and a welder in a locomotive factory—had the opinion that management was “just bullshitting from one place to another.” A worker in a fiberglass factory put it more politely: “Upper management is to me a salesman. If you can talk, if you

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

61

can keep someone nodding, you can be in upper management.” This man had direct contact with white-collar people: “I sit on a couple of committees—shop steward, I’m safety rep—I’m kind of involved with management at a different level than a lot of people down there and I basically see some of these people are nothing but filling a hole in there . . . that number of management was there. They are basically collegeeducated, book-smart, reality-makes-no-sense, salesmen.” The image of white-collar workers as not doing anything important was further exemplified by a construction worker’s comment that he is happy that he is not “sitting around in an office all the time lounging on coffee and donuts and, you know what I mean, wasting your life away like that.” Obviously, white-collar work entails more than simply putting “his hands in his pockets and drink[ing] coffee all day,” as the thirtyseven-year-old factory welder envisioned upper management. However, this image was held by three-quarters of the sample. Some respondents made an effort to support their conception of whitecollar work with logical reasoning. A thirty-year-old contractor explained: How much work is there actually to be done when they can set up one agency to oversee what another agency is doing? That means there’s a halt on exactly how much work they can dig themselves up. As they do that, they keep creating more positions and more positions so the people that are honestly working keep footing the bill in order to pay the salary for the people that are trying to do as little as possible. It’s a vicious circle. Two workers from different jobs, the contractor and a sixty-threeyear-old union construction laborer, made the point of comparing the importance of work done by blue-collar versus white-collar workers. The contractor: Take, for instance, if one person from the research department fell out of line, you know—dropped dead. Would that person be missed as an overall? No. It just wouldn’t happen. I mean, one person working five hours a day or something making $50,000 a year, two months off during the summer and down the line is a little outrageous compared to the person that works two hundred and eighty-eight days a year, gets weekends off, a week’s vacation a year, you know, and without that one person something would stop functioning. If I didn’t show up other people would have to do twice as much work in order to cover the work that I’m supposed to do. The top office, you know, and the top offices, departments where it’s

62

Working Class

just a department pushing paperwork from one department to another, it could be cut out. It could disappear and nobody would even notice it, except the people that actually carry the paperwork. . . . It’s like a road crew versus, you know, a researcher. If one flagman doesn’t show up for the road crew, which is going to make more of a substantial difference, the one researcher or the one flagman that doesn’t show up—or the one grader operator or the one roller operator or the one truck driver that’s hauling asphalt or something? The union laborer, using government workers as an example of whitecollar, said: “We’ve got people making thirty thousand, forty thousand dollars a year that if they were gone tomorrow the only thing that would be missing would be the paycheck because the government would go right on just the same way. On the other hand, the job that I have, if I wasn’t doing the job they would have to get somebody the same day to do what I was doing because I was accomplishing something.” The idea of white-collar jobs being unimportant was common, and although many of the men recognized that managing, purchasing, ordering, and selling were important aspects of the businesses that employed them, it was more common, however, to hear views similar to those quoted above. One-half of white-collar workers, to use the carpenter’s estimate, are doing work that three out of four respondents considered unnecessary. A mason said, “You look around—half the jobs people have, it seems like, or half the people that have jobs, their jobs are just kind of like made up. You know, it’s not something you really need. It’s just there.” This man explained further: WORKER: When you think about it, all jobs are [made up] except for your basic jobs that give you food and shelter. Then everything else after that was made up. AUTHOR: Like management and all the different levels and the bosses? WORKER: Yeah; people that do the paperwork and all. It just doesn’t seem that important. I’m sure they feel important.

Blue-Collar Conceptions of White-Collar People

This study later addresses in detail the reasons that the blue-collar workers gave for not wanting white-collar jobs, but first discusses what construction workers and factory workers thought of those doing white-

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

63

collar work. Societal views of blue-collar work often link the performance of dirty jobs with the character of the person doing the work, as though workers that get dirty while on the job are dirty “on the inside” as well as the outside.1 The working-class men interviewed here made similar generalizations about middle-class people. These notions may play a role in the working-class men’s reports of their preference for blue-collar work. Several men reported feelings that white-collar people are not as good “on the inside.” An eighteen-year-old construction worker: “I think that people who work [i.e., working-class] are going to be better people inside; they are going to have better personalities, they are going to be more down to earth and in touch with other people.” A carpenter claimed that white-collar workers were more “self-absorbed.” Asked what that meant, he said, “[They] could give a shit less about whose going to get crushed, you understand? They have no heart in their body, but as long as they’re going to bring their food home, fuck you, Joe!” A twenty-seven-year-old excavator described white-collar people simply as “Snobby, stuck-up.” This was reiterated by a forty-five-year-old painter: “They’re arrogant, very arrogant people.” He went on: WORKER: I see a lot of office people and white-collar people that are constantly on the scam. I mean with women and sex and all that. It’s like they have confused that with being a man. They’re always chasing other women, that type of thing, or at the office trying to get in this one or that one’s pants. I don’t think they appreciate the home life or their family as much as the blue-collar guy does. It’s kind of hard for me, like, who am I going to go out and impress? But I don’t care. I go home, I’m dirty, I’m filthy, I want to take a shower, have a beer, sit down and eat dinner; whatever. They want to go out in their suits and ties and impress people. They’re out drinking every Friday night or Thursday night after work and they’re out fooling around with this floozy or that floozy and they come home at twelve at night and you see it all the time. AUTHOR: That’s really interesting because it seems that the kind of stereotype you see on TV or whatever, usually it’s the characterization of the blue-collar worker who’s the party animal and wants to go out and chase women. WORKER: Right. But see, I don’t find that. I don’t find that at all. I find it completely the opposite.

64

Working Class

The painter who had worked in the offices of a couple of different companies touched on another issue that was remarked upon by several workers: Most of the guys [owning construction businesses] are understanding, too, because we’re family men. That’s the difference. We’re bluecollar, nine to five or eight to five, whatever you want to call it, seven to three o’clock, family men, where our families are important to us. We are not traveling around the world; we are not salesmen that are away from our families for a week or two weeks. We’re not at the country club socializing, playing golf, trying to get ahead and making that our priority. “Who do I have to hang around or who do I have to buy a drink and what-not, and who do I have to socialize with in order to get ahead?”—which is a silly game that a lot of people have to play to get ahead. All I have to do to get ahead is show up here and get the house painted and move to the next one. I think most of the bluecollar workers put a much higher priority on their family . . . because there aren’t the games that have to be played. The welder from the locomotive plant also saw “playing the game” to be part of white-collar work. He said, “I think it’s more of a big authority game than anything else. Who’s on top and who’s on the bottom and who is coming up on top.” The thirty-year-old contractor, too, looked upon “the game” with disdain. As he put it, “I don’t want to be a part of the game. I’ve been working now for twelve or thirteen years and so far I’ve kept myself from getting sucked up in the system.” A printer from a paper factory, who had become foreman late in his career, reported that the game that is associated with white-collar positions was difficult to accept. “Just let something happen and your best friend will stab you.” A sixty-year-old assembly line worker also claimed that white-collar workers were much more likely to “step on another’s toes to get ahead.” Many in the sample pointed out that “getting ahead” was different for them than for those of the professional class. A mechanic who was a maintenance technician in a felt factory (he had recently become a fulltime farmer) suggested that, perhaps, he was “too idealistic, but I never wanted to be part of the scam.” He questioned how people coming out of college and taking managerial positions could be worth the large incomes they receive.

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

65

I’m not willing to do it. . . . If they just want to work for a corporation and be a pawn for the corporation and make their money, then that’s something that I couldn’t do. Do I think less of them? I certainly don’t think more of them for doing it. Just because they make more money than me doesn’t impress me at all. . . . I don’t live within that same system. A BMW doesn’t mean anything to me. As a matter of fact, anybody who has a tremendous amount of money and wastes it on consumer goods to me, that’s a real turnoff. But you know, people who grow up in the suburbs make all these jokes about farmers, but they don’t realize that the farmers make jokes about all those people that live in these little row houses and you can’t tell one from the next and the people have nothing to do and wear the same clothes. They just don’t realize that there is more than one point of view.

The competition for status based on consumer goods was looked down upon by many of the blue-collar men. The emphasis on consumerism as the primary motivation for blue-collar workers that was emphasized by the researchers discussed in the preceding chapter was not reflected in these workers’ interviews. Asked what was the difference between white- and blue-collar workers, a twenty-one-year-old construction laborer replied, “They’re all in competition. ‘Well, this guy, here’s what he bought, so I’m going to have to go out and buy this.’” The contractor said, “They’re more worried about what kind of car they’re driving, what party they’re going to, where they’re going to eat, where they’ve been to eat. If there’s a restaurant a hundred and fifty miles away that another teacher has said is good to eat at or has heard something about on the news, they’ll drive there and eat just to say they’ve been there. It’s that social-status thing.” The mason regarded middle-class people as “just another sheep following the herd—another lost sheep following the herd.” A construction laborer remarked, “They all look the same. They look like clones.” Another laborer concurred, “Our neighbor bought this or is buying that. [They] have to have this kind of car. [They have] got to dress this way, got to have these namebrand clothes. I don’t know why it is, but that’s how it is.” Perhaps blue-collar workers are less likely to stab others to get ahead, to use the factory worker’s words, or to feel the need to compete with each other, because getting ahead for the working-class involves different factors than those for white-collar workers. Rosabeth Moss Kanter pointed out in her 1977 Men and Women of the Corporation that

66

Working Class

because a white-collar worker does not always create tangible products, for them conforming to a corporate culture that dictates appearance, values, and personality type is more important than it is for blue-collar people. A need for indicators of commitment and trust may lead to an emphasis on status symbols, whereas, for blue-collar workers, there are obvious indicators of performance. Blue-collar workers don’t have to impress others by owning the right clothes or joining the right club to project a desirable image: there are clear standards of production against which their output can be measured. The workers also argue that this creates a greater potential for intrinsic sources of dignity. The interviews reveal a reduced importance on consumption for the working-class men compared with white-collar workers. Ironically, blue-collar work is considered by researchers as unsophisticated and lacking in mental challenges—which was exactly what the blue-collar workers said about white-collar work. Lacking common sense was a common image that blue-collar workers had of white-collar workers. Some, such as the pipe fitter from the silicone factory, actually came out and said: “Basically, they are not smart.” Others were more careful with their words. A construction laborer remarked, “I don’t think they’re necessarily smart. I just think that they were taught something and that’s what they know how to do. I think that they’re kind of stuck. I don’t know how to say it. They were taught how to do something and that’s all they know how to do. Then when it comes to anything else, they have no way of working the situation. They might be great at what they do but that’s all they know how to do.” The blue-collar workers in this sample were familiar with whitecollar workers who had college training, a high-paying job, and proficiency in their profession, but little knowledge of things that the bluecollar workers considered essential—such as how to fix their cars or work on their homes. In many cases, such as a building inspector or an architect or an engineer, the blue-collar workers saw individuals in authority positions who had theoretical knowledge but little practical understanding of how things actually work. Such experience of whitecollar workers had significance for the blue-collar men when it related to their jobs. A factory winder complained: The guys that come right out of college and go in and do the work, like plan it or design it, they are not doing the job. You can’t do a job unless you understand the basics of what the job is, and that’s the trouble. They have too many guys coming out of college thinking they know everything and not knowing enough.

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

67

Workers had plenty of opportunities to encounter white-collar supervisors who lacked practical understanding. A machinist reported, “Mostly your upper echelon makes all the rules on paper but has no practical experience doing the job, so everything looks good on paper but until you actually do it, it doesn’t mean a thing.” A thirty-seven-year-old operator of heavy equipment spoke of the resentment workers have for management at the construction firm where he worked. He reflects a common perception of white-collar workers as undeserving of respect:

WORKER: If I’m standing in a group and a couple of—we call them the wigs or the wheels—come out to inspect the job, it’s like . . . nasty comments about them. They’re pricks, you know. They come out here and they’ve got their brand new rubber boots on and brand new L. L. Bean rain jackets, and they won’t even buy us rain gear and we’re out here working in the rain. You know, they pull up and maybe they’ll roll their window down and they won’t even turn it down all the way because the dust is too bad and they don’t want to get it in their car. They bring whatever people think about them upon themselves by the way they act. AUTHOR: And that’s not a positive thing? WORKER: Without a doubt, it’s not a positive thing.

The Affluent White-Collar Worker

Aside from the negative impressions of white-collar workers’ personalities, a fascinating issue was brought up by some in the sample regarding intrinsic and extrinsic orientation to work. A few men said in their interviews that it was blue-collar work that provided intrinsic (personally meaningful) satisfaction, while, from their perspective, white-collar workers had only instrumental orientations to their occupations. Echoing sentiments reported in an earlier chapter, they felt that blue-collar work was where workers could find true job satisfaction, while white-collar jobs had few redeeming qualities or reasons for pursuing them other than financial reward (as well as not having to get dirty). An older unionmember construction laborer thought that people going into the construction trades do so not only for the money, but also because they want, in his words, “the feeling of accomplishment . . . and I suppose a little of

68

Working Class

that was a little gung ho—that you were doing something that everybody else couldn’t do.” Alternatively, this man was certain that to make more money was the primary reason for seeking a white-collar job. “That’s obviously why they go there.” Wanting to be fair, this man admitted: Then there are people, I’m sure, that have a reason for being devoted to something, a phase of work—that there is more to work than just financial, I’m sure. But nevertheless, I think that [more money] is what it’s all about [for white-collar workers]. People want to, what they consider, better themselves in a better position and a better financial return. They think that is what life is all about and that’s what you’ve got today in education and everything is that’s what everybody’s pushing toward. A twenty-six-year-old laborer on a concrete crew went further. He claimed that white-collar workers were trapped into accepting their jobs simply for increased monetary potential. He regarded white-collar work as so far removed from what could be rewarding and satisfying that those who took on white-collar employment, failing to leave in favor of blue-collar work, did so because they were blinded by the monetary rewards. He viewed white-collar workers as not strong enough to make the financial sacrifices necessary to find truly meaningful (working-class) employment: “That is where I think people don’t have the will to jump out. Some people are so weak minded [that] they say to themselves, ‘I have to do this. I’m making this good money. I’ve got to do this for the rest of my life.’ [They think] they have to do this and it is not the fact.” This man’s perspective makes intuitive sense if one looks beyond the stereotype of blue-collar work as mindless, repetitive, unskilled labor. Blue-collar work often leads to the development of skill and knowledge that can be learned only from years of experience; and unlike the visible product that ensues from much blue-collar work, white-collar jobs often have vague job requirements, arbitrary expectations, and few obvious, tangible outcomes. Success often requires making political relationships to defend against bureaucratic and personal attacks. College students seeking managerial degrees are usually taught a general knowledge—knowledge not intended for creating a particular product, but that is to be sold to whichever corporation offers the best salary-and-benefits package.

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

69

Why Not Want a White-Collar Job?

The question of why working-class men prefer blue-collar work is central to this study. It has long been argued that structural factors, such as limited resources for higher education, are primarily what keep workingclass people from reaching white-collar positions. This is surely the case for many in the working class; however, all but one of the men in this sample reported that even given the resources for higher education they would still not want white-collar employment. Some of those in the sample had college degrees, college training, or were studying in college at the time the interview took place. Everyone attending college reported that they were taking courses to advance their skills in their blue-collar jobs, not to gain entrance into a white-collar profession. For example, a twenty-seven-year-old construction worker had been in the armed services and had $25,000 toward college from the GI Bill. He planned on using the resources for college so that he could “take blue-printing and stuff.” AUTHOR: Are you thinking of what you would do? Perhaps maybe going into business or . . . ? WORKER: I’d like to take those courses [blue-printing] and try to get a higher-ranking job in the place I’m in now [that is, still in production]. AUTHOR: So you want to stay in construction? WORKER: Oh yeah, definitely. AUTHOR: How come you like construction so much? WORKER: I like building stuff. I like to see your finished work after it’s done. This man said his parents had offered to pay for his higher education upon his graduating high school if he would like to attend college, but he declined. Instead, he joined the army. “I’m glad I did, too,” he said, “because that’s where I learned to operate [heavy equipment].” One man reported a desire to become a chemist when he was younger. He enjoyed chemistry, was fascinated by the periodic table, and was an exceptional student in high school. He did not attend college for financial reasons, but not entirely because of his limited socioeconomic status. He looked at the financial advantage that a college degree would provide and decided that it was not worth the investment. A white-collar job as a chemist would not pay more than the blue-collar

70

Working Class

trade he was learning while in high school. A locomotive-factory assembler, he reported: I wanted to be a chemist and at the time I was working at [an automobile service station] and before, when I started checking out what chemists and lab techs make, there was like, I mean typically a lab tech would make—you know—five or eight or maybe ten grand more than I was making as a mechanic. And I wasn’t the best mechanic, okay, I wasn’t the best mechanic. So a very good mechanic would make as much or more than your typical lab tech. And, at the same time, I didn’t want to invest what back then would have been forty to fifty grand into an education to become, you know, one of the preeminent research people. And besides that, I really didn’t see where you should need that, need the school for that anyway. . . . But it, well, somewhere along the way in between I met a girl, I fell in love, and just decided it just won’t be worth the time and effort to go to college so I just stuck with the mechanical trades instead. And I did alright. His words illustrate an important point. The reasons men gave for preferring blue-collar work were not one-dimensional. This man would have enjoyed white-collar work as a chemist, but, he said, not enough to justify the expense and sacrifice of attending college when he would not have improved his financial status by doing so. He also questioned the need for college degrees, which he regarded as simply credentials—a prerequisite needed before being able to do the work in which he was interested. Other men also suggest that there is more to their preference for blue-collar work than simply a blanket feeling that blue-collar work is “good” while white-collar work is “bad.” Two working-class men in the sample had held white-collar jobs in the past. In both cases the men reported making more money in their blue-collar work than in their white-collar jobs. At the same time, they both reported much greater job satisfaction in their blue-collar occupations. Both men also reported that they chose blue-collar work over white-collar. The shipping-and-receiving department worker in an air-compressor factory worked previously as a public adjuster at an insurance company for six years. When asked how he became a factory worker, this man said he took the job because the work hours demanded by his insurance profession were too great; the salary plus commission had been a good income, but “you really had to work a lot of hours, seven days a week,

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

71

Saturdays, Sundays. If there is a house fire you don’t make money sitting at home watching the football game.” His factory job pays on an hourly basis, which he preferred. An hourly pay scale allowed him to feel he really is off work and can get away from it—mentally and physically. The white-collar job had no clear definition of when work was to stop. In describing his current job, this thirty-seven-year-old worker said: WORKER: It’s a job that I like to do, and I’m comfortable doing it. It is what I like to do. I mean, it’s a job I could do until I’m fifty or sixty years old and it wouldn’t bother me. AUTHOR: Is the type of pride that you can take in your work the same as the old insurance job? WORKER: No. No, because with this job you see what happens where the product you are sending out, you know, somebody at the other end is going to see that type of work. In this job you can see it more opposed to the insurance job [where] only the people you work with understand the type of work and maybe the pride that goes into it, and maybe the customer—the one that lost his house. AUTHOR: Did you actually make a choice? You didn’t want to do white-collar work anymore? You wanted to do bluecollar work? WORKER: Yes. AUTHOR: But why? WORKER: I thought in white-collar work and office work you are a clock watcher. You go to work at 8:00, you do eight hours of work, you get a break, you get a lunch, and you go home. Same thing, sit at your desk, do the computer work, and go home. It’s basically the same thing; you’re in the same building with the same problems. Here you are outside, you are inside. I thought an office job made for a long day. Like I say, I’m an energetic kind of person. I can’t really sit for a long time. I mean I can, and I’ve done it, but it is one of those, “Boy, it’s only one o’clock.” “Boy, it’s four, it seems like I’ve been here for two days.” But being between four walls for eight hours, five days a week, I think it’s monotonous. . . . Like I said, I’ve seen both sides of it. And I’ve seen that too where, like I said before, where this [white-collar] guy thinks this is a dirt job. Well you sit in an office all day and talk on the phone. I think that is boring. I know what you do

72

Working Class

and that is not me. You know what I do and that’s not you. But maybe if I listen to you on the phone or actually know what you sell or do, maybe I would like that. You don’t know until you actually see that. But in my life of thirty-seven years I’ve done the sales part, I’ve done the . . . so I know both sides of it. What else did I do? Something else—another desk job. I know I didn’t like it. I worked in a warehouse; oh, yeah, I worked in a warehouse, inventory control, and I didn’t like that. AUTHOR: So you have actually chosen to do blue-collar work over white-collar work? WORKER: Oh yeah, because that is what I like. The other man with white-collar experience was the painter, whose primary business involved painting the interiors of newly constructed homes. He was under contract with several builders. This man was just a few credits shy of his bachelor’s degree as an accountant from a prestigious local private college: WORKER: I did go to school, night school at [a local college] and during the summer for accounting. I’m about fifteen credits short of graduating as an accountant. And again, I did it because everyone was hammering me over the head, still working at the felt company [supervising the acquisition and installation of production machinery], and they said, “You know, to get a real high position here they want a college graduate. You know the equipment really well, you know the business really well, but to get upper management they’re going to want a college degree.” AUTHOR: How come? WORKER: That’s just the way things work. I mean, the guys that were production managers, you know and whatnot, all had college degrees. I forgot more about making felts and the equipment than they’ll ever know, but they had a college degree. So I was making thirty thousand dollars a year—back then, which was quite a lot of money—but they were making fifty thousand and sixty thousand, all because they had a piece of paper. So I took accounting, because it was easy, again, not because I wanted to do it.

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

73

Math was my good subject; I was good at it. I got an eighty on my math boards. So I knew it would be something to go through the motions and get the piece of paper. And after going constantly on Saturdays and Sundays and stuff like that, during the summer, I mean I’d be tied up doing homework, going to class three nights a week all year long, taking the crash minicourses during the summer, that became very old after a while and I said to myself, “Why am I even doing this?” The bottom line is I don’t want to sit behind a desk. Yeah, I do want to make the fifty thousand or sixty thousand, but I don’t really want to sit behind a desk. Again, I wanted to do something more creative than be a paper shuffler. And even if I do graduate as an accountant and they give me one of those big jobs, what am I going to be doing? I got to that point and I just never finished. I could go back for two semesters and finish but why? I don’t want to do it. . . . I like being out of doors, doing things with my hands. I didn’t want a desk job. Asked whether he had taken a large cut in pay because of his decision to stay in the blue-collar ranks, the painter replied: “No, I actually make more money now. On average I bring home a thousand [dollars] a week.” This man repeated several times that he wanted nothing to do with a desk job. The strength of this realization must have been great for him to disregard the investment of the time and money spent on several years of night school when he was so close to finishing. For the twenty-seven-year-old excavator, white-collar employment was not the result that he wanted from college, like others in the sample. Even with the financial hurdles removed from his path toward college, he still did not seek a white-collar occupation. College was seen as a way of advancing his status and occupation, but he wanted to remain a blue-collar worker. The working-class men interviewed for this study did not want white-collar jobs for many reasons. First, white-collar work was seen as too confining. One of the positive aspects of blue-collar work that was reported in Chapter 2 was the freedom and independence it provided. The men saw white-collar work in opposite terms. A thirty-seven-year-old excavator wanted nothing to do with white-collar work because he would feel “cooped up.” He explained, “As far as people who work in an office or something, I would find that, for any amount of money, unbearable. To

74

Working Class

teach school or something, to me that’s something I would never do for any amount of money. It would have to be an outdoors job. I don’t know what the ideal job would be, but I’ve got one of them.” A machinist said of a possible desk job: “You see, I’m thirty-two years old right now. I haven’t been working behind a desk or anything else. I’ve always been out and about and I found out that I really don’t like sitting and being in one place. I mean I was in one place before and just doing that and it started bothering me and my back started bothering me and stuff like that. So I prefer to move around.” The thirty-seven-year-old welder in the locomotive factory had a similar statement: “I’m just not the type of person to sit in one spot. I just can’t stay still in one spot. I need to do something with my hands. I need to work with my hands.” That was not an uncommon statement. Many men related that sitting in one place was a challenge. The welder commented that he “would go absolutely berserk just sitting there.” Even the machine-shop worker above who worked on cylinder heads at a specific station reported that he was able to, and had to, move around frequently. It was construction workers who most strongly reported their lack of confinement to be one of the most important things about their jobs. The fifty-two-year-old carpenter regarded the essential difference between white- and blue-collar work to be “the cubicle”: WORKER: White-collar is like a nine-to-five job. You have to be there, no exceptions, just in a one-sentence thing, where you have your little cubicle, you walk into it at nine o’clock and you leave at five—very simple. AUTHOR: Have you ever thought about having a job like that? WORKER: Oh yes. As I get into my middle ages here I’ve considered maybe going into the office and taking my boss’s job, you know, who sits at the desk and tells everybody where to go to work. But I wouldn’t want to do it. AUTHOR: Oh, really? Why not? WORKER: Because I don’t want to be confined. A twenty-seven-year-old excavator used similar words, as though working in an office would be like a prison sentence. He said, “I’d like to do that but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t handle it. I’d feel too constricted.” A twenty-nine-year-old concrete laborer, too, used the word confined when asked if he had ever thought of having an office job. “You could never confine me,” he said. “I don’t like being confined.” Many men insinuat-

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

75

ed that white-collar work meant giving up freedom. As the pipe fitter said, “No desk for me, absolutely not—although I am tied to a computer now, which I don’t like. But I have to deal with it.” More than simply being free to move about, for several construction workers there was the importance of being outside. For many, that was the most important aspect. A thirty-four-year-old carpenter explained: AUTHOR: Did you ever think about doing a white-collar job? Or was that ever an option? WORKER: I suppose it would be an option, doing white-collar work, if the job was a night job or something like that. Like I said, I can’t deal with being cooped up in the daytime where I can’t get outside—get outside in the elements. I like to be able to get out in the elements even in the bad weather. Another reason for preferring blue-collar work, which also expands upon a theme from Chapter 2, was the desire to work with one’s hands to create things. As the silicone-factory pipe fitter said, “I like to work with my hands.” When asked why, he responded: “Accomplishment. You create something.” This was repeated often. A mason’s laborer went further: “If you knew that you made something with your hands, like a concrete wall or something, that’s going to be there two hundred years from now—long after you’re dead and people can see that somebody made that.” This thirty-year-old compared this feeling with white-collar accomplishments: “Knowledge lasts a long time, too, but knowledge is often replaced and changed and invalidated and has its place. Like if you were to write a paper or something, it’s great, and it may last hundreds of years or not, but concrete walls, unless somebody knocks it down or bulldozes it, it’s usually going to be there.” An eighteen-yearold who was beginning college in construction technology with aspirations of being a construction worker said: “It makes you feel good. It makes you feel a whole lot better than something on a piece of paper.” The locomotive plant welder explained how working with his hands made him feel good: “The accomplishment, you know, the accomplishment of making something with your hands that’s got your name on it.” The train cars this man welded did not actually have his name on them, but the work stood as testament to his skill and efforts. Another worker from the locomotive plant, an assembler, reported a similar feeling:

76

Working Class

WORKER: I don’t know if I could stay in an office. I always felt kind of sorry for the office people. They’re stuck in there with whatever machinery they see fit to give them . . . and I don’t like doing the paperwork as much as I like doing the work. The satisfaction just isn’t there. . . . [Office work] is kind of like shoveling up behind the animal. It’s not a satisfying feat. Feeding the animal and petting it and having it look up at you while you watch it grow, you know, that’s satisfying. Shoveling behind it is not. But they are both very necessary parts of taking care of an animal. It’s just another aspect of the job, and I’ll do my share. AUTHOR: Do you equate office work with cleaning up after the animal? WORKER: Depends on who you are. Some people like the paperwork. It just seems to me that the office people at our place aren’t as happy as the floor people. I will say that. And as time goes by, you know, I find myself having to venture into the office more frequently. I mean there is just no escape. AUTHOR: That’s an interesting way to put it—no escape. We were talking before about how these people who define prestige equate doing the office work and the whitecollar jobs as more prestigious and more satisfying. WORKER: I just figured that they got more money because they had to deal with more aggravation. This assembler reported that his blue-collar work experiences had begun to take a cumulative toll upon his body; the “aches and pains” were “starting to act up more with the physical activity.” He was concerned that eventually he may have little choice but to take white-collar work, and he viewed that prospect with regret. He wanted to remain in a position where he put the product together and could “watch it grow,” rather than play the role of coordinating the activity and “cleaning up after it.” Such views were found among the more experienced and thoughtful blue-collar men in the sample; for example, the one quoted above who realized that white-collar work, though not as satisfying, was nonetheless necessary. When pressed, even the men who claimed that white-collar work was worthless would probably change their statements; but they would hold to their opinions with regard to some specific white-collar positions. One of the building contractors said that management should all

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

77

have “bandanas [tied] across their faces,” suggesting that they are outlaws—criminals—thieving from society by receiving their large salaries and benefits without producing positive things in return for their pay. This attitude came from what he had seen of business managers for the school district in which he had worked as a custodian some years before. He said, “They make such an amount greater than their worth I don’t know how they can sleep at night. They’re thieving from the general public; they’re thieving from the taxpayers.” Several men used the word scam to describe the benefits received by white-collar workers. “How can they be worth all that?” asked the maintenance worker from a felt factory. A factory welder who had earlier worked for General Electric made this point when referring to his former employer’s CEO: “Forty-two million—forty-two million dollars in one year—in 1996. Between all the stock options and everything else, Jack Welch made forty-two million. This guy makes fifteen thousand eight hundred an hour—in one hour’s work. That came right from the IUE hall, the local union—fifteen thousand eight hundred dollars an hour. Now it takes us thirty years to pay off a hundred-thousand dollar mortgage, and it’s taking this guy one week to pay off that. You know? So I mean where is it equal here?” Two men in the sample did desire white-collar work. One of them, a mason’s laborer, placed conditions on the type of work he could accept, and this was because of his blue-collar experience. A highly intelligent young man, he had graduated high school early, when he was sixteern, to attend college. He did not finish his college degree and found work with a masonry company. He intended to go back to college and to get a white-collar position eventually, but he stipulated that the job would have to fulfill his need to create something tangible and useful. He explained: WORKER: If I was an accountant or something like that, to me that would just be meaningless; something on paper. If a purely white-collar job would be something like that, was just symbols and theories and such, then I probably wouldn’t want to do it. I wouldn’t. Something that didn’t have any bearing on my . . . AUTHOR: What do you think your stereotypical white-collar job would be? WORKER: Like a business executive. AUTHOR: Somebody in sales or management of some sort? WORKER: Might be fun for a while, but it’s not something that I would want to do forever, or even a long time.

78

Working Class

AUTHOR: Would that be meaningful to you do you think? WORKER: No. To me if you’re a psychologist, you fix people’s brains; you would be making something. You would be making a healthy person. Or [a scientist] could be making a new species of wheat, or you would be making something. If you were just, I don’t know, making a commercial, to me it isn’t quite the same thing. AUTHOR: My brother sells space in the yellow pages. That’s his job. WORKER: That is just too nebulous. I suppose it is making something, but it’s just making the perpetual wheels go around that are going to go around anyways, you know? Doing payroll at the state, that’s what it would be like—paying people to do nothing, so they can get paid. For many construction workers, the central issue in not wanting white-collar work was their wish to work outdoors; for the factory workers, it was because of white-collar stress levels and the work’s demands on the individual. A union winder in a factory making turbines explained, “If I take over a manager’s job that means I’m on call twenty-four hours a day. Is it worth it? No, it’s not. I have a family. . . . [Managers] have more stress. They’re on call twenty-four hours a day and they have their vacations and everything else set by the company, whether they can take them or not. The blue-collar worker has it easier. He can do what he wants to; if he wants to use a personal day he can use it without hearing the ramifications.” A sixty-year-old assembly-line pieceworker reiterated the same idea: “Some of those guys [white-collar] come in for nothing on Saturday. That’s what they have to do to keep their job.” Part of the reason he thought that white-collar workers had it worse was that there was no union protection for them. “A whitecollar has no recourse. He has no advocate. He has no one to argue for him other than himself. And they bury some of those guys. They work the asses off some of them. Not all of them, but some of them are getting jerked around by the company.” A machinist provided another reason: “I didn’t want to be a manager down there trying to deal with people, and my boss saying, ‘Hey, [the CEO] says the bottom line isn’t enough so you’ve got to get rid of forty people.’ And in your mind you’re racking you brains, saying, ‘Forty people; Christ, I’d like to get rid of maybe five deadbeats, but not forty. How the hell am I going to get the work done?’” Two dilemmas are going on here for this man: how can the product be produced without the labor force? and the moral dilemma of having to tell good people that they no

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

79

longer have a job. This man made another good point. The strategy for increasing profitability for the CEO of this multinational corporation was to use personnel cuts and outsourcing to reduce labor costs. The result was, for those managers overseeing the fired blue-collar workers, that “they’d have nobody to direct, or they would have nothing to manage.” This machinist argued that without a contractual agreement, such as the one the union had negotiated for hourly workers, the white-collar worker’s position, at least with that company, was more tenuous than that of the blue-collar workforce. The thirty-two-year-old assembly-line worker at a fiberglass insulation factory also saw management as more stressful. He had thought seriously about going to college and qualifying for supervisory positions with his company, but after assessing the costs and benefits of advancing to management, he concluded, “I’m happy where I’m at. I’ve got overtime available to me, I’ve got a decent income, I don’t have to kill myself, I’ve got days off if I need them, they can’t call me in at the drop of a hat saying ‘you have to be here’—there is no such thing as mandatory overtime. I’m saying no, supervision can be supervision, I’m on this side.” This man was not against struggling for advancement when he declined seeking a managerial position. He became active in the union, became shop steward, and voluntarily joined the fire company at his plant. He was trained in workplace safety and became the plant safety representative. He worked very hard to advance himself within the blue-collar ranks. It was not the effort required to become management that dissuaded him from moving in that direction; he simply saw white-collar as less advantageous than bluecollar, even after the company had approached him about becoming a supervisor. Another man, a seventy-one-year-old retired printer who had worked at a paper factory, said he regretted moving up to management because of the stress associated with the position.

Working-Class Understanding of Class Inequality

The negative meaning of blue-collar work in social-science research shapes the theoretical depiction of social-class inequality as a linear hierarchy in which those who work in manual occupations are inferior to people with white-collar jobs. One of the most sacred ideas in social science is that the social-class system is arranged as a social ladder in which classes, identified predominantly by occupational category, are ranked in relative order of superiority and inferiority. Blue-collar workers are identified as beneath the white-collar “middle” class.

80

Working Class

The workers quoted above see the social system differently. From their perspective, white-collar workers have less importance, less integrity, less knowledge, and less reward. The men were clear that white-collar positions were not superior to their own, and being forced to do white-collar work would be a move downward. By and large they do not admire white-collar people, and they do not value their circumstances. A thirty-one-year-old contractor said that he “would cringe” if his young son grew up to become a white-collar professional such as a sociologist. At first glance it appears, in the words of a prominent sociologist who studied factory workers in Britain, as though the “workers reverse the conventional social ‘pecking order.’”2 Upon closer inspection, however, most of the blue-collar workers are careful not to explain the social-class system as simply as the scientists have. The men in this study were adamant about not wanting a white-collar job, yet nearly one-half of them expressed opinions that allowed whitecollar work, at least much of it, to be important and necessary. This group did not voice the negative tones—a “necessary evil”—that other workers claimed to feel from office workers toward blue-collar jobs. Many of the men were genuinely grateful that the white-collar workers did their job because most of the blue-collar workers knew that much of their own work depended upon the labor of white-collar workers. Most workers in the sample were cognizant of the fact that the contemporary labor market requires all types of specialized labor. They repeatedly said that it is good to have different types of workers with different aspirations, skills, and preferences. For example, the winder said, “I think physically, the blue-collar worker puts more muscles into it. Maybe the white-collar worker may put some more thought into it, but in order to have a good mix you have to have them both.” The old phrase was frequently used: “It’s different strokes for different folks.” The fifty-two-year-old carpenter expressed reservations about top executives taking “this gigantic bulk off the top”— their huge salaries— and he did say that he often has to face making a job work that was not estimated properly or was ordered incorrectly, but “in the end I just say thank you so much for selling this job; I wouldn’t be doing it if you hadn’t sold it.” A thirty-seven-year-old union excavator also conveyed complex feelings. While opining that most white-collar work was “not a worthwhile thing,” he continued: But I will say, without them doing their work, like engineers who do all our drafting and everything, our job wouldn’t get off the ground. So it’s like a chain, or dominoes or whatever; without one, or if you have a break in it, the job is not going to happen. You can figure out

Blue-Collar Views on the White-Collar World

81

everything. If you got the money, you got the land, you got all the right-of-ways squared away, but if you can’t get the pipe to do the job, the job isn’t going to get done. If you’re missing any one of these things the job can’t go through. You got the guy who does all the legal paperwork and goes around and buys up all the right-of-ways. There was resentment on the part of some workers for the uneven distribution of rewards and power in the social hierarchy. The thirty-fouryear-old carpenter said: “White-collar workers are needed, there is no way around it, but at the same time they are crucifying the fucking actual working man.” Several men questioned the morality of a system that rewards immoral, greedy executives for harming people and nature, but they hesitated to make negative judgments on all white-collar workers. Most of them were careful not to define white-collar jobs as honorable or not simply because they were white-collar. Determining the place of jobs on a hierarchy was considered too complicated to do in any general way. Just because they did not want to do white-collar work themselves, the manual workers generally recognized that those jobs were important and that somebody had to do them. The locomotive assembler said, “It’s not better or worse, it’s just different”; and a concrete laborer said, “It’s just a different type of work. It is mental work instead of physical work. Some people like to do physical work and some people like to do mental work.” The twenty-seven-year-old excavator added, “It just wasn’t my choice.” The construction supervisor did not want a white-collar job, but he added that blue-collar workers ought not to be looked down on, just as it was wrong for him to look down on white-collar workers: “Everybody has a job to do. There is no difference in who you are or what color collar you are wearing.” A twenty-nine-year-old mason’s laborer agreed, “We are all the same. We’re all the same people. Everybody’s got something different about them, that’s all. Everybody’s got something different in each of us. There isn’t one person that has the same talent, you know.” The pipe fitter: “Any work is honorable work—even office work.” Many workers said something like, “They deserve just as much respect as we do.” The construction-site supervisor saw both sides of the business and declared, “It is all linked together; one is not going to function without the other.” These men viewed the social-class hierarchy in horizontal terms, with class positions occupying separate spheres—neither necessarily superior nor inferior to each other. White-collar positions have some advantages, but they are rife with shortcomings; blue-collar positions, too, have drawbacks, but on the whole, these workers wanted to stay in the jobs they had.

82

Working Class

Discussion

The goal of this chapter is to highlight the reasoning behind blue-collar attitudes that regard white-collar work negatively or at least the lesspreferred way to earn a living. This meaning system provides logic by which working-class men willingly accept and reproduce their place in the social-class hierarchy by performing blue-collar labor. Work has a variety of meanings that relate to a diversity of personal and interpersonal issues. The meaning system that these blue-collar workers express displays a working-class orientation to work. Professional-class people may not agree with these attitudes, but working-class attitudes must be acknowledged. Further evidence of working-class orientation, displaying a logic that makes blue-collar performance rational and meaningful, is presented in later chapters. This logic does not fit with social theory that regards blue-collar work as inferior. The workers’ perspective is in sharp contrast to the way researchers in the next chapter measure and define the social-class system. Scientific research on class, and even research that merely includes variables related to social class, is based on theoretical assumptions that define the social-class system in ways opposed to the views expressed above. Past researchers have either ignored workers’ statements or they have devalued them, claiming they are irrational. Not only is this an inaccurate portrayal of society by social science, which is assumed to present “the truth” about people and society, but disregarding the culture of the working class legitimates biased understandings of social inequality. Leading theories on class assert that white-collar is superior to blue-collar. The blue-collar workers quoted above do not share that opinion.

Notes 1. Woollacott (1980), “Dirty and Deviant Work,” quoted George Orwell with this expression of working-class stigma that comes from performing productive labor. Orwell wrote in 1962 that “the essential thing is that middle-class people believe that the working class are dirty . . . and what is worse that they are somehow inherently dirty” (emphasis in original). 2. Collinson (1992), Managing the Shopfloor, 79.

5 Conceptions of Class Hierarchy

THE MERE FACT THAT BLUE-COLLAR workers find their work to be

rewarding is an important challenge to the dominant image of manual labor in the sociological literature. Moreover, that the sampled blue-collar workers consider their jobs to be superior to white-collar work shows that at least these working-class men do not define a job as desirable, honorable, or worthwhile by the same standards as those of the white-collar professions. These two points confront the dominant understandings of work and class in social research. Questions of how work is understood by workers, how it shapes their lives and their identities, and what motivates workers to continue working were forgotten as the most influential research moved forward under the assumption that those controversies were settled. Research conducted by leading scholars in the 1950s and 1960s had deduced that blue-collar work was a negative experience. The denigration of working-class jobs and lifestyles received little effective criticism, and it became an unspoken premise when theorizing about the social order.

Conceptions of Class in Sociology

Social class is no longer directly measured in most empirical research. Stratification scholar Pat Ainley observes, “Analysis of society in terms of social class has been largely abandoned in favor of description by measure of social status.”1 Harold Kerbo explains that two indexes of socioeconomic status have replaced the concept social class in most research:

83

84

Working Class

Both of these scales are now used widely and have become standard methods of measuring social class in studies of the relationship between social stratification and such factors as attitudes, political behavior, psychological conditions, sexual behavior, and deviance. . . . In fact, it was not until these scales were developed that extensive empirical research in social stratification emerged.2

Kerbo continues: “These scales are based primarily on the underlying assumption that prestige is the most important aspect of divisions in the occupational structure.” Socioeconomic status (SES) scores are calculated by regressing the value of a job in an occupational prestige index on the age-standardized indexes of educational and income levels obtained from US census data.3 This sounds highly scientific, but the mathematical equations rely upon a standard measurement of occupational prestige. The multidimensional concept social class, which recognized the complex relationships between economic standing, subcultures, occupations, and living standards, was replaced by an index that assumes that prestige can be measured uniformly across class boundaries. Looking at the way blue-collar workers think of white-collar jobs, it is obvious that a consensus on occupational prestige does not exist across classes, but research is conducted nonetheless based on the assertion that white-collar jobs are preferable to blue-collar. As Ainley explains, the understanding of social class has become, more or less, “based upon official estimations of the social statuses of occupations and therefore reflect the traditional distinction between mental and manual labor.” 4 White-collar jobs are generally ranked above blue-collar jobs in the occupational prestige index. Sociologists Mary and Robert Jackman tell us that “the blue-collar/white-collar distinction is highly collinear with occupational status; the correlation between the two variables is 0.80.” They go on to suggest that the manual/nonmanual distinction is a “rough proxy for socioeconomic status.”5 SES appears to be a continuum, but it effectively reproduces the traditional conception of white-collar superiority and blue-collar inferiority. Blue-collar workers report having contempt for professionals, yet researchers confidently place white-collar positions at the top of the prestige scale. Stratification researcher Keiko Nakao questions the “theoretical rationale for expecting the concept of status to be unidimensional.” Nakao observes that “researchers seem to be content with using a single dimension that defines hierarchical orders of occupations.” 6 Researchers are content because they have ignored the dissenting voices of the working class.

Conceptions of Class Hierarchy

85

When sociologists abandoned the concept social class in favor of SES, they stopped questioning the inherent meaning of blue-collar work. This worsened as stratification research dominated the concern over class and work. Class became important to researchers primarily as a representation of rank on the social ladder, a simple dependent variable, and blue-collar work became simply an indicator of inferior class position. The multiple dimensions of class were discounted in favor of measuring just those few variables that could consistently and efficiently determine the relative place of a class on the hierarchy, which also highlighted the lower position of blue-collar occupations. Class status was still primarily linked to work, but it was now indirectly measured so that the presumption of inferiority was hidden and unquestioned. The research on occupational prestige supports the worldview of the professional class, which understands white-collar work to be superior. When surveyed, working-class respondents repeatedly gave similar responses to those of white-collar respondents who respected white-collar jobs more than blue-collar occupations. It is widely assumed, therefore, that citizens across the social-class hierarchy recognize the superiority of white-collar occupations over blue-collar positions. Later research found dramatic consistency in survey responses over time, suggesting to researchers that perceptions of the occupational order are consistent across the social spectrum.7 The data show that there is wide agreement between the working class and the professional class that white-collar jobs are superior, but the statements of the workers in the preceding chapter say otherwise. There must be an explanation for the disparity between this book’s interview data and the data of occupational prestige surveys.

Flawed Evidence: The Occupational Prestige Survey

Data from the survey questionnaires that support occupational prestige scales do not reflect the differences in culturally defined meanings of occupational categories between blue-collar workers and professionals. Surveys do not address the logic and circumstances upon which questionnaire responses are based. Noted sociologist Michael Burawoy suggests that survey researchers “cannot avoid misunderstandings and mistakes” because they do not understand the social contexts from which respondents answer questions.8 Surveys are useful for gathering descriptive data, and they efficiently collect answers to questions, but they cannot explain why people selected those answers. They also do not allow multidimensional responses to simple questions.9

86

Working Class

Studies of occupational prestige base their findings on survey wording that can be interpreted differently than researchers intend. The wording of the instruction given in the 1947 North-Hatt Prestige Study 10 (simulated in later NORC surveys on occupational prestige,11 including the 1963 replication used by Hodge, Siegel, and Rossi) states, “For each job mentioned, please pick out the statement that best gives your own personal opinion of the general standing that such a job has.”12 Occupations were ranked as excellent, good, average, somewhat below average, or poor. Researchers assumed that people would say how they regarded the standing of particular types of work, but in practice respondents may interpret the wording as addressing how occupations are ranked generally. Working-class people may simply be reporting societal conditions in general, rather than stating how they personally understand the place of their own occupations relative to others.13 That is exactly what will be shown in the next chapter. There the interviews repeatedly detail how the blue-collar workers feel the stigma from society, but also that they do not accept that judgment as valid. They clearly recognize that the general standing of their occupations is low, but they say this is because professionals are misinformed about the nature of manual labor. Occupational prestige surveys misinterpret the responses of blue-collar workers. For the past half-century, researchers have concluded that workingclass understandings of occupational prestige are consistent with middleclass values that regard white-collar jobs as superior to blue-collar jobs. Actually, prestige surveys simply reflect working-class acknowledgment that indicators of social status generally reflect professional-class standards. The interviews presented in Chapter 4 provide clear evidence that blue-collar workers do not consider white-collar jobs as superior to their jobs. They do not want white-collar jobs; most do not think white-collar work is meaningful or important; and they do not look up to professionalclass people. Moreover, prestige scales are computed by collapsing categories into a weighted average, covering up within-occupation ranking variations and thus creating the impression of consensus between occupational groups.14 The variable SES is so deeply flawed that it is not a valid subsititute for social class. Perhaps a follow-up question can be asked in order to disentangle the interpretation of the phrase “your own personal opinion of the general standing that such a job has.” Still, social class is multidimensional and SES is not a multidimensional variable. As it currently is measured, occupational prestige reproduces the devalued identity of blue-collar work.

Conceptions of Class Hierarchy

87

Scholars of social inequality accepted the superiority of white-collar positions in the occupational hierarchy as a matter of fact. Once again, the historical circumstances that shaped empirical research on occupational prestige led to the analysis of data according to an outdated theoretical framework. The research that laid the foundation for socioeconomicstatus indexes was conducted from the theoretical perspective of structural functionalism. The functionalist logic that places white-collar positions above blue-collar positions is best explained by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945), who explain class inequality as a natural reaction to society’s need to match the most talented people with the most important positions. Even though their theory has been thoroughly discredited, stratification models that were conceived according to that paradigm continue to inform common understandings of the social order.15 Theories of occupational inequality—and therefore of class inequality—that were created in the decades immediately following World War II have been institutionalized. The scales and indexes of prestige that came out of that period continue to shape the way inequality is defined, even though their logical foundations are no longer legitimate.

Defining Class Inequality According to Professional-Class Standards

In 1967 Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan prefaced their influential book The American Occupational Structure with the claim that the occupational structure was “the foundation of the stratification system of contemporary industrial society.” Their work institutionalized the model of the class system as hierarchically ordered, with the working class beneath the white-collar class. The ranking of positions was not determined by objective standards. Based on an index created earlier by Duncan, one of the authors, Blau and Duncan ranked occupational categories according to levels of income and median education. Why income and formal education should determine the rank of occupations was not seriously questioned, but even by that narrow standard many blue-collar occupations had higher scores than many white-collar positions. Blau and Duncan were not satisfied with that fact, so they simply overruled their own formula. In their words: “The one exception is the placement of retail salesmen above craftsmen, which has been made to maintain the nonmanual-manual distinction.”16 This simple determination sentenced all blue-collar work to a subordinate status relative to all white-collar work and thereby doomed the working class to an inferior

88

Working Class

identity in sociological theory. Why did these empirical scientists feel it necessary “to maintain the nonmanual-manual distinction”? Those two prominent scholars promoted their class model as an objective depiction of the stratification system, but their model actually built their prejudices into the conceptual framework of their theory. The old depiction of the social-class system was given a seemingly “unbiased” mathematical formula that entrenched the assertion that the class system is a vertical hierarchy. Of course, the hierarchy was arranged according to professional-class notions of which direction is “upward.” Blau and Duncan explain, “It is not enough to know that the men in a certain occupational group experience much mobility, but we also want to know whether this involves primarily upward mobility or downward mobility or both.”17 Accordingly, British sociologist Frank Parkin asserted, “The backbone of the class structure, and indeed of the entire reward system of modern Western society, is the occupational order.” Parkin went on to state what sociologists generally agreed to be the hierarchy of broad occupational categories. This runs from high to low as follows: 1. Professional, managerial, and administrative 2. Semiprofessional and lower administrative 3. Routine white collar 4. Skilled manual 5. Semiskilled manual 6. Unskilled manual18 This schema has remained the basic model for understanding socialclass inequality in social research. Occupational prestige scales that were interpreted to rate white-collar jobs above blue-collar jobs are an extremely good fit with traditional scientific understandings of the class hierarchy. The conception of social class itself has long been based upon the distinction of manual versus nonmanual work.19 British sociologist Mary Beth Crompton explains that working-class people are generally recognized as “geographically concentrated, manual employees in heavy industry,” while white-collar employees have “conventionally been regarded as located in the ‘middle’ classes or strata.”20 The importance of the manual/nonmanual distinction is clearly overemphasized. As stratification authority Dennis Gilbert explains: “The changing character of work has largely eliminated the traditional differences between blue-collar and white-collar employment. The declining income differential between them, the increasing routinization

Conceptions of Class Hierarchy

89

of clerical tasks, and the corresponding drop in the prestige value of a white collar per se have all served to close the gap between shop and office.”21 In 1974, Harry Braverman popularized the idea that clerical workers labor under conditions typically associated with manual production jobs, drawing into question the emphasis placed on blue-collar labor as the defining variable for class membership.22 The tendency for scholars to hold to the manual/nonmanual distinction despite its limited utility is revealing of the bias inherent in the discussion of social class. Michael Zweig, for example, has abandoned this assumption, but those who perform physical labor23 are still typically defined as filling a distinct and lower position in the class hierarchy despite similarities with white-collar workers along many dimensions.24 As suggested earlier, the act of physically producing things warrants the identification of the working class as a separate class category from that of the white-collar experience. The values, lifestyles, and knowledge sets of each group are quite different in many ways. The concern here is the conception of blue-collar work as inherently beneath white-collar work. Even the scholars that challenge the relevance of blue-collar and white-collar work for determining to which class a person belongs haggle only over where to place lower-level white-collar work and skilled blue-collar work. The working class is ranked beneath the “middle class” in all of their stratification models.

Socioeconomic Status

The concept of social class was too abstract for statistical analysis. Class has multiple dimensions that relate to cultural characteristics such as tastes, values, language, and other traits that do not fit easily into linearequation models. The creation of indexes that can be plugged into mathematical formulas made statistical research easy, but it also standardized the measurement of class identity according to the assumptions of inferiority in working-class positions. The varying cultural standards between the working and professional classes make it difficult to rank-order groups, but scales and indexes are ordinal variables that impose a hierarchy on the indicators of class standing. The socioeconomic-status index begins with an occupational-prestige score that is already weighted against blue-collar workers, and it adds measures of formal education and income that are highly correlated with white-collar work (education is particularly collinear). The years of apprenticeship or on-the-job training that are more typical of blue-collar work are de-emphasized, while college education, which is more often required of white-collar workers,

90

Working Class

is accentuated. Blue-collar workers often must have postsecondary training, though this is often in a trade or technical school; and some of the men in this sample did have college experience or even a university degree. Even when blue-collar workers are college educated, however, the primary indicator of their status is their manual work. Socioeconomic status indexes are closely related to the distinctions between white-collar and blue-collar work. Adding the level of formal education to occupational prestige creates an ordinal variable in which high scores are given to white-collar positions. It is clear from the interviews in Chapter 4 that these blue-collar workers do not equate white-collar occupations with prestige; but also the education and income elements of SES are interpreted differently by working-class cultural standards than by professionals. Education and income levels are simply not signs of prestige or importance for the sampled working-class men. In fact, they actually see these variables in negative ways.

The Education Dimension of SES: Working-Class Perspectives

Not only do the blue-collar workers report an alternative view of the occupational-status hierarchy, most of them also suggest that college education is not venerated as in professional circles. Several men said college education is overvalued. The house painter understood a college degree as simply a “piece of paper” needed to gain access to the high salaries of managerial positions.25 The forty-nine-year-old factory maintenance worker regarded college education as simply “putting a flag in front of somebody that says, ‘I’m a big shot and I got the degree.’” He asked rhetorically: What would I have gone to college for? There are some things I wish I’d done [when I was younger]; I would have taken some machine-trade school things. I’d like to take several different trade schools. There is nothing in college that I would probably do. As far as I can see, there’s nothing in college that I can’t read books and learn. There are probably some things; if you want to be an engineer, it’s hard to get all that stuff from books, but as far as history and all those types of things, there is nothing you can’t read. You don’t need a degree. I’ve probably read more books than most people who have gone to college. So does that make me not as good just because I don’t have a piece of paper that says I read all that

Conceptions of Class Hierarchy

91

stuff? What is going to college? Reading books and writing a report to prove that you read it. Unless you’re going to some real technical engineering thing where you need to learn all this math, which is pretty hard to learn on your own, most of that stuff you can learn on your own. That’s what I’ve done. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I can build a bridge for a thousand-foot span and put thirty tractor-trailers on it. That’s a skill that I don’t have. Most of the things that college teaches you, though, you don’t need a degree for. The assembler from a locomotive factory added that the academic community didn’t have “much connection with the planet Earth.” He said, “Basically they are not forced to deal—they don’t have to deal with the world in real terms. They can isolate themselves from it.” A recurrent theme was the importance of experiential knowledge. As a thirty-one-year-old concrete laborer put it, referring to the knowledge needed in his trade: “There’s not too much you can learn from a book, I don’t think.” It was commonly recognized that theoretical knowledge was essential, but, as the construction supervisor argued, “book knowledge” must be combined with experiential knowledge in order that it be truly useful. The workmen were constantly reminded that their white-collar supervisors lacked a complete understanding of their jobs. Education was regarded as important by most men, but not in the absence of experience. White-collar workers who lacked hands-on experience were considered of little use. Education does not necessarily add to one’s status. In fact, many of the workers saw education as an indicator of negative traits.

The Income Dimension of SES: Working-Class Perspectives

The sampled working-class men did not suggest that a high income was indicative of high status. On the contrary, as we saw in Chapter 4, several men used the word scam to describe high white-collar incomes and perks. For these men, income was not a direct indicator of high status as the SES index assumes. In fact, many of them saw an inverse relationship between income and respect when income levels become high. The felt factory maintenance worker said: Whenever I look at extreme wealth I always try to look beyond that wealth to see what they destroyed to get it—who they stepped on, whose life they made miserable. Whether it is the Third World or

92

Working Class

the fish in the ocean that got polluted, what it took to get that extreme wealth. Very few people can get wealthy without stepping on somebody or something. Wealth in itself to me is not something to get excited over. If you get it honestly and through hard work and ingenuity and long-term planning and you are bettering society, then I have nothing against wealth, but few people get it that way. The men claimed that their standards for judging what is meaningful and important in work and in the commodities they value are different from those of the professional class. Many reported making the conscious choice to live within more limited means in order to have jobs that were rewarding. When an income became what these men regarded as excessive, they did not figure it as a positive reflection upon a position. Syndicated columnist David Brooks writes, “This is why class resentment in the U.S. is so complicated, despite inequality and lagging wages. When it comes to how people see the world, social and moral categories generally trump economic ones.”26

Working-Class Conception of the Class Hierarchy

Socioeconomic status, as a function of occupational-prestige scores, formal education, and income level, is so closely reflective of the whitecollar/blue-collar distinction that it does little more than echo the middleclass assumption that white-collar work is superior to blue-collar work. Notions of superiority and inferiority, particularly related to other social classes that have differing standards for judging dignity, honor, rewards, and quality lifestyles, are so relative that objective means for determining where on the hierarchy other classes exist is impossible. The men with young children were asked about what they wanted for their kids’ future careers. They universally said that they would not try to influence their children’s choices and would support them regardless of where they worked. Several did say, however, that they hoped their children would remain blue-collar. Why wouldn’t blue-collar workers pressure their children to pursue professional positions if they recognized white-collar work in superior terms as the occupational-prestige research suggests? Some of the men questioned the moral character of white-collar workers, and several regarded white-collar work to have severe disadvantages over bluecollar due to the exploitation and isolation of mid-level managers. As we have seen, most of the sample did not consider white-collar work meaningful or generally important; and all regarded blue-collar work

Conceptions of Class Hierarchy

93

as more intrinsically rewarding. Still, after all their negative impressions of white-collar labor and the respect they have for blue-collar workers over white-collar people, both factory and construction workers stopped short of declaring the superiority of “the working class” over professionals. Theories that claim superiority on behalf of one class over another do not accurately consider working-class perspectives. The blue-collar experience is different, but theorists cannot objectively argue that one is better or worse along the full spectrum of what work means in society. The data do not support such a position. This is especially true when we question the methods and theoretical logic used to justify the inferior positioning of the working class. It is necessary to develop multidimensional conceptions of class that consider the diversity of experiences inherent in work and in workers.

Discussion

The substitution of SES for the concept social class is both a cause for and an outcome of the theoretical conception of the social-stratification system. The direct consequence is that blue-collar work, and by definition the working class, is beneath white-collar work and middle-class people. Occupational prestige scales that place white-collar occupations above blue-collar occupations reflect middle-class values, not workingclass values. The blue-collar workers represented in this research acknowledged that professionals looked down on them for the jobs they had, but as shown in the next chapter, they clearly did not share this worldview. These men did not consider prestige to be a simple function of occupation, education, and income. They reasoned that respect for a job ought to be based upon the skill and effort involved in creating important products. Moreover, they regarded standards such as doing the job “right” and charging a fair price as outweighing concerns over staying clean and flaunting symbols of high status, even if that required physical and economic sacrifices. Stratification scholars mistakenly assume that there is consensus on occupational prestige across the occupational spectrum, leading to a misconception of the class hierarchy. Occupational-prestige scales do not accurately measure working-class understandings of the occupational hierarchy and have, therefore, misrepresented the ability of socioeconomicstatus indexes to fully determine the relative rank of social positions. Socioeconomic-status indexes appear objective, but biases are built into the concept and hidden by the mathematical precision that looks impres-

94

Working Class

sively scientific. The indexes then obscure the biased presumptions that establish the working class as inferior. Once the cultural preferences of the professional class had been implanted into the measurement of class identity, the inferiority of blue-collar workers was considered a scientific fact. Scholars were too quick to abandon class as a variable, which has the capacity for multidimensional meaning,27 and favor SES, which is easy to use yet incapable of representing the differences in worldviews across class boundaries. SES, as a function of formal education and income, defines class inequality differently than the sampled blue-collar workers did. This variable appears valid, but only because it is highly consistent with occupational-prestige scales that, though reliable, are of questionable validity. As long as working-class values are not acknowledged and as long as class is measured by a narrow indicator that conceals its inherent biases, sociologists will continue to reiterate the inferior identity of blue-collar workers. The qualitative design of this study that has uncovered an alternative, working-class conception of the occupational hierarchy is limited, however, in that its conclusions cannot be immediately generalized to the greater working-class population without further research. It does suggest, though, at the very least, that the survey questionnaire of the NORC occupational-prestige study must be revised; it must account for the fact that the current survey carries the potential for working-class attitudes to be measured incorrectly. Blue-collar workers must be able to say whether their responses regarding occupational status reflect their personal perception of the general standing of jobs or whether they reflect their personal opinion of occupational standings as generally perceived. Furthermore, the concept social class must be brought back into the scholarly debate. Abandoning the concept in favor of indexes based upon survey data has allowed one-dimensional understandings of the class system to maintain their legitimacy and, therefore, to reproduce devalued perceptions of the working class in social research and in popular culture.

Notes 1. Ainley (1993), Class and Skill, 1. 2. Kerbo (2006), Social Stratification and Inequality, 123. Both of the following references to Kerbo are from this text. 3. Nakao (1992), “Reviewed Works,” 658. 4. Ainley (1993), Class and Skill, 53. 5. Jackman and Jackman (1983), Class Awareness, 91 and 95, respectively.

Conceptions of Class Hierarchy

95

6. Nakao (1992), “Reviewed Works,” 659. 7. Nakao and Treas (1994), “Updating Occupational Prestige and Socioeconomic Scores.” This line of research has been repeated in many other societies around the world with similar results. See Wegener (1992), “Concepts and Measurement of Prestige”; also see Hauser and Warren (1997), “Socioeconomic Indexes for Occupations.” 8. Burawoy (1998), “The Extended Case Method,” 13. 9. See Fantasia (1984), Cultures of Solidarity, 4–16; and Weiss (1994), Learning from Strangers, 2. 10. Reiss, Duncan, Hatt, and North (1962), Occupations and Social Status. 11. Kerbo (2006), Social Stratification and Inequality, 208; emphasis in the original. NORC is the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. 12. Hodge, Siegel, and Rossi (1964), “Occupational Prestige,” 288; emphasis in the original. 13. See Coxon, Davies, and Jones (1986), Images of Social Stratification; Guppy (1982), “On Intersubjectivity and Collective Conscience”; Guppy and Goyder (1984), “Consensus on Occupational Prestige;” Villemez (1977), “Occupational Prestige.” 14. Zhou (2005), “Institutional Logic of Occupational Prestige Ranking,” 93. 15. Ibid., 98. See also Hauhart (2003), “The Davis-Moore Theory of Stratification”; Cass, and Resler (1978), “Some Thoughts,” 78–80; and Yanowitch (1977), Social and Economic Inequality in the Soviet Union, cited in Kerbo, Social Stratification and Inequality, 142n. 16. Blau and Duncan (1967), American Occupational Structure, 26. 17. Ibid., 58. 18. Parkin (1971), Class Inequality, 18–19. 19. Edgell (1993), Class, 43. 20. Crompton (1998), Class and Stratification, 17. 21. Gilbert (2008), American Class Structure, 234. 22. Braverman (1974), Labor and Monopoly Capital. Erik Olin Wright’s efforts to restructure the conception of class in terms of power and authority must also be noted: Wright, [1985] (1997) Classes. Wright’s conception is now gaining acceptance, such as in Zweig’s (2004) definition in What’s Class Got to Do with It? of the working class as those who work under close supervision, “who have little control over the pace or the content of their work, who aren’t the boss of anyone,” 4. Zweig’s definition extends to both blue-collar and white-collar occupations, “comprising 62 percent of the labor force.” 23. This conventional distinction of class membership is still arbitrarily applied. Consider the example given by James Zetka (2001), “Occupational Divisions of Labor.” Zetka describes how surgeons’ occupational demands resemble those of skilled blue-collar trades, yet surgeons are generally identified as middle-class “professionals.” 24. Zweig (2000), Working Class Majority. See also Halle (1984), America’s Working Man; Hurst ( 2003), Social Inequality; and Oppenheimer (1975), “Women Office Workers.” 25. This man was one semester from finishing his bachelor’s degree in accounting from a prestigious private college. At the place where he formerly worked, he found the potential for promotion was limited unless he had a col-

96

Working Class

lege degree, so in order to advance he went to college at nights and on weekends. He said, “That became very old after a while and I said to myself, ‘Why am I even doing this?’ The bottom line is I don’t want to sit behind a desk. . . . Yeah, I do want to make the $50,000 or $60,000, but I don’t really want to sit behind a desk. Again, I wanted to do something more creative than be a paper shuffler. And even if I do graduate as an accountant and they give me one of those big jobs, what am I going to be doing? I got to that point and I just never finished. I could go back . . . and finish, but why? I don’t want to do it. . . . I like being out of doors, doing things with my hands. I didn’t want a desk job.” 26. Brooks (2007), “Truck Stop Confidential.” 27. The difficulty in measuring class, given its multiple dimensions, is one of the reasons that researchers chose to abandon the concept (see Edgell (1993), Class, 51, and Crompton (1998), Class and Stratification, 10–12).

6 Occupational Prestige

THE INTERVIEWED WORKERS WERE VERY AWARE that they were

looked down on for doing the very jobs they find to be meaningful and appealing. Most of them said they were respected by their peers—that is, those who understood what their jobs entailed. It was people without blue-collar experience who obviously regarded the men’s work as negative. This chapter documents this blue-collar awareness. The data examined here call into question the models used in ranking occupational prestige, and therefore the conception of socioeconomic status. They also clarify how blue-collar workers find satisfaction in their work even as others look down on them for doing so. Institutions that are dominated by the professional class, such as the media and academia, shape perception in ways that look down on blue-collar work. The working class must live in a society dominated by professional-class values, norms, and worldviews. Not only does society at large look down on them, but blue-collar workers—particularly, factory workers—often must also accept a subservient position at work. There were many examples of the men stating that their place of employment supported the view that blue-collar work was low in status. A retired printer recalled a manager at his plant who “walked down through there like God.” Another factory worker mentioned the stereotype by which others understand his job: “I say I work for GE; ‘Oh, you are lazy and make a lot of money.’” This machinist also discussed the general image people have of unionized factory work: “A lot of the people in the factory have a bad rap, blue-collar, you know, beer-drinking, cigarsmoking, don’t-give-a-shit-type union guys. Well, that’s not true. Most of the guys down there have a lot of skills and they do care and they learned a lot on the job and they take their job seriously, because they 97

98

Working Class

take a lot of pride in what they do.” He spoke of how management looked down on the hourly workers: “Yeah, a lot of them, not all, but the majority of them does. It’s almost like a caste system. . . . They always felt that they were better.” A factory welder angrily expressed his dissatisfaction with how he is treated by management, “when they try to talk down to you, they try to treat you like you are a fucking chump or something.” The sixty-yearold machinist added to this account: “They treat you like a machine, not a person—not all of them, but too many of them.” The pipe fitter said that his company’s CEO “takes them [employees] and just squeezes them dry and then throws them away. What you have to remember is that you are just a can, just to be squeezed and thrown away.” Construction workers did not share this experience of being consistently reminded of their subservient position to managers, but some did recognize their situation as expendable when safety issues were brought up. While subservience may be a part of doing one’s job while at work, what all the men complained about was the fact that they were looked down on by middle-class individuals after they leave the workplace— that is, away from work. These accounts provide an explanation for how working-class men can prefer blue-collar occupations, respect blue-collar workers, and disrespect white-collar positions yet still respond as they do to occupational prestige surveys that ask them to give “your own personal opinion” of the “general standing” of the job. The forty-nine-year-old sawmill worker gave this account of how middle-class people regard those of his class. “I think that most people [who] go to college come out of it now’days thinking that they are like way too good. These are the guys that go white-collar. I don’t mind them; now’days you need them, but you know they look down on the guys that work for a living.” A concrete laborer also reported being looked down on. “There are people like that [white-collar] . . . you go into a gas station, or into a restaurant, or into a bar, and the people just look at you like, they turn their nose up on you. They feel that they’re in a higher class.” Another laborer, twenty-nine, described the middle class as “stuck on themselves—nose way up in the air. I think my point is that they think that they are higher than everybody else and I think it’s kind of like a prejudice.” A similar statement came from another man who had recently begun his own business. He was responding to questions about the negatives of his line of work. AUTHOR: What is it about it that you don’t like? WORKER: I don’t like the feeling that in society I’m not a professional.

Occupational Prestige

99

AUTHOR: People look down at you because you work in their dirt? WORKER: Yeah. Well a lot of times I’m getting twenty bucks an hour to do something in somebody’s yard, actually making more than they get paid, but since they wear a suit I can tell that they don’t think as much of me, but they are surprised by my intelligence when they converse with me. A welder from the locomotive plant reported similar feelings. “I really think they look down on people. I don’t think they give the bluecollar any respect whatsoever.” Asked how that made him feel, he replied, “It makes me feel like shit; it makes me feel lousy.” A reaction as strong as that was not admitted to by many others. More typical was a statement that the workers knew better than to let such things bother them. A twenty-seven-year-old excavator, recounting his experience, gave a glimpse of his reaction: I’ll bet a lot of them [people in society generally] think that they are better than us, because of the jobs that they have. They don’t think that the dirty, gritty job we’re doing—we’re coming out all sweaty and stinky and dirty—I say they look down on us. I know I haven’t talked to people about it but I don’t know, . . . because I know people that have white-collar jobs and it’s just their attitudes and the way they talk when you’re out with them . . . snobby, stuck up. . . . I don’t look down on them, I just feel uncomfortable because I feel they are looking down on me. They drive around in their brand new cars and sporting their ties all day and stuff—it’s not like I am jealous or anything. The construction supervisor attempted to make sense of the negative looks he gets by pointing out, to himself perhaps, the importance of his work: AUTHOR: So you think that people don’t have much respect for construction workers? WORKER: Yeah, most of the time, because we are dirty. We look dirty, I mean, you come home from work—you know as well as I do—you come home from work sometimes and you’re pretty nasty. You know, but that is all part of sweating and working hard. You know.

100

Working Class

AUTHOR: Well, don’t you think people would say, “Wow! That guy is really working hard. He’s got all that dirt on him, he must be busting his ass to feed his family and . . . WORKER: People don’t get that deep. They don’t put that much thought into it. They say, “Whoa, that guy’s filthy. Get him out of here.” But they don’t see what you did all day. They don’t see that you’ve been working in a trench or cleaning out a sewer or, you know, cutting wood all day—you get covered in sawdust. . . . It’s going to get awful cold outside living in a tent, wouldn’t it? An electrician who had experience working at a university also spoke of the talent that middle-class people overlook when they devalue working-class people: “I mean you get a guy, you get a good stone mason, you get somebody that really knows his business, and he puts in an elaborate terrazzo floor and does all this other stuff; I mean, the guy is an artist. He can make a lot of money doing that. Is he any less a person? No, I don’t think so, but I guess society looks at people that don’t get dirty as being of a better class. . . . I know, looking at it the other way, looking at it from academia, the professors, I know . . . they look down. Office workers, do they look down on construction workers? Yeah they do.” A carpenter who was asked where a random sample of people would place his job on the occupational hierarchy replied, “[They] would put your ass on the low end of the spectrum there, on the bottom of the scale, I would say, the lowest of the earth.” Then he added, “. . . unless they [those sampled] were blue-collar workers.” Those two preceding informants raise an important point: that they and their working-class peers do not agree with the middle-class viewpoint that blue-collar work is “the lowest of the earth.” The five workers quoted next told of personally being shunned because of their appearance after a hard day’s work. Successful individuals, all of them highly paid, they nevertheless reported being looked down on by others. The winder from the turbine factory said people did not want to sit near him on the bus. “I walk out and I’ll walk up the street and get on the bus with some lady that just came back from [her job with] the state and she’ll move.” He was asked if the woman perceived a threat or something, and he responded, “I don’t know; maybe the copper dust will rub off on her. I don’t know. People think that just because you’re coming out of work dirty that they don’t know what you are going to have.” A twenty-six-year-old concrete laborer shared a similar experience of what it can be like for him while waiting for his ride

Occupational Prestige

101

home from work: “When I’m dirty and I come home, or get dropped off there and I’m sitting around waiting, people look at me like, ‘this guy is a monster. Keep my kid away from him.’ I don’t know; they kind of look at me weird, like. You know, like, ‘What’s that grub doing?’ Because I’m sitting there and I’m getting off a hard day’s work, probably making more money than her husband is making, and they look at me like, ‘This guy is weird’ or something. I mean they don’t try to avoid me or anything like that, but they look at me like they’ve never seen a guy that worked a hard day in their life.” An eighteen-year-old construction worker reported being jeered by people in a supermarket after building a deck on a hot summer day: “I knew I smelled bad but I didn’t care.” He said, “Guys were looking at me crazy but I didn’t give a fuck. I’m getting paid probably more than you are and I enjoy it.” The pipe fitter said that he was treated differently than white-collar workers in the cafeteria at work. “There is a big cafeteria line and they are all dressed in their pencil necks, you know what I’m saying. They say, ‘Go ahead, go ahead.’ They don’t want you behind them; they don’t want you touching them. Management, secretaries, salesmen, they just look at you; they don’t say too much.” The forty-five-year-old owner-operator of a painting business (who reported making a substantial income) gave an account of an illuminating incident: Well, you know, here is an interesting thing that happened to me not long ago. My wife needed a new car. She had seen a car she thought looked pretty nice in this car dealer’s lot so I said I would go over and take a look at it with her after work. I had just gotten paid from a couple of jobs and I had a roll of cash on the dresser. It was a big roll—about five or six grand, all hundreds—and I grabbed it thinking we might need something for a down payment. I just got home from work, you know, all grubby and dirty, but I wanted to get there before they closed. Well, we got there and it was a good-looking car and we wanted to talk to someone about it. We couldn’t get any of the salesmen to come over; they were all busy talking with these other young guys in suits and ties. Another guy in a suit came in and the salesman went right over to him. We waited and waited and finally this young kid who was the salesman came over—he didn’t sell a car to either of the guys he was talking to—and I told him I wanted to buy this car. I pulled out the roll of bills and told him that I was planning to give it to him right now. I was hot. I said, ‘I know that guy you were

102

Working Class

spending all that time with. He’s a shoe salesman at Macy’s. I could buy and sell him many times over. You think that just because he’s wearing a suit he deserves more attention than me? I wouldn’t buy a car from you if my life depended on it,’ and we walked out. A forty-five-year-old factory welder‘s story of being looked down on referred not to his appearance but to job description. He was out at a nightclub, he said, and women who were speaking with him were friendly until they learned what he did for a living. Me and a buddy of mine, this is when I was single, we went to a nightclub. We were dressed up, we were styling and shit—that was when I was into that kind of stuff. We saw these two chicks looking at us, so we went over there; you know, we started talking. Things were going real good and then finally they asked us, “What do you do?” We said, “We are urban lumberjacks.” They said, “Urban lumberjacks, what is that?” I said we were construction workers. She goes, “What do you mean, what kind of construction do you do?” I said, “We are laborers,” you know. When we said that, I guess these chicks were looking to go out with somebody they thought had money or, I don’t know. Anyway, they started gaffing us off after that, you know. They were secretaries. I threw my union card down on the table. I said, “I make three-hundred and fifty bucks a fucking week! You are a fucking seventy to one hundred [dollars] a week, fucking secretary. Fuck you. Kiss my ass.” We got up and fucking split, blew the joint, you know. She goes, “What do you mean—like, a common laborer?” It looked like she was going to turn green. I said, “Yeah, I am a common laborer. I work with concrete and this and that. . . . It was no skin off my ass. I knew they were wrong. It was obvious to many of the men that there is a gulf between them and middle-class people. A twenty-seven-year-old excavator stated: “You don’t see a guy that works down at the garage ripping transmissions out sitting and sipping a beer with some guy that is a lawyer. You just don’t see it.” Another construction worker, a twenty-six-year-old laborer, also spoke of the isolation between the two classes. “I know for myself personally, I don’t have any friends that work behind [desks in] offices or do any type of clerical work or anything like that.” Of the several interviews in which workers discussed their isolation from middle-class people, each of the men claimed that the distance was caused by white-collar workers not wanting to associate with working-

Occupational Prestige

103

class folks. The assembler of locomotives said: “They tend to stick to themselves. They, well, I can’t say that for sure, but I do know that I don’t know very many and the ones that I’ve met really had no interest in knowing me. And naturally, if they are going to create a gap, you know, I’m not going to waste my energy trying to reach across it. So why bother? You know, if they want to be closed minded and they want to be by themselves, well, then they must deserve to be all by themselves.” A mason’s laborer, twenty-nine, although he personally regarded white-collar work to be as important as blue-collar, reported the perception that white-collar workers consider themselves to be better than him. He continued, “They don’t bother me. They do their job and I do our job. Now, if they don’t want to associate with me then that’s fine, too. I don’t need anybody that gives, you know, that can look down on me. I think we’re all, you know—God made us all. I think we’re all equal. If they don’t want to associate with us then let them go on their way and be in their world. If they want to associate with us that’s fine and we all can get together.” A worker who machined cylinder heads in a machine shop, when asked his opinion of white-collar workers given their reported negative attitude toward his class, said he respected them, but admitted that this did not include everyone in the white-collar category. “You are not going to like everybody in the world,” he said. “It’s all according to the people that you come into [contact with], and if they want to stay up on their little totem pole and not mingle with the lower people, I have no interest in them.” Asked whom he meant by “lower people,” he said, “The people that get dirty.” He was then asked if that was his consideration or that of society in general. “Society looks at it that way,” he said—a significant point, because he and others in the sample did not regard blue-collar work as lower in prestige, importance, or value, but they recognized that society (dominated by professional-class standards) defined his position as lower. These working-class men were acutely aware of their place in the occupational hierarchy according to professional-class standards. It is obvious that they did not subscribe to the conception of occupational prestige that researchers attribute to them. They did not look up to white-collar workers; they did not regard white-collar work to be easier, more rewarding, or preferable in any way (with the two qualified exceptions discussed in Chapter 4). Moreover, the men did not associate income—a key factor in one index of socioeconomic status—as necessarily an indication of prestige. In fact, the blue-collar workers regarded those at the top of the income ladder to be overpaid. The factory maintenance worker:

104

Working Class

You certainly need a society that respects people, and I’d like to respect people, but I usually don’t respect somebody that acts important because they have a degree that says they can. There’s even a quotation from an Amish man that says, “There is a real problem in life when a teacher makes more than a farmer.” It’s not that the farmer feels that he should be worth more than anybody else; it’s people coming out of college that make all this money and how in the world are they worth all that? A building contractor who also made this point went on to say that his prices were reasonable, suggesting that maximizing profit was not his goal: The administration position, for the number of hours—actual amount of work—that is put in, they make more than they’re worth. They make such an amount greater than they’re worth [that] I don’t know how they can sleep at night. . . . [If I were] work[ing] a job that I was making more money than I felt the job was actually worth, I couldn’t sleep at night. You know, I run a small construction business myself. I’ve given people prices that I can live with. I’m making money on the job, they’re satisfied with the work; everybody’s happy. The meaning of blue-collar work makes it attractive for the working class, or makes it, at the least, acceptable or tolerable, reasonably fulfilling, satisfying, or enjoyable. The lack of personal contact with middleclass individuals, coupled with negativity experienced when there is interaction with them, enhances the likelihood that working-class kids will prefer to remain in the working-class when they grow up. For the working class, that is a source of pride.

How Blue-Collar Workers Interpret the Stigma

Workers who had a sense of pride and accomplishment in their work and yet found others did not understand this often proposed that ignorance was the reason. “They have no respect for the guys because they’ve never done it,” said the locomotive assembler. The construction supervisor argued that others defined blue-collar work negatively “because most people don’t realize what it takes to do it.” The winder added that “they don’t [respect you] unless the people you run into know what you do for a living. . . . The old saying that you can’t judge a book by its

Occupational Prestige

105

cover fits right there.” When asked how others would place his job on an occupational prestige scale, the pipe fitter says: “Probably down low because they don’t know it. They don’t understand it.” Even his wife, he said, “doesn’t understand it.” A forty-five-year-old factory welder, the only member of the sample to define himself as black, explains other’s disdain for his class position as a function of ignorance. He said, “Ignorance is based on one of two things, either fear or wrong teaching. All ignorance is based on fear and wrong teachings. With some people, some people need to feel better than somebody else, because they are afraid. They need to feel better than that guy, you know. Racism works the same way. It is the same type of mentality. They’ve got to have a nigger to kick. If they don’t have a nigger, they will create a nigger.” A concrete laborer, asked to explain why others looked upon him as if he were “a monster” because he was dirty after work, responded, “It’s just when you’re baking out in the sun all day long and, of course—you know that the work is very hard, you know what I mean—they don’t know. A lot of people don’t know because they are not there. The only way you would really know is if you were the person actually wearing the work boots and actually did the work for while.” The thirty-seven-year-old shipping-and-receiving worker from the compressor factory was aware that others did not recognize his work as respectable but saw it in perspective: “It’s kind of a one-sided opinion. You know, you’re getting, ‘I’m here but you don’t want to be down there [with a blue-collar job]. You are the lower people.’ I mean, even in this [factory] where I am right now [there are those] who say, ‘Well I’m an engineer, what are you?’ ‘I’m in shipping and receiving.’ They go, ‘Oh, you like that? You can do that? Isn’t that like dirt work?’ And that’s what they think of it as. I’m like, ‘Yeah, I like it; I’m a hell of a lot happier than you at five o’clock.” He did not buy into the professional-class notion that he should be ashamed of his job. His experience had shown him that ignorance was to blame for white-collar workers’ negative opinion. This is not unlike the attitudes of coal miners studied by Malcolm Pitt: they were proud of their skills as pitmen, maintaining “selfrespect against the insult of ‘dirty miner’ from an ignorant and hostile world.”1 The shipping-and-receiving worker said others had shown a negative attitude toward him in the past because of his occupation, but once they found out what his job entailed their attitude changed. I’ve been in some places where people say, “Hey, what do you do?” . . . and I say I work in shipping and receiving. “Oh, dirt job!” I’m sorry I didn’t say CEO. I’m sorry. But then there are people who

106

Working Class

know a little bit about the company and they say, “Wow! that’s a big company. You must ship out a lot and do this and . . . ” But some people look down on it, yes, they do. But then if you start talking about it and they get interested in it because, “Not only does he do shipping and receiving but he serves a hundred and thirteen countries, he has to deal with customs, and do this and that. Wow! his job sounds interesting.” . . . And before long you have somebody that is a white-collar worker with total interest in what you do and in the beginning of that conversation it was, “You do that?” You know, because that is not something that they would want to do. It is physical, hard labor. “I don’t want it; I don’t want to get dirty. But wait, that sounds interesting. You deal with what? Stuff comes from where? It comes by boat, plane, you’ve got deadlines to meet? It is interesting.” His claim was that even though they still may not want the job themselves, people he talked to gained respect for him and recognized the difficulty, the challenge, the dignity of the work. The house painter felt respected by other blue-collar workers: People that are actually out there working hard for their money, getting paid a normal wage, let’s just say it’s thirty to forty thousand dollars a year or whatever, the nondoctors, the nonlawyers, the non–vice presidents and CEOs, whatever. Those people I think have a lot of respect for the trades. It’s the people who have never really had to work hard to get where they are—their mom and dad spoil them, they run into where their dad gives them a business, the spoiled little rich kid scenario who goes to the prep school, goes to Princeton and Mom and Dad buy him a Corvette for his graduation or whatever—I don’t think they even understand. It’s not so much that they don’t respect, I don’t think that they are even familiar with our world enough to; I don’t think they give it a second thought. It’s like we are a different class—a different society—who they don’t have to come in contact with, they probably never will, so it doesn’t enter into their mind. They are on a whole different level; they’re on a whole different plane; a whole different way of life. We are an evil necessity, I guess to them you might say. . . . I don’t see that you get a whole lot of respect. This painter, forty-five years old, owner-operator of his own business, considered himself to be middle class. His income was greater than that of

Occupational Prestige

107

most white-collar workers and, while he was doing up to seventy hours a week of physical, dirty work, he was a businessman. Nonetheless, this man was accurate in recognizing upper- and even upper-middle-class people as having lives that were, at least somewhat, isolated from the lives of the working class. The painter saw the lack of respect granted to his occupation by professional-class people to be the result of existing in a “whole different way of life.” Privileged lifestyles did not provide experiences for shaping a worldview that appreciates what blue-collar workers do, in this man’s thinking. He also deduced that lack of respect for working-class jobs was the result of ignorance. The sixty-three-year-old union laborer claimed that the lack of respect was unjustified. A negative attitude toward his job, he said, “probably won’t be from the guys [other construction workers] because they know themselves. It’s the other people that, I’m sure other people that, you know, have jobs outside the trade will think—you know, that’s what they think—well, ‘Just a laborer.’ You know, but it’s not. I’m not saying that you are a rocket scientist or something, but the fact of the matter is, there is really a lot to learn out there and they’re really putting it on.” The welder from the locomotive plant was asked if his job provided positive rewards for his own personal self-image. He said: “Yeah, it’s good, but it is just trying to convince others—you can’t.” In order to understand what is satisfying about blue-collar work, the men argued, one must experience it for oneself. It was the inability to relate to the experience that led others to define it negatively. A twenty-seven-year-old excavator said that the men he worked with respected him for the work he did. Likewise, he respected them— “because I know what they do all day and, because I do it myself, I know how they feel at the end of the day. I’m doing what they’re doing so I know how they feel.” Others did not have appropriate respect for his work “because they don’t see what a guy does all day,” he said. Several other men claimed to be respected for their work, but by those that worked with them or had personal knowledge of the job. Regarding lack of respect for his job from white-collar workers, a thirty-one-year-old laborer commented: “Maybe they’re afraid to get dirty or they’ve never actually really done it. I bet if you give them the opportunity and took them out, some of them would actually even enjoy it.” There were other ways that the men disputed the conception of their situation as inferior. The winder, a union member who earned a comfortable living building generators, argued that pay and prestige ought not be based upon college education. He gave an example of an electrician who “had to learn that [trade] and it might have taken him ten years to learn it.”

108

Working Class

A union excavator noted that there is an argument that says professionals, such as doctors, deserve greater reward because of their great responsibilities: “This is the way I look at it,” he said. “I’m a crane operator. I’m running a crane lifting a concrete bucket onto a scaffold, pouring walls. There’s twenty guys, masons, working on the scaffold. If I drop that bucket I kill twenty people just [snaps fingers] at the wrong move by me. A doctor on the operating table, be it a broken arm or brain surgery, he can kill one person at any time. So therefore I should be making twenty times the amount of money he is. But it doesn’t happen that way.” Some of the men in the sample saw no need to argue that blue-collar work ought to have respect from society; on the contrary, they questioned the logic that concluded that they should not. The house painter challenged the notion, previously stated by Seymour Martin Lipset but supportively paraphrased by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb in their 1973 book The Hidden Injuries of Class, that “the circumstances of working-class life prevent people from developing the social intelligence necessary to deal with democratic strife.”2 The painter said, “I can hold a conversation about politics or this, that, or the other thing with almost anybody. Give me calculus, trig, give me geometry, whatever, I can do it—do it in my sleep! Does that make them [professionals] more intelligent because they have a job doing it? I don’t believe so.” A thirtyone-year-old concrete laborer argued that it was wrong for others to regard “the common worker” negatively because, in his words, that person “does the work for this country,” and “make[s] this thing move.” A welder from the locomotive factory stated, “Nobody in this world can build the type of quality product that we build in North America. We have a lot of very skilled people and some people think that they’re not skilled at all. There are people that can build that stealth fighter. There are people coming from manufacturing shops that have the experience that can build these 747 jets. We can do all this stuff, you know, but they don’t look at us like that.” To the blue-collar workers interviewed, it was simply obvious that they perform skilled work that is necessary, important, and worthy of respect. They see the entire process of production and recognize that every aspect of the production process is essential for it to work. “I think there is skill in everything,” said the locomotive assembler, “and in everything from digging ditches to brain surgery there is professionalism . . . and some skills by their nature should demand a higher premium. When I have a doctor, I want him to be the best doctor I can afford, or that crane operator—you don’t want to work underneath an economically driven crane operator.” Respect, for him, was granted based upon contribution, rather than the color of one’s collar.

Occupational Prestige

109

Reaction to the Stigma

The words of the workers above are logical, but they must be placed within the cultural logic of the working class. This research has displayed that blue-collar laborers can articulate several ways in which their work is meaningful and, to the probable disbelief of many in the white-collar ranks, preferable. The logic in the arguments is sound and, when considered with an open mind, convincing. There remains the question: how do working-class men deal with the blows to their selfimage that they receive regularly from middle-class society? In the interviews, blue-collar workers introduced their understanding of the stratification system as horizontal. “No one is better than anyone else,” was a common statement. It was obvious to these men that others in society possessed more of some things, but they also recognized the sacrifices that those with more resources must make in order to have those things—sacrifices that, for them, would mean giving up much about themselves that they valued. The positives and the negatives of blue- and white-collar work balanced in the workers’ favor, they think, but the good and bad aspects of each type of work must be understood along a continuum with many dimensions. There were advantages and disadvantages in the jobs on either side of the class boundary, and making sense of one’s situation must often recognize a number of different and complicated, if not competing, issues. Looking down on the factory workers and construction workers simply for being dirty or for having production jobs ignored the many ways that those jobs have meaning. Some of the men admitted that they were angry that middle-class society looked down upon them. Most common, however, were comments such as that of the thirty-nine-year-old machinist who agreed that there was injustice between the benefits (including prestige) that whiteand blue-collar workers received, but he said: “I can live with it; I don’t care; it doesn’t bother me.” Perhaps Sennett and Cobb were accurate, in a way, by describing any injury to workers’ psyches as “hidden.” If this machinist felt injured by society’s negative consideration of him, he certainly did not address it; instead, he shrugged it off and simply said he didn’t care. From listening to other workers, to the interviewer it appeared as though they may be honest in their statements that they were not bothered. A fifty-two-year-old carpenter was asked if he felt the negative stereotyping with which societal members generally identified him. He replied: “Oh sure, you always do. Yeah, it is nice to come home with a suit and tie on, but it is all in your own personal self; it is in yourself. There were many years I was proud to come home, just worked my ass off, I felt great about it. And I thought, ‘Man! I really did

110

Working Class

a good day’s work today.’ I never had any problems with that, myself, but I can see where some people might. Not me. No, I don’t have a problem with that at all. . . . There is nothing like good hard work, and that’s it. I would never be intimated by that.” The construction supervisor had a similar statement: “I don’t let it bother me. As long as I have pride in what I did. As long as I know what I did, you know, somebody looks at you and says, ‘Oh, you’re filthy.’ Well I’m filthy because this is what I did, because I did the job right. Yeah, it cost me a shirt—it is dirty or it is ripped—but I did the job right and I got it done. It is all part of having pride in your work and pride in yourself. If you’ve got the self-pride then you don’t need anything else.” Such comments reveal some of the pride men feel in overcoming adversity and completing a task correctly. In a way, the dirt on their bodies and the rips in their clothing (as well as their skin) are symbols of the difficult circumstances the men had to endure in order to complete a necessary job. Both of the quotations immediately above come from men who construct buildings. They knew that in order to put up a building, dirty, difficult work must be done. The finished product gave them a sense of accomplishment in part because it was difficult. Perhaps the claims by these men that they were not bothered by negative impressions from white-collar society are actually the truth. They seemed to have accepted the hardships that go along with their work—the dirt, the heat, the noise, the danger—in order to do a job that they considered satisfying, important, and meaningful in a number of ways. When the construction supervisor was asked if he thought construction workers lacked respect from society, he initially replied, “Well, it’s hard for me to say because I respect construction workers; I know what they go through.” Since the circles that the working-class men live in rarely put them in meaningful contact with professionals, it is understandable that society’s negative images are not a big enough part of their daily lives to seriously impact their self-esteem. Another explanation was given by David Halle,3 who observed that the lifestyles and possessions of the factory workers he studied were similar to those of most white-collar workers. The two groups often share the same neighborhoods and restaurants, which for blue-collar workers reduces the impression that they are worse off than white-collar people. Some in the sample evidenced that they did not on a daily basis feel negativity regarding a stigmatized identity. A factory welder in his midforties, stated, “Ain’t nobody better than me, but, by the same token, I ain’t no better than nobody else. We are all out here, like little fish trying

Occupational Prestige

111

to swim around and keep from getting eaten by sharks.” A concrete laborer gave little or no credence to the stigma that others granted to his job. “Because sometimes they classify other people in this world as to how much they make and what they do . . . I don’t think that’s really important. Some people are really concerned about what other people think about them instead of what they think of themselves.” This twenty-six-year-old man recognized the stigma from society, but wondered, “Does this really matter? Does it really matter to anybody else what they do?” About 10 percent of the sample reported that the occupational prestige hierarchy was reversed in the attitudes of many blue-collar workers. “You’ve got some people that are blue-collar workers that think they are better than the office people,” a factory welder said. All but one of these workers, many of whom held deeply negative feelings of professionals, understood this thinking, but reported not sharing this attitude themselves. The welder continued, “I think that is stupid. Just because you have a certain position in life, what makes you think that you are better than somebody else, because they don’t have the position? I mean, like I said, we are all out here together.” A construction laborer concurred, “I don’t think that anybody in this world is in any position to classify or judge anybody else in this world as to what they do and what their goals are. There is not supposed to be any classification between the classes in society, right?” The house painter reported having respect for white-collar workers, even doctors and lawyers whom others disliked, but gave a qualified statement regarding his attitude toward those that see themselves as superior to his class. He said that “many doctors, lawyers, professional type people with substantial incomes”—people for whom he had worked— were “very down to earth, normal people” that appreciated the work the painter did for them. “And there were others that you go in and say, ‘Good morning,’ and they’d look at you and turn right around. But they were much above me—much too far above me to even converse with me. When I run into people like that I kind of feel sorry for them. It doesn’t bother me; it shows that they are ignorant people. It doesn’t show me that they are better than me, it shows me that they are really below me.” The locomotive assembler had obviously thought a great deal about how society works. Like a few of the others in the sample, he had read widely in order to educate himself, although he had not attended college. The discussion within the interview came to deal with the stereotype of a blue-collar worker. The assembler’s comments reflected a negative impression of academics and those in the media who are responsible for disseminating ideas.

112

Working Class

AUTHOR: You know the stereotype—the one you see on the TV— like Archie Bunker, Homer Simpson, that is what a bluecollar worker is. They wear plaid shirts and drink beer and that’s about it. WORKER: Well, I wear plaid shirts and I like my beer. And see, that’s what the people that are putting those things together, the people that are supporting those stereotypes, they really don’t put any energy into trying to comprehend the more noble things that we espouse. If they did they wouldn’t [promote such stereotypes]. AUTHOR: What noble things? WORKER: Well, what America stands for: being free. Some people think of us as the common man, and we are the common man, but we—just being an individual is a lot more than that. They see us as just underlings, but that’s what really exposes them for thinking that they are up there and we are down here, because they put that state of mind into themselves and into what they do and into what they publish and into what they broadcast. In the end, negativity from white-collar workers is not granted importance enough to dwell upon. A welder explained that there were more important things to worry about than what professionals thought of his job type: “One of these days I am going to have to stand before my Heavenly Father and he is not really going to be that interested in what kind of work I did. He is going to be interested in how I did it. He is not going to be interested in how much money I have. He is not going to be interested in my stock—what stocks I had when I died. He is going to want to know what I did for him.”

Notes 1. Pitt (1979), The World on Our Backs; emphasis added. 2. Sennett and Cobb (1973), Hidden Injuries of Class, 71. 3. Halle (1984), America’s Working Man.

7 Making Sense of Working-Class Attitudes

THIS STUDY IS YET ANOTHER IN a long, though intermittent, history of

research on working-class people’s orientations to their work. As discussed in Chapter 3, it is not a new discovery that blue-collar workers find satisfaction and positive associations from their jobs and their workingclass lives. Sociologists who specialize in work and occupations have long known that blue-collar workers have different standards for success and honor in their work than do professionals. Unfortunately, this knowledge has not translated into changes in stratification theory, and social science continues to predicate conceptions of class difference on the assumption of inferiority in blue-collar work. The validity of socioeconomic status indexes rests upon the incidence of commonly held understandings of occupational prestige across the social-class divide, as well as homogenous attitudes concerning the meaning of income and educational achievement. This study has found that working-class individuals do not recognize their positions as beneath those of white-collar workers, though they are quite aware that professionals often look down on them. Much of the research on working-class occupations and lifestyles reflects sociological theory that defines the working class as inferior. Since that is the underlying logical framework into which empirical evidence is commonly placed, the sentiments embedded in stratification theory dictate the hierarchical outcome that represents the conventional wisdom of the whitecollar classes. The cultural logic of the professional class cannot explain the actions of blue-collar workers accurately because working-class values provide alternative motivations for their behavior. Unfortunately, even some highly qualified scholars fail to realize that their interpretations of working-class behavior are based on misunderstandings, faulty 113

114

Working Class

premises, and false deductions. When blue-collar workers do not behave according to the same logic as that in the professional-class worldview, academics commonly dismiss the lower-status workers’ reasoning and impose their own explanation—the one that fits their preferred paradigm. A book by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class, provides the classic justification for ignoring blue-collar workers’ opinions. This book, first published by Vintage Press in 1973, was republished by W. W. Norton in 1993 because of its wide appeal, and it is still cited frequently. Sennett and Cobb claim that working-class people, in their subconscious at least, recognize and internalize the stigma that stems from their devalued occupations. The men in the preceding chapter clearly recognize the stigma, but Sennett and Cobb say that those men actually believe their devalued status to be warranted. In their book, the scholars also document blue-collar workers’ claims that they see their circumstances in a positive light. When laborers say that they like their jobs and their working-class lives, the authors say that the working people are lying. The working-class people may not realize that they are lying— mostly to themselves—when they claim satisfaction in their workingclass existence, but the enlightened authors of The Hidden Injuries of Class think they see through this masquerade. Even though workers interviewed by Sennett and Cobb plainly say that they find satisfaction in their jobs and that they are satisfied with their situations, these statements are brushed aside as failed attempts to feel dignity in their lowly positions. The researchers cannot understand how anyone could find such things rewarding, so they declare that working-class people “create new patterns out of the information society feeds to [them], patterns which deaden or distance the emotional impact of the information.”1 Sennett and Cobb’s interviews with blue-collar workers reported feelings of “innate disrespect” for white-collar positions. There were also statements from workers that manual labor had more dignity than whitecollar work, attitudes that held certified knowledge to be “a sham,” and even acknowledgment from those who left blue-collar jobs for white-collar work that they felt “terribly ambivalent about their success.” The scholars made no attempt to understand these attitudes from the perspective of the people making the statements. Instead, they claimed that these expressions are a “sign of vulnerability in themselves.”2 The workers repeatedly told the interviewers that they were satisfied in their blue-collar jobs and that they had little respect for white-collar professionals. “Still,” Sennett and Cobb say, “the power of the educated to judge him, and more generally, to rule, he does not dispute. He accepts as legitimate what he believes is undignified in itself, and in accepting

Making Sense of Working-Class Attitudes

115

the power of educated people he feels more inadequate, vulnerable, and undignified.”3 Sennett and Cobb simply accept that college-educated elites have the authority to judge inferior working-class people, and the authors insist that, deep down, working-class people agree. The legitimacy of the working-class values was completely dismissed by Sennett and Cobb. They followed the norm for sociologists of that day. Any statement provided by working-class interview subjects that did not conform to the values of the researchers was interpreted as a sign of refusal by the bluecollar workers to accept the truth of their own inferiority and subjugation. From the standpoint of the professional-class intellectuals, this made perfect sense. Theoretical understandings of blue-collar work do not provide a logical context for reports from workers that they enjoy their jobs. Or, what is more confusing, that they don’t regard college-educated professionals as superior. In another example, a sociologist who has conducted important research on masculinity found that factory workers were proud of their work and they looked down on management. David Collinson’s 1992 book explained that workers were simply trying to “generate a positive, meaningful, ‘heroic’ world for themselves”4 in the face of demeaning treatment by management. There are no sociological paradigms that assume the working class is anything other than subordinate, so scholars find little theoretical justification for interpreting the workers’ positive, meaningful understanding of their jobs as anything other than cognitive dissonance. Collinson’s devalued conception of blue-collar jobs as alienating and meaningless, which was mandated by prevailing theoretical perspectives, did not allow an understanding of the workers’ orientations in positive terms. He reasoned that workers regard their white-collar supervisors as— in the words of a factory worker quoted in the ethnography—“fucking parasites”5 because of a desire to overcome their sense of inferiority. The researcher explains, “Workers reverse the conventional social ‘pecking order’ with its associated dominant meanings of what it means to be ‘successful.’ Whilst these cultural practices constitute partial penetrations of organizational contradictions, their primary condition and consequence is the workers’ redefinition of themselves as dignified subjects and the rejection of themselves as disposable objects or commodities.”6 This is an example of good sociology. The researcher attained privileged access to the blue-collar occupational culture of a British auto plant. He conducted careful observations and took detailed records, and his interviews were skillfully conducted. The analysis is even keen, given the theoretical framework available. The problem is the theoretical logic

116

Working Class

that begins with a presumption of working-class inferiority: the factory workers’ definition of their positions as honorable, meaningful, or positive cannot be the result of a rational, reasonable appreciation for the desirable aspects of productive work from the perspective of working-class culture; instead, the workers’ “cultural practices” are merely seen as a reaction to the dominant class’s definition of the situation. By this reasoning, the culture of the workers could not have originated organically as a practical response to their circumstances, especially when those reactions result in satisfaction or a positive connection to blue-collar work. There is recognition of at least some practical justification for workers’ attitudes because of “organizational contradictions,” but, more importantly, the employees are presumed to have simply twisted the “conventional” truth around to make themselves feel better. What is missing in this explanation is the realization that the quoted worker, the one who said managers are parasites, is correct. Like the men studied for this book, the British factory workers understood that profit is created at the point of production. Managers, like parasites, literally do live off the work of others because they do not directly produce value through their labor. Managers perform an important part in the successful operation of a manufacturing company, and the profit realized from the sale of a product could not happen without their contribution, but, from the perspective of some notable economists, the managers’ salaries and all the other costs of running the business must be taken from the value added to the product at the point of production. Rather than see the logic in the workers’ attitudes, their opinions are perceived as illegitimate attempts to cope with their low-ranking positions. It is demeaning to say that working-class culture is only a reaction, or an adaptation, to the superior ethos of the middle class. Dominant theory, however, presents investigators with little choice. Researchers confidently know, from the values they share with their professional peers and from the theories that guide their empirical observations, that blue-collar work cannot be rewarding or enjoyable. When blue-collar workers say that they find their jobs rewarding, it does not fit the logic of the professional class and therefore must be explained in a way that conforms to that logic. Since all people interpret the world through their cultural lens, it is not surprising that researchers do this. The danger lies in researchers’ authority for determining truth, which derives from the power of science. The working class and the professional class each define identities according to their own standards, but it is the standards of the professional class that are incorporated into the insti-

Making Sense of Working-Class Attitudes

117

tution of science. The outcome is that working-class cultural values are ignored while the bias of the professional class is allowed to belittle bluecollar workers, an evaluation that is taken as a matter of fact. Cognitive dissonance remains a convenient way for researchers to explain away workers’ attitudes that do not conform to the standpoint of the professional class. Claims of satisfaction from blue-collar jobs are easily dismissed as lies, if not spoken directly to the researcher then in the workers’ psyches. Ethnographic researchers, who take the time to live and work among blue-collar communities in order to understand the culture of working-class people, are more sympathetic to the logic of their worldview.7 These researchers rarely resort to explanations of cognitive dissonance to account for workers’ alternative values. Unfortunately, the tendency remains to simply dismiss the alternative values of the working class as a coping strategy, without trying to understand the cultural logic that supports such thinking.

Acknowledging the Words of Workers

The history of sociological thought has been dominated by approaches that treat the knowledge and actions of the people as data, without trusting the adequacy of what they say as knowledge itself. This attitude has been justified in Marxist terms based on discourse about ideology and false consciousness.8 It can also be justified in Freudian terms due to the operation of defense mechanisms theorized as present in almost everyone.9 The structuralist position illustrates this view.10 It is based on the assumption that social scientists are uniquely qualified to discover the structure of language or society, while ordinary people, the users of language and the actors in society, are unaware of the structures that work behind the scenes and guide their thoughts in unseen ways. For these theorists and many others, common citizens are in no position to accurately reflect upon their own circumstances. Scholars therefore reasoned that there is little need to consider the ways that average people see the world. This led George Homans, in his 1964 American Sociological Association presidential address, to call for theoretical approaches that would focus on “Bringing Men Back In.” Interestingly, Homans’s answer was to first treat people in behaviorist terms with a set of propositions about stimuli, responses, and reinforcement. Then, in a revised approach, his research assumed that people are decision-making maximizers with decision-making principles that are unknown to the actors but recognized

118

Working Class

and formulated by the experts—the researchers who often use mathematical decision theory requiring probability theory and calculus for solutions (such as the Nash Solution to cooperative games).11 These approaches have been heavily criticized by theorists who argue that the ordinary person is a highly skilled, knowledgeable agent. Thus, Jurgen Habermas could examine the Marxist ideological forces and the Freudian psychological forces and recommend ways that allow the individual to “correct” the theoretical knowledge.12 One of the other key figures in this critique of traditional theorizing is Anthony Giddens, who characterizes the traditional view as follows: A common tendency of many otherwise divergent schools of sociological thought is to adopt the methodological tactic of beginning their analysis by discounting agents’ reasons for their action . . . in order to discover the real stimuli to their activity, of which they are ignorant. . . . It implies a derogation of the lay actor. If actors are regarded as cultural dopes or mere “bearers of the mode of production,” with no worthwhile understanding of their surroundings or the circumstances of their action, the way is immediately lain open for the supposition that their own views can be disregarded in any practical programmes that might be inaugurated.13

Giddens proposes a theory of “structuration” as a remedy to the derogation of the individual knower. He argues, “The production of society is a skilled performance, sustained and ‘made to happen’ by human beings. It is indeed only made possible because every (competent) member of society is a practical social theorist; in sustaining any sort of encounter he draws upon his knowledge and theories, normally in an unforced and routine way.”14 This leads Giddens to a view of sociology that requires “a subject-subject relation to its ‘field of study,’ not a subject-object relation; it deals with a pre-interpreted world, in which the meanings developed by active subjects actually enter into the actual constitution or production of that world; the construction of social theory thus involves a double hermeneutic that has no parallel elsewhere.”15 This view has significant consequences for the sociologist, who must seek immersion in the “form of life” of the societies and persons being studied. The sociologist is no longer the expert interpreter of the actions of unknowing actors but is a collector of informed interpretations of other knowledgeable actors. Similarly, Pierre Bourdieu rejects claims about universal logics and principles, which are assumed by positivist researchers to apply to all

Making Sense of Working-Class Attitudes

119

social categories. Bourdieu prefers the emphasis on strategies and local logics. He notes that people have “the practical sense, or, if you prefer, what sports players call ‘a feel for the game,’ as the practical mastery acquired by experience of the game.”16 It is skill that is partly conscious and partly habit. Thus, a person builds a set of local logics for the conduct of the type of activity engaged in. It is done reflexively, where the person recognizes strategies, uses them consciously, and improves them based on his or her experiences. In Support of Ethnography

These advocates for listening to people—and then taking their perspectives seriously—explain how social scientists could have made some false presumptions when they failed to take seriously the cultural logic that motivates behavior for working-class people. Presumptions that structural variables dictate behavior dominate sociological theory, discounting the cultural influences on people’s choices. Failure to understand the standpoint of the working class is behind the misconception of blue-collar work. Scholars must be informed of the alternative cultural logics that guide the actions of people in the groups they are analyzing. When a coal miner or a construction worker says that he loves his job, scholars have to ask him why. Then they need to understand the ideological context of the reply. The theoretical conventions of the era in which blue-collar work was defined as meaningless instructed the researchers to ignore the worldviews of working-class people. In much the same fashion as Goldthorpe et al.’s Affluent Worker studies dismissed workers’ claims of intrinsic satisfaction, the complex motivations for working-class behavior were commonly dismissed in favor of structural explanations. The theoretical as well as the methodological conventions of the day rationalized researchers’ disregard for culture. For example, Seymour Martin Lipset and Reinhardt Bendix showed that changes in occupational structure in the first half of the twentieth century made room for expanding numbers of white-collar positions. Much of the occupational mobility in this period can be accounted for by the simple fact that managerial job opportunities were quickly being created and the increasing supply of office jobs was often filled by people from working-class backgrounds. This information was at least part of the explanation for working-class movement into white-collar positions, but Lipset and Bendix were quick to dismiss all other explanations simply because that one answer was

120

Working Class

supported by the evidence: “Instead of supporting the assumption that value differences cause variations in mobility rates, the data support the hypothesis that mobility patterns in Western industrialized societies are determined by occupational structure.”17 Cultural explanations for behavior were quickly thrown out by positivist researchers, who emphasized structural variables—which, not coincidently, promoted quantitative research methodologies over ethnographic techniques. Stratification researchers commonly dismissed the existence of a working-class subculture,18 but we now understand that there are multiple, complex motivations for behavior. It is inaccurate to dismiss the varieties of factors that influence behavior simply because one narrow hypothesis is supported by the data. The conclusions of positivist research in the “structuralist” period following the World War II were limited. Much of what we know about the working class that derives from research conducted in that era, at least through the 1970s, must be reconsidered. When a coal miner, a construction worker, or a factory worker says that he loves his job, dominant sociological theories would explain it as false consciousness, cognitive dissonance, co-optation, or simple-mindedness, or it may simply be ignored. Researchers discount the individuals they are studying when they ignore their standpoint. They make faulty presumptions. These devalued images of blue-collar work and working-class life are then built into the conceptual framework of social theory. They then can be used by the professional class to justify prejudicial attitudes toward those of “lower social standing.” As influential actors in the knowledge-producing institution of social science, researchers may be unwittingly contributing to the unequal distribution of social resources when their variables have been conceptualized according to inappropriate cultural logic. Scholars cannot accurately understand the decisions of people unless they understand the cultural logic of the communities in which they live, which is especially true for scholarship concerning social class. Herbert Applebaum, author of Construction Workers, USA, explains, “Blue-collar workers do not get good press because the people who write about them are not blue-collar workers themselves, except in very rare cases.”19 The negative scholarship on blue-collar workers, Applebaum states, cannot be corrected until observers listen to them, and then seek to understand them. There is a trend in social science toward “participatory action research,”20 which places the words of those being studied at the center of analysis and recognizes the people themselves as the most knowledgeable representatives of their ideas and motivations. This improvement is the best way to

Making Sense of Working-Class Attitudes

121

understand the impact of class cultures upon occupational choices and related behaviors. Social scientists must alter their perspective from one that studies working-class people to one that seeks to understand them. It would also be useful if researchers did not begin their research with negative definitions of those they are analyzing.

Responding to Cognitive Dissonance

It was improper for researchers to dismiss workers’ claims of satisfaction in blue-collar work, and it would also be unacceptable to dismiss their conclusions by the same reasoning. There have, after all, been examples in the research literature of workers stating directly that they are unhappy with their manual jobs, and cognitive dissonance must be confronted as a possible explanation for workers’ statements of satisfaction. Mirra Komarovsky documented in her 1962 study Blue-Collar Marriage several statements by men who describe their jobs as “monotonous” and “no great fun; just something I got to make a living by.”21 Lillian Rubin likewise recounted interview data from working-class men that showed a lack of enjoyment in blue-collar jobs, although Rubin was clear that skilled workers portrayed their jobs as highly satisfying.22 Is it not conceivable that blue-collar workers could be claiming to be satisfied with their blue-collar jobs in order to defend their self-esteem? Lawrence Ouellet has argued that perceived differences in the recognition of occupational status between blue-collar workers and the researchers asking questions have led to inaccurate responses from the workers.23 In his explanation, workers know they are looked down on by middle-class researchers so they choose not to admit to enjoying work that the professionals consider demeaning. Ouellet says workers realize that admitting to finding satisfaction in work that is regarded as simplistic and meaningless by researchers would be the same as admitting to being stupid, so they may not be truthful in their job appraisal. In statements that support Ouellet’s explanation, the workers in the last chapter claimed that a person would actually have to do their jobs in order to fully understand the inherent satisfaction, and Komarovsky, too, illustrates this when reporting her interview data: Although a few of the husbands claimed that anyone, including their wives, could easily understand their work, the great majority, many of whom held semi-skilled jobs of low technical level, agreed with the man who said, “She’d have to work alongside of me to under-

122

Working Class

stand. I don’t expect her to.” They often felt that only a man in the same line of work could comprehend the technical problems, the irritations, and the satisfactions of the daily routine.24

Not only may it be demeaning for workers to express enjoyment in manual jobs, it may simply be fruitless to try explaining the satisfaction to outsiders. Ouellet’s point about blue-collar work’s rewarding aspects is important. Such a view is not to deny that such jobs have negative characteristics; that is immediately obvious to a casual observer, and it is impossible for a manual worker to deny such observations. Few bluecollar workers could hide the undesirable components of their jobs even if they wanted to do so. However, intellectuals who suggest that workers’ claims of satisfaction are part of an artificial cover-up may be revealing another aspect of how they project their class experience onto the working class. Compared with the experience of the professional class, elaborate strategies for selfpresentation are much less necessary for blue-collar workers—because the standards for success in their jobs and the value of their contributions are clearly identifiable and easily measured. In the white-collar world, work is often abstract and the determinants of quality and quantity are seldom obvious. In the working-class environment, there is less need to create a performance or to manage the interpretation of circumstances. Even so, could the blue-collar workers actually be trying to portray themselves in a positive light because their actual circumstances have little basis for satisfaction? Their testimony seems rational. They explain how and why they find their jobs rewarding and they provide reasonable grounds for finding their logic credible. Even if they can honestly deflect the stigma received from white-collar society, the satisfaction that the men claim must nonetheless be placed in the context of their challenging work settings. Many of the workers who say they are proud of their occupations do work that is onerous. Their jobs are tiring, tedious, dirty, and dangerous. Their working conditions are frequently stressful and uncomfortable, if not painful. How can they be sincere in claims of happiness with their jobs in the face of so many obvious hardships? Most of the interviews in this study took place away from the workplace, after the men had had the opportunity to clean up and relax. It is reasonable to consider that their blue-collar jobs could look better when seen from a distance, when the finished product could be focused on without necessarily considering the difficult conditions through which the product was created. The things that the workers make, either directly or indirectly, are tangible evidence that their jobs are important and

Making Sense of Working-Class Attitudes

123

meaningful, and pointing to those results presents evidence to contradict those who view blue-collar labor as demeaning. Perhaps the men put the difficulties out of their minds while away from the job. However, three interviews took place during lunch break, when there was no distance between the hardships experienced on the job and the discussion about it. Two other interviews took place at work immediately after the workday, and there was no difference in the testimony of those workers and those interviwed off-site. It is correct to be skeptical of the workers’ claims to feeling satisfaction from work. But it must also be remembered that not all of the evidence has been presented. The preceding chapters, where men declare their satisfaction, could be accompanied by other, lengthy chapters in which workers describe the dissatisfying parts of their jobs in detail. There was no attempt to hide the negative experiences. The dreadful features of manual labor are well documented elsewhere in the literature, and this book will discuss the negative aspect of the men’s jobs more fully in Chapter 10. Thus far, however, it is the meaningful nature of the work that has been emphasized. That is the new and important contribution of this study. In Chapter 10, the point will be made that the drawbacks of bluecollar work are intimately connected to the positive attributes. They are intertwined and cannot be separated. The redeeming qualities of work do not discount the detracting elements, and there was no attempt by the workers to distance themselves from that messy reality. The deduction that workers “reverse the conventional social pecking order” or that they downplay the negative aspects of their jobs in order to enhance their worthiness in the eyes of themselves and others reflects the binomial logic through which scholarship is often conducted. Researchers are trained to place empirical findings into black-and-white categories. They interpret workers’ experiences as either good or bad and presume that an affirmative statement negates the negative. That directs researchers to question the truthfulness of workers’ statements. Actually, the workers recognize the satisfying dimensions of their jobs, but they also recognize the inherent obstacles and challenges. They do not have to ignore or deny the negative to appreciate the positive. There are pros and cons to all jobs. The workers know this, but researchers have been hesitant to realize it. The logical framework of social science has interfered with the perception of complexity in blue-collar labor, but a bigger concern is the inability of scholars to take workers seriously when they report that their jobs are rewarding and meaningful. It is much easier for blue-collar workers to ignore the satisfying dimensions of their jobs when speaking

124

Working Class

to professionals who cannot comprehend their experiences. The dreadful parts of manual labor are clear; the attractive elements are more obscure. That is what makes this study significant. Because they were being interviewed by a fellow traveler, the men could speak candidly about both fulfillment in their work and its unappealing aspects without worrying about being judged inaccurately. Discussing their jobs with an experienced concrete mason permitted the workers to divulge their feelings in ways that would be impossible with an interviewer who could not relate to their circumstances. The consistency in the workers’ stories and the logic in their accounts indicate a high degree of validity in the data. But another question remains. Could the workers’ professed preferences for blue-collar labor simply be attempts to mask their truly unfortunate lack of options for better working conditions? How honest were the men who said they have blue-collar jobs by choice? Did they have realistic options? That is difficult to answer, and those issues cannot be reasoned away. American culture instructs citizens that they have the opportunity to achieve whatever station in life they strive for. For years sociologists have shown how unrealistic that myth is, yet it is still a strongly held belief. What matters most is that people truly believe that they have options. That said, several of the men clearly did not have the credentials for white-collar employment. Many of them originally came to their occupations as a result of events that required them to find a dependable job in a hurry, most commonly when their girlfriends became pregnant. Impoverished backgrounds were not typical, but a few of them grew up in poverty and manual labor was their likeliest career path. For those workers, it is doubtful there was a white-collar option. On the other hand, more than half of the workers had the financial means to attend college and seek a white-collar job had they chosen to do so. Those who went to college did so with the intent of remaining in a blue-collar position (except the painter who decided not to complete his degree). A few of the workers had exceptionally high mental aptitude and could keep up with the most astute intellectuals. The degree of choice for taking blue- or white-collar work was mixed in the group. Some clearly made that choice; others had the option of white-collar work but had never seriously considered it; and others were in blue-collar jobs out of necessity. The men’s claims of satisfaction in their blue-collar jobs appear to be genuine, but such statements have greater significance when they are from workers who had a reasonable option for alternative employment. Even for those whose opportunities were limited, however, that does not discount their well-reasoned explanations for finding intrinsic rewards in their work.

Making Sense of Working-Class Attitudes

125

Notes 1. Sennett and Cobb (1973), The Hidden Injuries of Class, 192. 2. Ibid., 21–37. 3. Ibid., 78 (emphasis in the original). For other claims that working-class men mentally distance themselves from the subordinate, dominated conditions of their jobs, see Knights and Roberts (1982), “The Power of Organization or the Organization of Power?” and Knights and Willmott (1985), “Power and Identity in Theory and Practice.” 4. Collinson (1992), Managing the Shopfloor, 78. 5. Ibid., 88. 6. Ibid., 79. 7. Ouellet (1994), Pedal to the Metal; Halle (1984), America’s Working Man; Kornblum (1974), Blue Collar Community. 8. Marx (1978), “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”; Marx (1988), The German Ideology; Habermas (1972), Knowledge and Human Interests; Habermas (1981), The Theory of Communicative Action; Lukacs (1971), History and Class Consciousness. 9. Freud (1937), The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. 10. Levi-Strauss (1958), Anthropologie Structural; Levi-Strauss (1966), L’Homme: Revue Francaise D’Anthropologie. 11. Nash (1950), “Equilibrium Points in n-Person Games,” 48–49. 12. Habermas (1972), Knowledge and Human Interests; Habermas (1981), The Theory of Communicative Action. 13. Giddens (1979), Central Problems in Social Theory, 71–72. 14. Giddens (1976), New Rules of Sociological Method, 15. 15. Ibid., 146. 16. Bourdieu (1990), In Other Words, 61. See also Gouldner (1980), The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology; and Friedrichs (1970), A Sociology of Sociology. 17. Lipset and Bendix (1959), Social Mobility in Industrial Society, 73. The conclusions in this work were heavily based upon Bendix (1956), Work and Authority in Industry, 211–226. 18. See Reissman, Class in American Society, 171–176; Rossides (1990), The American Class System, 415; and Rothman (1978), Inequality and Stratification in the United States, 228. Rothman acknowledges the possibility that workingclass value orientations may impact the job that a person takes. He suggests that children may internalize the values of their parents as to which types of occupations are preferable. Rothman concludes, however, that while there may be reason to consider this possibility, there is no solid evidence that working-class children do, in fact, adopt the value orientations of their parents. Researchers should therefore emphasize the “constraints and opportunities (or advantages and disadvantages) which result from institutionalized arrangements,” 191. 19. Applebaum (1999), Construction Workers, USA, 37. 20. Narayan et al. (2000), Voices of the Poor; Brock and McGee (2002), Knowing Poverty; Estrella (2000), Learning from Change; Williams (2005), “Researching, Organizing, Educating, and Acting”; Edwards and Gaventa (2001), Global Citizen Action; Fals-Borda (1996), “Research for Social

126

Working Class

Justice”; Fals-Borda (1998), People’s Participation; Chambers (2005), Ideas for Development. 21. Komarovsky (1962), Blue-Collar Marriage, 151–152. 22. Rubin (1976), Worlds of Pain, 155–160. 23. Ouellet (1994), Pedal to the Metal. 24. Komarovsky (1962), Blue-Collar Marriage, 152.

8 False Dichotomies: The Importance of Experiential Knowledge

SCHOLARS SUCH AS HARRY BRAVERMAN HAVE argued that bluecollar work has been stripped of its meaning partially because creation of the product has been separated from its design.1 The mental aspects of production, along with skill, have been separated from blue-collar work, Braverman argues, leaving blue-collar workers with little more than alienation to go along with their wages.2 The assumption is that blue-collar workers are in de-skilled, subordinate positions in which their activities and their need to think are completely controlled by management. The workers interviewed for this research revealed that authority and control over the production process does not easily follow this model. The factory workers and construction workers in this sample were constantly reminded that those playing the role of official experts (engineers, architects, managers, and inspectors) had less knowledge than those they were supervising. They valued knowledge of trade or job as yet another thing that made work meaningful. Not only did the men say that their blue-collar jobs often required them to spontaneously discover, assess, and solve the errors of “the experts,” using their experiential knowledge to overcome problems, it was obvious to the workers that production depended greatly upon their skill and experience even when things went as planned. Much of the production process on a construction site as well as in a factory depends on unskilled or semiskilled labor, or what has been defined in those terms. These workers, who supposedly can be replaced easily, have generally not been given high esteem by either managers or scholars. The accounts of these workers, however, tell us how important their knowledge is to the production process. The conception of blue-collar work as mindless, of little skill, and quickly learned—something that virtually anybody could

127

128

Working Class

do—was challenged by accounts in this study, although sometimes it is necessary first to see through some self-deprecating remarks. A baker from a confectionary factory actually said that even a monkey could do his job, but while those were the worker’s actual words, his accounts later in the interview dispelled the assertion. This man began with a description of what he did: “Basically I work on an assembly line. It isn’t exciting or anything—the line. You don’t even have to be a baker anymore.” This line worker had done several jobs in the factory over his twenty years with the company. When asked if he had been trained as a baker, he replied, “Not really, yeah. I used to bake.” He then went on to describe how there was more to the job than simply monitoring machinery and pushing buttons, as the current management assumed. .

WORKER: I spent five years making batches. It takes a year to learn it—how to do it right. Not only do you need to know how to mix the batch, but also you need to know how to change it. The flour you just put in might work differently than the flour that was sitting closer to the oven. Every time you got a new order of ingredients the batch will probably change. Everything that goes in might make a different mix so you’ve got to know how to change it. I can see the texture and all, and I can tell how it will work, you know what I mean? AUTHOR: Like I know what a batch of mud [mortar] looks like. WORKER: Right. The temperature of the water, the flour, the fat— the shortening—you use, all the ingredients, the ovens, et cetera, all make a difference. The guy working the mix needs to troubleshoot. This man and those that work on this assembly line are responsible for making the product come out properly despite management’s statements that the machine does all the work and all the machine tender has to do is monitor. That is not the case according to this man; the blue-collar workforce uses its skill and experience to interpret changes caused by humidity, temperature, and ingredient variations. “They [college-trained managers] don’t have a clue,” the baker said angrily. “They think the machine can do it all alone. Some young kid in a three-piece suit thinks he knows more about baking cakes than I do.” This bakery plant had been taken over by a multinational corporation some years earlier, but even though the assembly-line laborers had submitted to the disregard

False Dichotomies

129

shown them by the new management, they still cared enough to keep the product at an acceptable level of quality, if not what it was when the company’s founder ran the plant. The baker grumbled: They only want production. They don’t care about anything else. They don’t care if you go all out to make a difference so why should we? They’ll chisel every nickel out of your pay that they can. They talk to you like you’re a moron so that’s what we give them. If that’s what they want then that’s what we give them. If that’s what they want then that’s what they get. You know they’ll stab you in the back the first chance they get. He said that he and others that run the mixer and other parts of the line must troubleshoot potential problems and change the recipe as needed if the confections were to bake correctly. This mirrors reports of Richard Pfeffer3 that disaffected factory workers claimed not to care, but, as displayed by their actions, they obviously did care. The lumber mill worker, too, said his job was much more complicated than it appears at first sight. His work station was at the end of a conveyor belt, cutting and taking off milled boards. At some point, construction-quality boards of usable length and width can no longer be taken from the lumber on the belt, and he then must measure the master board (he does this by eye) and use his best judgment to get the most useful remnants from it so that there is little waste before the scrap is ground into sawdust. WORKER: It takes six months [to learn the basics of his job]. Like, somebody says, “Oh yeah, you flip the board over, you cut the knot off, you look it over, you cut the thing.” But there are so many different sizes you’ve got to know so that you don’t have to keep looking up, you know. Well, once you know all the sizes and once you know just what you’re doing, and I can now just look at a board and know what I’m going to get out of it. AUTHOR: You can just look at a piece of wood and know what you’re going to get out of it? WORKER: Yeah. Zing! bang boom! You couldn’t do it. It would take too long, at first. Number one, you have to get used to flipping the board over on these metal rollers without smashing your fingers is like the number one trick. . . . Well, the thing is it takes a year. I would say it takes a

130

Working Class

year to do the job, to learn how to actually do it. It isn’t just cutting the knots out. Well, you would think this is like just an easy job, but you have all these different sizes and then it’s getting the most out of the wood, okay? And it’s learning what’s mineral, what’s rock, and getting used to . . . AUTHOR: In a year you can learn that? WORKER: You get pretty good in about six months. You know what’s going on in a couple of days. You can get the basics. But after about six months you’re going at a pretty good clip and you’re getting all the wood you can get out, okay? So you’re going along pretty good, but then it takes another six months to get a little speed, you know. The trick is to get all the good habits in the beginning. Take your time and learn because when you saw you want to be in the habit of tipping your head off to the side in case it snaps. Then when you go off to the other side, you tip your head. I mean I’ve had the saw catch and you go, “Oooh baby!” I cut the end of my glove off once. I looked down and my glove was gone. Now that’s as close as I’ve gotten. The menial tasks that blue-collar workers perform usually have something about them that makes the work engaging—that and the need to pay attention so they don’t hurt themselves. Workers can usually learn what has to be remembered about a task before they became proficient at it. Then new recruits will come along, and they must be shown how to do the seemingly simple task properly. Thus workers see that work that may be considered routine is actually more complicated than it appears. A construction laborer agreed, “Even like running a [mortar] mixer—to be able to stand there and make batch after batch that suits the masons, as you know, that is not a . . . if they’re happy, if you can keep them happy and give them what they want—there’s a little knack to it.” The carpenter/supervisor provided an example of something that looks as though anyone could do it but is in fact more complicated: WORKER: I mean you can’t get on a bulldozer and push dirt around and not know how to do it [a bulldozer was grading the area around the house while the interview took place during the supervisor’s lunch break]. You’ve got to— I mean, first you’ve got to know how to do it and then

False Dichotomies

AUTHOR: WORKER: AUTHOR: WORKER:

AUTHOR: WORKER:

131

you’ve got to . . . I mean it really takes so many hours to actually be good at what you do. You think it is a lot harder than people give credit for? Oh yeah. Just starting a bulldozer is a lot harder than people think. You mean turn the key? Sometimes there is no key. You know, it’s like, I’ve gotten into the machine and gone, “Okay, how do you start this thing?” It’s not as easy as people think. You’ve got to know what you’re doing when you’re digging—if it’s not level. A bulldozer is a classic example because everybody sees a bulldozer and if you don’t grade—get the contour of the earth around the house—properly you’re going to end up with water all over your house. I mean if you want something to look nice . . . everybody has an idea of what things [ought to] look like. Everybody’s idea or their own personal preference is their own thing and no matter what you want it to look like, you’re going to tell the operator that runs the bulldozer, “I want it to be a ten-foot hill” and he’s going to tell you if you can do it or you can’t and then he’s going to tell you, “Alright, how long? How wide?” And that’s what he’s going to make it look like. But if you get on the bulldozer and try to do that and you’ve never run one before, it’s going to take you at least four hours just to figure out how to get the blade to go up and down without digging into the ground. It is a lot harder than it looks. That is interesting. And you’re not going to learn it in school. It’s like flying an airplane. Sure you are going to go to class and learn how to fly an airplane, but you’re not going to get your pilot’s license until you have so many hours of flying time with an instructor because it’s going to crash if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s life or death, and some of the machines are life and death. You can kill people. It’s not easy.

What made some men appreciate the skill it takes to do their job was that the job was dangerous. “Somebody off the street would probably cut their arm off,” said the sawmill worker. A factory welder commented, “One of the first things you’ve got to know is how not to get

132

Working Class

hurt. You can lose fingers, legs, arms, get run over—you know, cripple yourself, break a leg, throw your back out.” Working in a dangerous job is meaningful not only because it reaffirms masculine images of toughness (to be discussed in Chapter 10) but also because it legitimates feelings of competence. A dangerous task completed without injury speaks to the importance of experience and knowledge. Men who do not know what they are doing can be seriously hurt. A theme brought up by most of the interviewed workers was that of experiential knowledge being extremely important. As a thirty-one-yearold concrete laborer put it: “There’s not too much you can learn from a book, I don’t think.” It was commonly recognized that theoretical knowledge was important, but as noted by the supervisor above, to be truly useful, knowledge learned in a classroom must be combined with experiential knowledge. The concrete laborer continued: Well, you can learn from a book, but the book is only basic examples. You’re not going to run into a situation where you have to change something or if there is a problem, how to fix it—how to make it work. If you don’t have the knowledge running into these problems, like these guys [those with only theoretical knowledge] will never run into the problems because they don’t do it, how are they going to fix it, you know? Some of the men used examples from outside their trades to point out the importance of learning from doing. A thirty-two-year-old contractor who also had experience as a mechanic said, “You can sit and read a book on how to rebuild a motor in a car, but until you’ve actually seen it done, you’re not going to do it and you’re not going to do it properly.” The sixty-three-year-old union laborer knew that things defined as unskilled by an unaware observer actually require skill that must be experienced in order to be understood. He recalled his youth on a farm: Well, any damn fool can throw hay on the wagon, but there is a little more to that, too. You’ve got to make the cox just right so they stay together. You put the fork in the middle of them and, boy, you start lifting some of them and they’ll bend the fork. But you set them on there and the guy on the wagon has got to know his stuff, too. You put—everything is tied in, everything is tied together. And the hay, you don’t just, it looks like you’re just throwing it up there but it isn’t. You’re putting it up there like this [motioning with his hands].

False Dichotomies

133

In other words, on your wagon, you’re going to take it and put one here, one here, one here, and one here. Now you’ve got your base for it. Then you can continue on that way. You set them on like that. This elderly laborer was full of examples, from jackhammering to building scaffold, of how, to be done effectively, tasks that may seem simple theoretically require experience. A turbine factory winder also discussed this: Who is deciding what is unskilled or not? . . . All the [on-the-job] training that we’ve got, and they’ve got people that have been there for twenty years doing it and they’ve shown us how to do it. And every time you turn around we are always innovating ourselves. We are always finding new ways to do it. And we don’t put it in the book as the new way to do it but we keep it in our head. . . . If the paper said it took a day to do it, I could do it in four hours. Because the guy that is figuring out how long it takes doesn’t know how to do the job. It is a situation where I can do more work than the paper says. I know it because I’ve done it so much that I’ve perfected how to do it—how to make not one piece but six at a time because I know that angles are all the same and I know how to wedge the blocks in, et cetera. Jobs that require skill and experience not only bring meaning to blue-collar work, they also provide understanding of products beyond that of managers trained in a classroom. The winder drew attention to the detail aspect of production: Since I built the generators, and the cores, and the fields, and I built the pieces that went into them, I had the knowledge from both ends, so I knew what was going on. So they turn around and tell me that an engineer that has never seen the piece, let alone touched the copper, or worked in a generator, is going to tell me how that thing is going to fit in there? So who has more knowledge? Who is being underpaid, the person that knows the job from one end to the other end or the person that can just draw it on the paper? Sure, everything works on paper—in theory—but nothing works when you put it on the floor because there is always something that goes wrong. There are always errors.

134

Working Class

A welder from the locomotive plant concurred: Well, I mean, we just don’t get looked at the way we should get looked at [with respect]. I think that the guys on the floor can make a better salesman than the management guys because we know all the problem spots and we know what needs to improve and we know what this locomotive has or what the steam turbine or gas turbine has that no others have. We know the type of power or the type of abuse that they can put up with and management don’t know. I mean high-speed braking systems; I mean anybody can read a book and learn about a high-speed braking system, but take it apart and see how it works. You’ll tend to know a hell of a lot more than just a high-speed braking system. The welder has an engineering degree from a prestigious university, and he commented on what his degree would be worth without his shopfloor experience: “I don’t think it would be any good because I wouldn’t know what some of the actual—what some of the problem spots are, I mean. And right now I am able to know the problem spots on paper because of having the experience on the floor and I really think that helps me out a lot.”

The Mental/Manual Work Dichotomy

This section further reviews evidence that disputes understandings of blue-collar jobs as mindless. Just as the “middle class” is recognized as performing nonmanual work, working-class jobs—manual work—have been regarded as nonmental. A scholar writing on class inequality informs us that blue-collar workers “are usually told what work to do, how it should be done, when, and how fast.”4 Under the mental/manual dichotomy, blue-collar work, when stood against white-collar, is regarded as nonthinking, mindless work by definition. As the data presented in Chapter 6 suggests, it is difficult to judge another’s job without having experienced it. According to the men interviewed, conceptualizations of blue-collar work as mindless are simply not true. A thirty-two-year-old supervisor/carpenter remarked: There is a lot to think about when you do any type of job, but it doesn’t make you any different than a person sitting behind a desk thinking all day. . . . You’ve got to think when you are running

False Dichotomies

135

a machine, and you’ve got to think when you’re setting up a foundation, when you’re framing walls. One mistake and you can kill somebody or you can kill yourself. In many different ways, working-class men explained how and why their jobs were mental as well as physical. Some even reported their jobs to be more mental than physical. “Oh please; this stuff is definitely more mentally challenging because physically it’s just lifting,” commented a thirty-one-year-old machinist from an automotive machine shop. He emphasized the amount of information that he must know and remember in order to perform his job. He needs to understand the physics and chemistry of an internal combustion engine, not only how it is designed to work but also how to troubleshoot and fix the problem when it is not working properly. The real mental challenge for this man, still considered new to the job after more than two years at the machine shop, is the variety of designs and models of cylinder heads with which he must be familiar. He gave an example, referring to a customer who called the shop with an engine problem: “He said, ‘it’s a little four-cylinder [Chrysler].’ I said, ‘Sir, there are fifty different variations of a four-cylinder engine for Chrysler. You’ve got to be more specific.” This worker had to know the differences between cylinder heads among not only all the different makes and models of automobiles in production today but also those for many years past. Another theme emphasized (interestingly, more by factory employees than construction men) was the degree to which workers must constantly assess the changing situations they face in order to be most productive. A sixty-year-old machinist from a turbine manufacturing plant explained his situation: “You have to work at half a mil, and every machine is different, and you could take ten vertical boring holes or ten lathes or ten internal grinders and they are all different. It’s not like you just push a button and away it goes. You have to learn how to address the wheels on the grinders, how to sharpen the tools on the machines, what grade carbo light tube to use, what kind of radius to use to where you get the finish.” An assembler from a locomotive plant placed the issue in the context of an entire day: There’s lots to know. The mental part, in a lot of ways for my part of the job, has to go without saying. Yeah, I do manual work, but each individual has to, together, manage their day. Secondly, and that doesn’t sound like a big deal until you start dealing with a whole bunch of different departments and all these different parts

136

Working Class

have to come from here and there and everywhere. And you have to arrange helping this guy, and on top of that when you’re working with anything, any kind of shaping or forming or joining or whatever, there has to be a plan. You can’t do it without a plan and you have to be able to read that plan from paper and concept to fruition. So you have to have that in your head, and you have to work around all the corners that people have put on paper to think of. There’s always lots of those. After a long report from a factory welder that told of how shop floor knowledge is needed to overcome design flaws created by white-collar engineers who have no experiential knowledge, he was asked, Is the notion of blue-collar workers not needing to use their heads—to think— a myth? “Of course it’s a myth,” he replied. “The upper management doesn’t see this. Either they see it and just don’t want to acknowledge it or else—I really don’t know what’s going on. I really don’t.” A machine tender from a turbine factory gave his explanation for why the mental/manual labor dichotomy is perpetuated by those in authority: A lot of times they would have what they call an implemented station. We would get a process sheet that would say do this, this, and this. You can draw a picture of a car but that doesn’t mean you can drive it. [There was] what they call the “methods man” who was usually a white-collar man and had a different philosophy. In other words, he would say, “all you gotta do is push the buttons on that machine and it happens.” Well, it doesn’t happen, you know. . . . But I always used to argue the point that, well, yeah, it is an implemented workstation but you still have to have the skill to do this, this, and this. It says, “Set the job up.” Well how do you set it up and turn it over and so on and so forth? So, they always figured because that would kind of keep the rate down, you know what I’m saying? Because it was an implemented workstation and they had a process sheet, well, they were telling you the steps, the sequence. Well, fine, but define the sequence more for the rate you’re paying me because you’re making it sound easy. This machine operator recognized that management saw it as being in their best to define the operation as de-skilled so they could pay a lower rate for the job. Both of these men reported that their jobs require high skill levels and extensive knowledge, but management does not acknowledge this fact. The machine operator thought this was done consciously, for political and economic reasons.

False Dichotomies

137

Consciously or unconsciously, management philosophies as well as academic theory have frequently conceptualized blue-collar workers as lacking the need—and ability—to think. “I totally disagree with that,” said a welder in the assembly department of a locomotive factory: I mean you run into a lot of problem solving on the shop floor. Like on the blueprint, it just doesn’t make any sense to what is actually real life. What is it in real life that [the engineers that design the train] are doing to a product? The product on the print and the product on the actual shop floor are totally different. There are a lot of loose ends in there. There are a lot of readjustments. There is a lot of cutting involved. There is a lot of fitting involved. There are also a lot of processes involved, too, that usually don’t work [that must be figured out by the shop floor workers]. Occasionally a worker gave extensive evidence of the diverse knowledge he required in order to perform his job. A thirty-seven-yearold from the shipping and receiving department of an air-compressor factory was asked if, since mental workers don’t do physical work, did he, as a manual worker, not do mental work. In my job you do both because you have to, and this would be very complicated when you first start, because it was for me. I’m the kind of guy that says, “OK. Get it off the truck and do this with it.” Well, not only do you have to do that with it but this is the kind of part that has to go to quality control so you need to make sure you have all your paperwork, all your certifications, put them in the right spot, put them in the right bin, and put it in the right department. Because when that guy gets it he’s going to want to be able to walk over there and get all his paperwork together; and it’s all organized by date the way they set this system up. If someone said, “Something came in last Friday. Do you know where it is?” You can flip back, by date, go back and get that out. That aspect, I mean, you can be a bull worker, run around and be a maniac [doing the physical work of unloading and moving inventory and newly delivered parts], but don’t forget you still have certain things you have to meet, especially if you’re going out of the country. There are a lot of things, I mean we end up with a good half inch of paperwork. Documents where, I myself don’t type them but I know what we need and I, when it comes down to it, you know who to get a hold of to get all this paperwork in the morning. You say, “OK, you got that? Is the compressor going out?

138

Working Class

I need this, this, and this; I need it by two o’clock. If I call him at two it will be here at four, and it will be out of here at five. But you’ve got to make sure the truck is ninety-six inches wide and not ninety-two inches wide because if you get a ninety-two it won’t fit the block in there. And then it will tie everything up and it won’t meet the boat, which happens a lot. This man’s job was basically a physical one. His job was to move parts—incoming and outgoing—from one place to another. What made his blue-collar job mentally challenging was knowing where the parts had to be moved to. This was a complicated question. There are obviously complex mental challenges that this worker routinely dealt with that accompanied the physical tasks that were the basis of his occupation. A thirty-eight-year-old locomotive factory worker, recently promoted to the position of foreman but who had not yet taken up his new post, said thinking was a huge part of his previous physical job: “The physical labor that I did required tons of mental work. You’re running your [measuring] tape and you’re figuring out where things are supposed to go and just last week, the last locomotive we did—the Amtrak one—we did nothing but think, think, think. And read, read, read. And so you get another book and go read that. So there is a lot of concentration on how to do this.” A fifty-two-year-old union carpenter who specialized in commercial ceiling installation gave an example of how there is much more to his job than the physical task of hanging a drop ceiling. Asked to describe some of the ways he must use his head on the job, he made many interesting points: WORKER: We’ll relate to just the ceiling work. Of course, I do other things but that’s . . . AUTHOR: Every one of them has its own story, I’m sure. WORKER: Oh, certainly, but if you’re going onto a project, the first thing is how do you get the material on the job? AUTHOR: People wouldn’t think of that one now . . . WORKER: Gosh! If you’re in a mud hole and you’re up four stories and there is no elevator, how do you get the material there? Number two, check the job out. . . . Do the other trades have their work finished so you can proceed with yours? For instance, mechanical, electrical, do they have the ductwork in? Do they have the electric in? Are you able, . . . is the plumbing up in the ceiling before you drop yours?

False Dichotomies

139

AUTHOR: Often times are you working around these other guys while they are still finishing? WORKER: Well, hopefully not, but in many cases you are. The ideal situation is that everyone else has their work done, the necessary work, before you come in. I’m one of the last people to come into a building. After I come in they are putting floors down. So ideally yes, but very often you are all working together, beating on each other. That’s a big part of the project, coordinating the work. Make sure it is ready for you as best as can be under the circumstances when you come in, and then getting your material up, and then, of course, is the job clean, are you able to—all our work is up in the air so we’re on scaffolding—so you need to be able to roll across the floor. Now if you have drywall lying all over the place, if you have whatever it might be, you shouldn’t be in there because you’re going to lose money. AUTHOR: The number one thing is something I wouldn’t have even thought about—how are we going to get the material from point A to point B. That’s huge. WORKER: That is very huge, and in a lot of cases it could be make or break. AUTHOR: Yeah, if you’re going to make money or lose money on the job. WORKER: Exactly, so I’m just trying to go in stages . . . AUTHOR: I was not expecting that. I was thinking that you were going to talk about laying out . . . WORKER: We haven’t even gotten to that yet. AUTHOR: Are these some of the variations in the job that keep it somewhat exciting and challenging? WORKER: Oh, certainly, it also gives me a day off once in a while— go on a job and it’s not ready. I’ll tell them, “Hey, are you joking? You have to do this, do that. Call us when it is ready. But thank goodness we are not in poverty; we are not millionaires, but at least we can enjoy a day off. . . . OK. Well, of course, then you go to the prints and then you lay it out. You measure everything out, you check ceiling heights, you check on it to make sure you have enough clearance so the light fixtures will go between the bar joists and the grid, if you had sprinkler drops, which you do in a lot of commercial buildings, you know what that is, OK, well you have to lay out so they fit pretty

140

Working Class

AUTHOR:

WORKER: AUTHOR: WORKER:

good, and blah blah blah. Then, of course, everything has to be square. If it is not square nothing will fit and you can put all this metal up and when you come to drop the towel in nothing will fit. Well, how do you determine whether that’s square because you’re the last person on the job? It might have been off from the very beginning when they put the walls up. Yes, that’s very true. OK, so it has to be square but . . . I go with the long walls and I’ll temporarily set it up and check it with the walls that are up, and if it does not square up I have to square my ceiling up even if it’s not square with the room, so that sometimes, normally the rooms are close enough but sometimes I’ve been in rooms an inch out of square. You have to shift—it’s a big deal, but you have to check. Normally what you’d do in a big building is you go off the column lines. When you’re putting up a high rise, if those columns don’t line up, or aren’t centered up, you’re in deep shit. You know, in a big high rise you would square off the column line. OK. I guess that’s just a few little things.

“You work smarter, not harder,” commented a thirty-one-year-old concrete laborer. “You try not to move things ten times. Look at the situation and assess it.” This man pointed out how even the most mundane activities, such as “moving things,” require a worker to assess a situation and decide the best way to address it, although there are many tasks in a typical day that are more challenging than simply moving objects—for example, moving rebar and concrete forms from one place to another. The interview continued: AUTHOR: Everyone is talking about our job and how it’s bull work. They think it’s physical, only physical. WORKER: It’s not. It’s only physical for a certain part of the day. . . . You use your brain a lot. You use your brain all day long. AUTHOR: So when you’re talking about mental work versus physical work, do you think you can separate them into separate categories? WORKER: I think it’s probably sixty—maybe even seventy/thirty. Sixty, seventy [percent mental], I don’t know. It depends on the job and how many people are there, you know, and

False Dichotomies

141

just how much you’re doing the thinking or someone is doing the thinking for you. AUTHOR: So it’s not just physical, huh? WORKER: No. No. I don’t think it’s physical at all. I think you have to have some intelligence in your head. Although not everyone interviewed for this study could be included in this discussion of the mental component inherent in blue-collar jobs, each of them could have been, and a few more examples point out the degree to which these blue-collar workers—construction and factory workers alike—had more than simply a physical dimension to their jobs. One mason’s laborer suggested that “the mind and body are two systems and you should pay equal attention to both.” A winder in a factory reported, “I like working with my hands and my head at the same time because it’s a challenge. It’s head food.” In dozens of examples, manual workers described drawing on their knowledge and interpretive skills while performing their jobs. A sixty-three-year-old union laborer: “It’s the mind along with it. You know, . . . even the little things that you take for granted like how you mix your mortar and how you build your scaffold, all the things that are going to affect how the job is done.” These tasks take experience to do correctly given the variety of circumstances under which they must be performed. Many of the examples of blue-collar “brain work” were such that even the most skeptical academic would have to admit as being impressive mental accomplishments. The welder from a locomotive factory spoke of “skill and know-how”: WORKER: The experience with different types of alloyed metals and what the alloyed metals are compatible to. AUTHOR: So you need to know a lot about metallurgy? WORKER: Yes, you do. As a matter of fact, I’ve taken several classes [sponsored by his former employer] when I used to work there on metallurgy. There is a lot to know about metallurgy. The maintenance worker from a felt factory recalled, “I built a lot of machines right from scratch. When I say I built them, I built them.” An electrician reported that, while working on an assembly line making robotics, he was personally responsible for the programming that led to success in the product: “And you’re the guy who did everything. You’re the guy who took some stuff and did a lot of the programming. I did a

142

Working Class

lot of my own programming to get things to work the way they were supposed to. You manipulated and designed and built things that would make that process work, where it may not have worked before, so the difference between success and failure is something you did and you feel good about it.” A twenty-nine-year-old union laborer discussing concrete masonry said, “You’ve got to do it right the first time or . . . you know, that’s where you’ve got to use your talent. That’s all your brain. . . . It’s an art. It is an art. You’ve got to use your talent and you’ve got to use your creativity. You’re designing something.” One last example concerns a machinist who owns his own business. This man is the owner and general manager of an automotive machine shop with an automotive repair shop in the same corporation. As president of the corporation, he was responsible for extensive managerial duties, but he still considered himself to be “more of a machinist than a manager,” which is where he found the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment. Taking care of the “business aspect,” he was “responsible for a certain amount of billing per week.” But, interestingly, he had recently delegated many of the managerial responsibilities to several employees who worked in various departments. These men were not trained in management but were “mostly machine operators or automotive technicians,” he said. Along with their blue-collar jobs, these working-class employees shared in performing the white-collar tasks of managing the business, including billing, scheduling, budgeting, and directing growth. Of the thirty-one members of the blue-collar sample, nineteen made mention of having at least some managerial responsibilities that went along with their production jobs. Separating workers into white-collar and blue-collar categories is not so simple.

The Meaning of Monotonous Work

White-collar and blue-collar work each has extreme cases regarding the degree to which jobs are fulfilling, self-directed, and meaningful. As many of the men stated, it is a positive thing, given the need for different types of workers to fill different types of jobs, that there is diversity— that people have varied personalities and interests. Several workers used the expression “different strokes for different folks.” A concrete laborer commented that most people would find his job too taxing, both mentally and physically, but he felt the work to be “good for the soul.” The shipping and receiving worker, commenting on his previous white-collar job as a public adjuster in the insurance industry, said, “It is hard; it

False Dichotomies

143

takes a special talent and, like anything else, there are people that are cut out for just that.” A twenty-nine-year-old union laborer remarked on the difference between white-collar and blue-collar work: “We’re all the same; we’re all the same people. Everybody’s got something different in each of us. There isn’t one person that has the same talent.” Few in the sample did truly monotonous factory work. Each of these men revealed that there were challenges to their jobs that tested their skills and made their work engaging, at least enough to satisfy some of the men’s desires for challenge and stimulation. Assembly-line work surely is not for everyone, but there were reports that it presents a niche for a type of person that may fit well with that type of task. Some of the factory workers commented that they would not want such a job, but they had witnessed people in those jobs that are suited for and satisfied with such work. The pipe fitter discussed people at the silicone factory whose jobs are more regimented than his: WORKER: Making tubes, that’s real production work. That’s got to be horrible. Can you imagine how they get one hundred tablets in a bottle every time? Sometimes people actually count them. That’s an aspirin company. How many tubes do they make? About a million tubes [of silicone] a day. To make the tubes right, who goes over and checks it? Somebody at the end of the line . . . [or you may] have a million tubes that are no good. I couldn’t do that job. That takes a different type of person. He has to sit there and physically look at something. I would just plop right over. I couldn’t do that. AUTHOR: Do you think there is a type of person that does this? WORKER: Definitely. Some people can look at that thing and then make changes to keep it going. They take pride in their work. Take a labeler; a blank tube comes out, there is a painter here and a roller here. The blank tube comes this way, hits the roller just like that, and in one swoop it goes on, right? If all of a sudden that sticks—instead of turning, it sticks—you just get a big smudge. Then it goes down the line. If that smudge goes down the line, somebody else has to take the responsibility to see that, see that the smudge is not printed. They have to get it off the line because you don’t want that to be put through. So somebody is doing these jobs. They are harder in another way; I could not do that work.

144

Working Class

AUTHOR: Some people take pride in that? WORKER: Some people are very good at it. Some people make good money at it. Some people do that their whole time there. The factory maintenance worker also spoke of a type of person that is suited for monotonous production-line work, although he was not that type himself. WORKER: The type of work [I did] as the main fabricator in the maintenance department was—not every day, there was garbage work—but in the real challenging welding that I did, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a challenge. It’s not like getting up and doing the same boring thing. I see a lot of people over at the factory; they have several crews of just inspectors. All they do is watch this really gaudy women’s fabric rolling up for twelve hours a day, every day, and I wouldn’t have lasted three days at it. There is no way I would have done that job. So there were people, quite a number of people, that did really monotonous work every day. I don’t know if that was any worse than the people who were the machine tenders on the frame machine which just regulated the width of the fabric and heated it and finished the last set of colors. Their main job was to make sure the machine was functioning in the way it was supposed to function. But if it stopped functioning they weren’t allowed to work on it. They just had to ring a bell and get maintenance people on it. That’s pretty doggone unchallenging, too. It took a fair amount of skill to work it, but it’s just basic skill of the individual and the idiosyncrasies of the machine. It’s the only thing they worked on. I don’t know if I could have stayed awake doing that all day. AUTHOR: Do you think they must find something about that job that is somewhat satisfying? WORKER: I don’t know. Talking to some of the people, I think some people in life don’t want to be challenged to the max. They like having a job that they can handle. They mastered it and they like that. It’s just, thank goodness there is more than one kind of person in the world. It certainly wasn’t for me.

False Dichotomies

145

The monotonous work on the assembly line, especially that which required the tender only to watch the machine or simply to watch the product roll past, was not what these men generally did. Even though such workers may enjoy it or find it worthwhile in some way, according to the two factory workers quoted above, the men said they personally would not find it appealing. The monotonous drudgery of those jobs does not typify blue-collar work, but that is the stereotype academics use to describe manual labor. Part of the misunderstanding about bluecollar work is based upon the assumption that all blue-collar jobs are represented by that “ideal type.” That is a false assumption. The workers in the sample spoke in similar terms about white-collar work. They were glad that somebody out there found interest in accounting and other white-collar tasks that the blue-collar workers had no interest in doing. In the end, the working-class men did not want white-collar jobs any more than they wanted blue-collar jobs that required little input on physical or mental levels. Like the monotonous assembly-line jobs, many of the workers did not regard white-collar work as meaningful, yet almost everyone in this sample stopped short of saying that white-collar work was beneath blue-collar work. All work deserves respect, said the pipe fitter—even white-collar work. As many of the working-class men explained, we cannot rank one class above the other because they are all necessary, and there are things about each type of work that people seek out and enjoy. The interviews of workers in this chapter highlight a great injustice done to blue-collar workers—not to mention the great inaccuracy on the part of social science. Manual laborers are the victims of an ideology that guides scientists to see the world in terms of mutually exclusive, dichotomous categories. As Jacques Derrida would put it, researchers have applied a binomial logic to their interpretations of work, workplaces, and workers. Once again, the deductive logic of positivist research has recognized only two possibilities for workers: manual and mental. It is assumed, therefore, that manual workers are simply ordered around because they don’t have the need or capacity to think for themselves. In reality, things are much more complex than that.

Discussion

Another misconception of intellectuals is that repetitive work is simplistic and mindless. What is misunderstood is that skill is a product of repetition. Any artist must practice until the art form becomes almost natural.

146

Working Class

The only way a mason can learn to put a perfect finish on a concrete floor or to build a block wall that is perfectly plumb, straight, level, and consistently laid is to have performed those tasks thousands of times. With repetition comes a feel for the movement that directs the muscles to apply the correct pressure on the trowel or to hold the tool at the proper angle to apply the mortar in the correct thickness. It may take years to develop the unconscious feel for laying a brick so that it is always level from end to end and from side to side. Repetition is what teaches a mason to take the perfect amount of mortar from the pan in just the right place on the edge of the trowel. The mason must learn to hold the wrist at the correct angle so that the mud does not slide off and then is spread evenly in its proper place, and all this must be accomplished without looking and in a matter of seconds. White-collar observers may see the repetition of blue-collar work as tedious, but blue-collar workers realize that it is essential in the development of talent. Moreover, the repetitive aspect of production work is only one dimension of a complex task. Professionals may see the repetition inherent in blue-collar work without recognizing the multiple levels upon which the workers are planning their next moves or have already laid out their actions so that they add up to the desired outcome. Each repetitive step may appear mundane in itself, but it contributes to the completion of a final product that is gratifying to those who take part in its creation. There is much more complexity to the work than meets the inexperienced observer’s eye.

Notes 1. Braverman (1974), Labor and Monopoly Capital. 2. Like Marx, Braverman made his claims about the degradation of bluecollar work without direct evidence to support his assertions. As Kai Erikson observed, “Braverman reports no data at all on the way workers feel about their work, how they experience it, or what it does to them”; see Erikson, Kai, and Vallas (1990), The Nature of Work, 30 (emphasis in the original). 3. Pfeffer (1979), Working for Capitalism. 4. Kerbo (1996), Social Stratification and Inequality, 220.

9 Reclaiming the Value of Labor

THEORIES OF SOCIAL CLASS HAVE HAD difficulty making sense of the

multiple dimensions of blue-collar work. Too often they have portrayed blue-collar work in generalized terms that leave little room for complexity. Such depictions have repercussions: they play into the hands of managers who want to keep labor costs as low as possible; devalued images in science also legitimate discriminatory attitudes in popular culture, justifying feelings of superiority among professionals who define themselves as occupying the upper rungs of the social ladder. We can extend this list of the consequences; for example, the public is taught to accept the outsourcing of “negative” and simple blue-collar jobs. There are disadvantages to blue-collar work, of course, but they are compounded by the negative identity imposed upon blue-collar workers. The definition of manual labor as mindless, subordinate, inferior, and meaningless shapes the way working-class people are treated across social institutions. Correcting this problem requires an entirely different conception of class and the social-class hierarchy. The theoretical understanding of blue-collar work must break with its conventional definitions of class. There has to be a more complex understanding, but to get there social scientists will have to alter some of their most sacred ideas.

Origins in Marx

The operating paradigm for understanding the place of blue-collar workers in the production process has changed little from the basic descriptions popularized by Karl Marx. The social theorist Steven Seidman explains that “the ideological presuppositions of Marxism have remained 147

148

Working Class

more or less stable [in the] ideological configuration of social science.”1 Marx argued, in writings such as Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, that under capitalism industry reduces blue-collar labor to an inhuman act by making labor no more than a commodity. Moreover, his analysis of capitalism concluded that workers labor under conditions that are increasingly segmented, controlled, de-skilled, and exploited,2 making blue-collar work meaningless beyond its limited monetary reward. Marx claimed that capitalism would force the working class into an increasingly dehumanized existence. In his “Manuscripts,” Marx explains: “The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him; it means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.”3 Elsewhere in Marx we find: Further, as the division of labour increases, labour is simplified. The special skill of the worker becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple, monotonous productive force that does not have to use intense bodily or intellectual faculties. His labour becomes a labour that anyone can perform. Hence, competitors crowd him on all sides, and besides we remind the reader that the more simple and easily learned the labour is, the lower the cost of production needed to master it, the lower do wages sink, for, like the price of every other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production. Therefore, as labour becomes more unsatisfying, more repulsive, competition increases and wages decrease.4

Marx regarded work as an intrinsic component of human existence. He glorified work as that which makes life meaningful. Under capitalism, however, Marx foresaw an ever-increasing degradation of this most basic element of humanity. Because of the relations of capitalist production, as well as the essential role that labor assumes in the creation of surplus value, Marxist theory defines blue-collar work as commoditized and dehumanized. This presupposition is built into the concept of work. The working class is doomed to this fate, Marx stated, as long as capitalism is the prevailing mode of production. Marx convincingly illustrated that in order to increase profits, business owners would take over from workers control of production, limit the importance of tacit worker knowledge, remove the connection of workers to their products, eliminate worker discretion and autonomy, segment the work process, and degrade the value of worker contributions.

Reclaiming the Value of Labor

149

Marx’s conceptual framework declares that blue-collar labor is exploited and alienated by definition. The dichotomous class model promoted by Marx gave control of the production process completely to the owners of the means of production, whose profits increased the more the production process transformed labor into a commodity. These were important insights, but it was wrong to assume that the everyday reality of workers matched the theoretical model of alienated labor. Marx never actually measured the experience of workers at the point of production. He did not gather data regarding the actual experience of workers. 5 Marx’s analysis of the industrial process has tremendous merit, but without directly and systematically measuring his theories against the real-life situations of specific individuals, he was bound to miss the complexities of workers’ actual experiences on the job. The importance of Marx’s theory has legitimized the theoretical conceptualization of the nature of work and of the identities of workers in completely negative terms, creating a legacy in which future generations have made the a priori assumption that dehumanizing circumstances are inherent in blue-collar work. Moreover, Marx’s ambitions to inspire revolution led him to make generalizations that supported his agenda for social transformation. As Frederic L. Bender remarks in the introduction to The Communist Manifesto,6 “The struggle to form the proletariat into a revolutionary movement was the Manifesto’s purpose; indeed it was the chief purpose of Marx’s life.” Steven Seidman reminds us, “To fully comprehend the origins and developments of social theory, it is necessary to view it as embedded in an encompassing ideological milieu. The practical and normative motivations of social theory are disclosed in the configuration of moral, political, and metaphysical assumptions comprising the ideological dimension.”7 It must be acknowledged that Marx’s theoretical categories were formed with the intent of motivating revolutionary action and human emancipation. As Seidman explains, these goals “are built into his basic premises, concepts, and explanations.”8 With this agenda in mind, it makes sense that Marx would describe circumstances in ways that would highlight the need for change. The deplorable conditions of life for industrial workers in the midnineteenth century inspired many social critics to call for social transformation, but it was Marx who succeeded in developing a widely accepted systematic description of how these oppressive conditions were rooted in the capitalist labor process and could thus motivate social transformation toward a utopian society. In his attempt to identify, and in fact create, an interest group that had sufficient numbers and motivation to

150

Working Class

transform society, Marx focused his attention on the disadvantaged circumstances of blue-collar labor. Marx’s reasoning was systematic, but his account was theoretical rather than empirically based. Without gathering systematic data from individuals actually working under the regime of industrial production, the description of work under capitalism was expressed in ways that supported the case for transforming society. That agenda led Marx to exaggerate workers’ misery for the effect of alerting citizens to the negative circumstances in the production process brought on by capitalism. For example, Marx logically defended his assertion that industry reduced the degree of skill on the part of the worker, but he went further by claiming the de-skilling as complete, such as in the statement cited above: “The special skill of the worker becomes worthless.” In hope of reducing the disadvantages faced by workers under capitalism, Marx painted an extreme picture of how bad life had become for workers. Marx’s motivations were admirable, as Eric Fromm explained,9 but in his concern for promoting the interests of the working class through his description of the capitalist relations of production, Marx devalued the image of blue-collar work by portraying it in extremely negative—even inhuman—terms. Of course, the situations faced by laborers varied widely between industries and individual circumstances, but measuring the actual experiences of workers was not essential to Marx’s agenda. Furthermore, the multiple factors that related to working-class suffering were deemphasized in order to focus on basic foundational principles, embedded in industrial labor, that justified the emphasis on mobilizing blue-collar workers into political action. The very thing that identifies people as working class—their manual labor—was identified by Marx to be the essential element of capitalist tyranny. Conceptualizing the injustices of nineteenth-century society as rooted in the relations of industrial production has had a devastating impact on the image of blue-collar work. The working class is, theoretically, tautologically trapped in circumstances that are defined as certain to lead to its own demise. Workers must work in order to survive, but their doing so places them in a situation that defines them as ignorant accomplices to their own dehumanization. Marx spells this out in his “Manuscripts of 1844”: “The worker puts his life into the object. Hence, the greater his activity, the greater is the worker’s lack of objects. Whatever the product of his labour is, he is not. Therefore the greater this product, the less is he himself.”10 According to Marx, it is impossible for workers to feel legitimate satisfaction, intrinsic rewards, or posi-

Reclaiming the Value of Labor

151

tive affirmation of self from their work. In fact, the more workers identify with their jobs, the greater the evidence that they are dupes of the system. The dehumanization inherent in blue-collar work becomes true by definition. Marx informs us that if workers find satisfaction in their work, it is because they are blind to the underlying exploitive relations of production. For Marx, workers who eagerly perform their jobs and feel pride in their skills display evidence of their false consciousness. Not only is it considered impossible for a laborer to feel meaningful satisfaction from work, if a worker reports enjoying blue-collar work, it indicates that the worker is a fool. Marx detailed the insidious nature of wage labor inherent in class relations that, he claimed, blinded workers to the manipulation inherent in the production process. Marx identified the working class as generally unaware that their true interests were not grounded in complying with production demands but in overturning the capitalist regime. The theory instructs researchers not to believe the worker’s claims of intrinsic satisfaction. Not only did Marx define blue-collar labor under capitalist relations as powerless, mindless, simplistic, and meaningless, he provided legitimacy to the conception of the working class as unwitting dupes incapable of interpreting their own true interests. There is absolutely no room in Marx’s conceptual framework for anything but a negative assessment of blue-collar work as long as capitalism shapes the production process. Marx was, of course, correct in stating that blue-collar workers are exploited through capitalists’ endless pursuit of profit, but in today’s circumstances they face a far greater attack through the basic ideas by which their existence is perceived. Regardless of how workers feel about their jobs, Marxian theory presents a systematic logic for thinking about blue-collar work such that there is nothing positive in it or extending from it. At the same time that Marx made us sympathetic to the plight of workers and aware of the injustices of capitalism, he also made it legitimate to think negatively about blue-collar work and bluecollar workers.

Limitations in Marxist Categories

Researchers informed by Marx’s sweepingly negative description of blue-collar work are prevented from recognizing the positive dimensions of blue-collar work. Simply using Marxist categories shapes the interpretation of reality. Marx’s theories direct researchers to ignore the

152

Working Class

satisfying aspects of blue-collar work. But Marx made his assertions about the labor process based on his theoretical categories, not after making any direct systematic measurement of the conditions faced by individual workers at the point of production. His claims were reasonable and, in many ways, reflective of observable trends. Still, researchers go too far when they ignore empirical evidence that does not fit into Marx’s theoretical framework. Worse yet, they squeeze their findings into the theoretical model when doing so is inappropriate. The interviews presented in the preceding chapters provide a stark contrast to Marxist categories. The men clearly are not alienated. They feel connected to their products and to the production process. They find their work rewarding on many levels. They have a positive selfconception because of the intrinsic satisfaction in their jobs. Furthermore, most do not experience subordination on a regular basis. They have much control at the point of production, and their knowledge and skill are essential components of the production process. Still, this must be considered in the multidimensional context of the workplace. The reports from the men of their positive orientation to their work do not negate exploitation and subordination; these do exist, at least on some levels, even while on others workers are empowered and rewarded. Marxist categories should not be thrown out, but they should also allow for compromise. Marx’s insights were important, but they went too far in dismissing the intrinsic relationship that workers have with their labor. Even with the use of de-skilling, controlling technologies, and the limitations on power that are inherent in capitalist relations of production, contributions from the workers and the positive connections to their work have not been eliminated for most of them.

Aligning Simple Theory with Complex Reality

Marx explained away the feelings of job satisfaction experienced by workers very simply: he said that they don’t exist. Any positive association with the job was defined as false consciousness. Marx’s statement was too sweeping, and its legacy still haunts the working class by directing scholars to dismiss positive accounts of blue-collar work. Theorists must abandon overly basic explanations for the way society is arranged because their theories harm those whose personal experiences are shaped by the complexities of social interaction. Social science, by making narrow generalizations of theoretical categories, injures the people it

Reclaiming the Value of Labor

153

defines negatively. Social scientists must look deeper into the relations of production to discover where their theoretical models have skewed their interpretations. The job-site authority hierarchy provides an example of where reality is defined too simply in theory, and authority hierarchy is closely associated with the social-class hierarchy. Conventional wisdom recognizes that blue-collar workers occupy a subservient position in the occupational structure. Theoretically, this is true by definition. Harold Kerbo explains: “The working class usually occupies positions toward the bottom of all authority structures. Its members receive orders from many layers above and are seldom in a position to give orders to others. Typically, they are told what work to do, how it should be done, when, and how fast.”11 Even when scholars include white-collar jobs in the working class, they describe this class as having “comparatively little power or authority.”12 Such an assumption corresponds with the formal hierarchy outlined in the bureaucratic structure of most U.S. businesses.13 While this line of authority is undeniably true in formal, theoretical terms, the empirical reality is that there are alternative, informal occupational hierarchies upon which businesses depend so that efficient production can take place. Theoretical models of the occupational hierarchy that stress the superiority of white-collar managerial positions do not reflect the day-to-day reality of how work gets done. On this point, I am not saying anything new: Donald Roy documented the power of machinists to control the pace of production;14 Tom Juravich observed a factory where assembly-line workers used their ingenuity and tacit knowledge to overcome “chaos on the shop floor”15—chaos caused in great part by management’s refusal to recognize worker knowledge and skill. Furthermore, several ethnographies, including those of Kris Paap, Lawrence Ouellet, William Finlay, and William Kornblum,16 describe occupational cultures in which workers dictate levels of effort and standards for performance. David Noble’s case study of machinists working for a defense contractor convincingly illustrated that production was dependent upon the skills of workers: when management attempted to take control of production the quality dropped below acceptable standards.17 Jack Meztgar argues that U.S. steel firms depended upon the experiential knowledge of union workers to keep production at high levels through the 1980s.18 This book adds to this literature, but it also seeks to do more than address the role of production workers in the labor process. Knowledge of the informal labor process and the occupational cultures that shape

154

Working Class

the production process are still not acknowledged in theories of social class and stratification (not to mention theories of business management). Prominent theoretical conceptions of the class structure that define occupational categories in basic terms of superiority or inferiority are inconsistent with the way work gets done in society. Rather than simply define the working class as subservient and powerless, theories must incorporate a multidimensional understanding of class position in order to reflect the multifaceted role that the working class plays in the social system. The model of the social-class hierarchy as a simple vertical ladder requires reevaluation toward a less rigid, more horizontal, cooperative conceptualization of class relations. Serious attempts were made in the 1980s and 1990s to define workers as intelligent, skilled, and intrinsically motivated. Shifts in the global economy led to the promotion of alternative strategies for organizing production.19 “Flexible specialization” scholars advocated alternative theoretical models for managing industrial production, including reliance on skilled workers,20 small-batch production,21 and the empowerment of workers.22 Academics such as Martin Kenney and Richard Florida cautioned against the adherence to rigidly hierarchical, authoritative regimes in the face of growing threats from alternative (Japanese) industrial models that recognize the important contribution of blue-collar workers to the production process. But the leaders of US industry seemed unable to change their management philosophy.23 Researchers have found mixed results from the implementation of “flexible” workplace models,24 which has limited the influence of this theoretical agenda. One explanation for this may be that researchers continue to look at the formal organization of the workplace. Workers continue to play a subservient role in the institutional hierarchy of American business. Even so, the failure of researchers to see power among the blue-collar workforce may be related to the way authority is defined and measured. The real power of workers is expressed informally and is easily missed if observers do not look deeply. In theory, blue-collar workers are on the receiving end of the occupational hierarchy. This chain of authority is reinforced when managers and forepersons are held accountable for, and measured against, the productivity of physical laborers beneath them. From the evidence provided by the blue-collar workers in the last chapter, even when their role was clearly to follow directions from white-collar supervisors, the flow of authority was typically not that simple. The men explained in their interviews that managers do not usually know enough about the production

Reclaiming the Value of Labor

155

process to give orders. Moreover, some production workers reported taking the initiative to effectively veto the orders of their white-collar supervisors when their experience showed them that their directions were incorrect for the job at hand. The formal expectation is that workers simply follow directions spelled out on blueprints. The plans drawn by the college-trained engineers or architects are usually done well in most respects, but often blueprints are flawed25 in ways that require the workmen to resolve the problems before the job can be completed. As a thirty-seven year-old union excavation-equipment operator said, “Everyday it doesn’t go by where [we say], ‘This must have looked good on paper,’ but it doesn’t work out here.” He added that the men working on the project must use their experiential knowledge to make things work. The thirty-five yearold supervisor of several construction sites for a large residential development company explained that architects’ theoretical-level training is insufficient to fully understand the construction process. Because of this, the details of how to construct a building must often be figured out at the point of production by the workers. He explained: An architect is a supervisor; he is the ultimate supervisor on a job. But if he’s got no idea how to do a job, how can he be supervising? I’ve seen some plans where, first of all you can’t read them. Second of all there is no way you can build what this person drew because it is one dimensional and you’re building a three-dimensional house. It just don’t, it don’t happen that way. They should have to go out and, yeah, you should always have to do the job, or at least experience the job, before you take on the ultimate, you know— the business manager should actually be in the business before he becomes manager of it. The theoretical assumption that the blueprints created by collegetrained engineers or architects are directly followed by the workers that construct the products was not supported by this study’s data. Rather, the men reported the commonplace necessity for them to override at least some aspect of a plan when the design was incorrect. Both factory and construction workers said that they could not always follow the blueprints. A thirty-seven year-old welder in a locomotive factory reported, “A lot of the engineering decision making and a lot of the blueprints they come up with, and what the real-life issue is, is totally different. They can have stuff on blueprints that really don’t make sense

156

Working Class

on the shop floor. . . . I just take it inside the office and tell them that their prints are no effin’ good. I just go ahead and fix the problem myself, which takes no longer than any problem anybody else runs into.” The sixty-year-old machine operator from a turbine manufacturing plant went further. He said the production process depends upon shop workers taking it upon themselves to fix problems with the designs: “You know how many guys on the floor bailed out guys in management because they did it their way and not the freakin’ process way or the way the boss told them to do it? Workers,” he said, “had to understand more than the engineer who drew the blueprint.” Absolute authority for how production will occur rests exclusively with management in theory only. Scholars have documented the efforts of management to separate product design from the execution of work,26 but these programs to control the production process were apparently incomplete and overly ambitious. A forty-two-year-old winder who made generators in the turbine factory understood the theory of management control over design and production. He recognized that “they want everything that they can get to be [from] their ideas only”; but he added, “I don’t care what they say, you put it on paper and it doesn’t always work on the floor.” Like most of the men, he recognized the important role of the engineer, but questioned the tendency to regard the engineer’s role as more important. Design of the product and the execution of that design are not separate, as theory suggests; instead, the process is cooperative, with the designer specifying the details of the final product and the workers participating in the process by interpreting the directions and applying them as necessary to fit the circumstances at hand. The welder from the locomotive plant argued that production workers have knowledge superior to that of white-collar workers because of the direct understanding of the product that comes from putting it together. Several men blamed the errors of product designers on their lack of experience with real-world situations. A twenty-nine-year-old union construction laborer said, “I can honestly say that a lot of the blueprint writers—the guys who write the blueprints—they’ve never been out in the field. So they think that whatever they draw you can make, and sometimes it is just totally impossible, and if you [they] got out in the field you could see what the guys were talking about when they say, ‘Your plans are a little, a little—you’re a little lax there, buddy. It’s impossible to do that.’” A different laborer, thirty-one years old and not in a union, concurred: “Even some of the architects that draw up the blueprints for some of the buildings I do; this guy sits there at one

Reclaiming the Value of Labor

157

o’clock in the morning and says, ‘Hey! This will be a neat little design,’ and he has no idea of hands-on work or how hard he just made someone’s job. He’s never done it. All he has gone to school for is to draw it. Well, yeah, we have all these codes, ‘The building is this high, it is this wide, so we’ve got to make it fit into this weight-bearing beam. So yeah, I can do this and I can do that,’ but it don’t work all the time.” This lack of experiential knowledge that undermined managers’ authority position was a common theme. Everyone acknowledged that the blueprints were, theoretically, the final word on how to proceed with their jobs, but making adjustments at the point of production was a common practice. A factory worker reported that he had once knowingly followed incorrect directions “to teach them a lesson” by producing “a pile of junk.” But such a report was unusual. For liability reasons, however, workers sometimes struggle over the decision to override the directives of their supervisors. They may see a mistake in the blueprint, but the appropriate correction for the problem is not always obvious. The pressures to meet production quotas and the costs associated with delaying work in order to have an engineer correct the plans often force workers to make difficult decisions about how to proceed. When possible, workers prefer to report the problem to the project supervisor—who is usually a fellow worker who has risen to a leadership position after years of work experience—in order to shift liability off themselves, but this places the foreperson in the stressful position of vetoing the directives of the legitimate authority. Steven Lopez, who documented work in a nursing home where workers had to cut corners from formal safety procedures in order to meet production quotas, found that upper management expected workers to do what was necessary to efficiently complete their assignments. Management and laborers alike informally acknowledged that the official protocol had to be overridden in order to complete the demanding workload expectations, but when a problem developed, if it extended from workers’ informal actions, management would place responsibility on those who made the decision to sidestep formal channels of authority.27 In Lopez’s case study, managers and workers were both aware that production expectations depended upon workers making adjustments to official procedures, yet the legitimacy of the process required that all participants recognized the formal lines of authority and abided by the official standards when outcomes were observed by regulators or outside evaluators. Scientific theories of the occupational hierarchy cannot simply reflect the formal organizational structure when

158

Working Class

defining the place of blue-collar workers. They must recognize the hidden dimensions in the authority hierarchy to accurately reflect the ambiguous place of blue-collar workers in the production process. Workers are more directly reminded that their white-collar supervisors are not in control when they must work under managers who have never done the job and do not fully understand what the job entails. A thirty-one-year-old warehouse worker with thirteen years experience in a factory that manufactured books, discussing a problem he had with managers who had not “come up through the ranks,” said, “I get frustrated at times when I have to tell these people what is going on and here they are supposed to be in charge of me.” From what he had seen on the shop floor, blue-collar workers made most of the direct decisions for guiding production. “But I see them [the white-collar management] getting credit for it,” he added. A thirty-four-year-old carpenter said that his supervisor, who had never done blue-collar work in building a house, did not know enough about the process to give directions: He doesn’t really know anything. He’s a salesman and he sold himself to my boss [the developer]. That’s his career. . . . Well what I’m saying is that they [white-collar workers] don’t really actually have the hands-on knowledge, so if something’s fucked-up he just says, “Fix it. Do what you’ve got to do to fix it.” I want him to understand what it entails. When I say I need a guy to help me with this [he says], “Why? You’re making a one-man job into a two-man job.” He says shit like that to me. “Hey! Don’t even tell me; you don’t even know what I’m talking about when you’re saying shit like that.” And I catch him a lot of times where he’ll ask the stupidest question in the world. Did you ever see people ask a stupid question? I’d rather remain silent and appear stupid than open my mouth and remove all doubt. Instead of remaining silent and thinking about it himself, he’ll ask it, and then you kind of laugh at him when you give him the answer, and then his response will be, “I knew that.” This is the truth. That’s how [he] is. “I knew that; I was just checking you.” Know what I mean? This carpenter explained that his white-collar supervisor understood that a job needed to be done, but he had no knowledge of how to actually complete the task. White-collar management has theoretical authority, but the worker decides how a job will be done, through both his knowledge and discretion.

Reclaiming the Value of Labor

159

In Chapter 8, the baker of confectionary provided an illustration of the complexities inherent in his assembly-line job, and the drift of that man’s story was duplicated by several others. In theory, all that the fortynine-year-old line worker had to do was monitor the machinery. As he explained, “Basically I work on an assembly line. It isn’t exciting or anything—the line.” In saying “even a monkey could do this job,” he was mimicking the formal understanding of his lowly place in the production process, but on further explanation it became apparent that there was more to the job than what the management assumed it entailed—simply monitoring machinery and pushing buttons. His story illustrates how the demeaning attitude comes out of an oversimplification of the process. It was only after being probed for more information that he revealed the depth of his understanding and his involvement in production. As the interview went on he became more prideful of his skills and was upset that he had not initially acknowledged the complexity of his job.

Discussion

The subservience of blue-collar workers to white-collar authorities is a basic tenet of conventional stratification theory and of many theories of work and workplaces. Blue-collar workers, however, have more control over the production process than prominent theoretical models recognize. To conceptualize the occupational order as a simple vertical hierarchy is too simplistic. White-collar supervisors are not always in charge of blue-collar workers at the point of production. The reports in this study challenge the blanket assumptions of bluecollar subjection that are at the heart of theoretical understandings of the occupational hierarchy, which further underlie conceptions of the socialclass structure. Understandings of the entire class system hinge greatly upon the pretext of blue-collar subjugation. In fact, whether on the shop floor or at the construction site, workers are in control over production in some dimensions and subservient in others. According to the informants quoted above, the dimensions in which white-collar managers have absolute authority are limited to the formal and theoretical levels. Informally, workers frequently use their experiential knowledge. Whitecollar managers often do not understand the jobs of those they are supervising. Even when the formal hierarchy is legitimate and operational— as in the expectation that workers will execute the directives as spelled out in blueprints—workers must frequently amend the designs at the point of production.

160

Working Class

To conceptualize the relationship between blue-collar workers and white-collar managers as a simple hierarchy in which subordinate production workers take orders from white-collar superiors represents the theoretical, ideal-type bureaucratic model, but this model fails to represent the day-to-day reality of the production process. The occupational hierarchy is not a simple vertical chain of command. Rather, production depends upon a complexity of relationships in which, while the formal hierarchy is acknowledged, workers take charge when directives are inadequate or incomplete. The occupational order is reflected in the social-class system, with blue-collar workers at the bottom of the social hierarchy. But social classes are not simply superior or subordinate to each other, and—as can be seen by examining the example of work sites—what is officially expected to happen between positions is not what is actually taking place. Theories claiming that blue-collar workers have been stripped of control and authority represent only part of the picture. It is true that workers are subservient in some respects, but it is incorrect to view those situations as support for theoretical claims that workers have no control at all. The old simplistic models that regard authority as “all or nothing” do not represent the complicated reality at the point of production. It is true that modern industry has transformed the work process in ways that have reduced the authority of production workers, and for many jobs mechanization has segmented the production process and reduced the level of worker skill. In many industries, in fact, an elaborate bureaucratic structure and the development of specialized technical knowledge have shifted much control away from the point of production and up the chain of command. For many jobs, especially for positions on an assembly line, workers have no control over the pace or complexity of their labor. Still, management control over production is incomplete. Actually, managers depend upon worker-centered initiative and knowledge in many cases, even as the legitimacy of the production process depends upon the formal recognition of managerial authority. Even in the case of assembly-line work—and theories of work and the production process have traditionally relied too heavily on the stereotype of the assembly line as typical blue-collar labor; it is in fact relatively rare—there are situations that depend upon worker discretion. In the example of assembly-line work above, at the confectionary plant, recognition of worker skill requires looking beyond the formal job description. Even the worker himself had to be prompted to do so.

Reclaiming the Value of Labor

161

Notes 1. Seidman (1983), Liberalism and the Origins of European Social Theory, 297–298. 2. Marx [1867] (1967), Capital, chapters 13–16. 3. Marx (1978a), “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” 72; emphasis in the original. 4. Marx(1978b), “Wage Labour and Capital,” 214; emphasis in the original. 5. See Epstein (1990), “The Cultural Perspective and the Study of Work,” 90. 6. Bender (1988), “Historical and Theoretical Backgrounds of the Communist Manifesto,” 24. 7. Seidman (1983), Liberalism and the Origins of European Social Theory, 276. 8. Seidman (2004), Contested Knowledge, 33–34. 9. Fromm (1961), Marx’s Concept of Man. 10. Marx(1978a), “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” 72. 11. Kerbo (2006), Social Stratification and Inequality, 209. 12. For example, see Zweig (2004) What’s Class Got to Do with It? 4. 13. See Chandler (1980), “The United States: Seedbed of Managerial Capitalism,” 10. 14. Roy (1954), “Efficiency and ‘the Fix.’” 15. Juravich (1985), Chaos on the Shop Floor. 16. Paap (2006), Working Construction; Ouellet (1994), Pedal to the Metal; Finlay (1988), Work on the Waterfront; Kornblum (1974), Blue Collar Community. 17. Noble (1987), Forces of Production. 18. Metzgar (2000), Striking Steel. 19. For example, Sabel (1982), Work and Politics; Piore and Sabel (1984), The Second Industrial Divide; Lawler, Mohrman, and Ledford (1995), Creating High Performance Organizations; and Adler (1992), Technology and the Future of Work. 20. Attwell (1992), “Skill and Occupational Changes in U.S. Manufacturing”; Adler (1992), Technology and the Future of Work; Hirschhorn (1984), Beyond Mechanization. 21. Sabel and Zeitlin (1997), World of Possibilities; Hirst and Zeitlin (1989), “Flexible Specialization and the Competitive Failure of UK Manufacturing”; Kern and Schumann (1987), “Limits of the Division of Labour”; Kern and Schumann (1989), “New Concepts of Production in West German Plants.” 22. Kenney and Florida (1993), Beyond Mass Production; Witte (1980), Democracy, Authority, and Alienation in Work. 23. Kenney and Florida (1993), Beyond Mass Production, 119; Vallas (1999), “Rethinking Post-Fordism,” 93. 24. Vallas (1999), “Rethinking Post-Fordism.” 25. In my personal experience as a construction worker, this was more often the case when working in the residential construction market, where less-thanperfect plans were the norm. Costly commercial and municipal construction

162

Working Class

projects are more likely to have complete and accurate sets of plans, but some errors are almost always present. See discussion of this in Hughes (1971), “Work and Self,” 340–341: the “dignifying rationalization” for workers that extends from “sav[ing] a person of more acknowledged skill, and certainly of more acknowledged prestige and power, than one’s self from his mistakes.” 26. For example, see Stone (1974) “The Origins of Job Structures in the Steel Industry”; Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital; Edwards (1979), Contested Terrain; Gordon, Edwards, and Reich (1982), Segmented Work, Divided Workers; and Gutman (1987), Power and Culture. 27. Lopez (2007), “Efficiency and the Fix Revisited.”

10 Recasting the Image of Blue-Collar Work

THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION AT the opening of this book is becoming clearer. It may still be difficult to understand how a person could proclaim love for a dirty, difficult, dangerous job, but at least it is now understandable how that work can be a rewarding part of one’s life. The question has now become how sociologists could deny the positive attributes of manual labor that exist alongside the disadvantages.

Review of the Findings

The blue-collar men in this study directly confront the dominant theoretical conception of blue-collar work. Researchers were wrong when they characterized blue-collar work as void of intrinsic meaning. Their deductive reasoning tossed aside evidence of complex orientations to blue-collar labor. Additionally, researchers oversampled assembly-line workers—the category of worker least satisfied with the job—that stereotyped blue-collar work according to this small segment of the working class. From there, specious logic determined that manual workers were instrumentally motivated. Influential sociologists reasoned that with little social capital and few alternatives, money was the only rational motivation workers could have for accepting blue-collar work that was defined as meaningless, subordinate, mindless, de-skilled, and repetitive. As the interviews show, this description is not valid. It is unclear how much choice the men in this study had when they took on blue-collar occupations, but some of them clearly did have options. Most of the men thought about their jobs as though there were alternatives, and they provided logical explanations for their preference 163

164

Working Class

for a manual occupation. All of the men respected blue-collar laborers over white-collar workers, and only two men, with some regret, wanted white-collar jobs. The men spoke frequently of their choosing to limit their needs to fit their earnings, acknowledging that their manual trade did not provide the potential income of a professional career. These blue-collar workers were critical of white-collar professionals in a variety of ways, attributing to them a less-admirable character. Contrary to some scholars’ singling out blue-collar workers as instrumentally oriented, the construction and factory workers criticized the white-collar class for its fetish for commodities. Professionals are, according to the manual workers, shallow and extrinsically motivated. Contrary to assertions from some scholars, the blue-collar workers here described multiple dimensions in which their jobs have intrinsic meaning. Their testimony is actually reflective of the interviews reported by Goldthorpe et al. in their Affluent Worker study, but those researchers discarded that evidence when they made their sweeping deduction. In both studies, the workers said there were negative aspects to their manual jobs, but the overwhelmingly negative theoretical stereotypes do not fit the reality of the men studied here. The men were clear about the hardships associated with their occupations, but at the same time they explained how their work was rewarding, and in a number of different ways. White-collar people look down on working-class people, but the workers regard their work as a source of dignity. None of them expressed alienation. In fact, they considered themselves a necessary part of the production process. Even those whose jobs simply supported the manufacture or distribution of a product, and even those who were laborers on crews that provided only a narrow part of a finished product, were proud of their contributions. Not only did the workers describe exactly how their jobs fit into the overall operations of their companies, they could see the fruits of their labor as an important contribution to society in general. They generally were in control of their daily work to a surprising degree, and many spoke of using their discretion to do quality work—because others depended upon it, because it was important, because it reflected highly upon themselves, and simply because it was the right thing to do. The workers said the formal organizational hierarchy is an inadequate model for real-life lines of authority. The formal chain of command, which assumes subordination on the part of production workers, is not in line with the way daily work gets done. The workers often said their white-collar supervisors inadequately understood the task at hand. Unless managers have blue-collar experience, they often must rely on

Recasting the Image of Blue-Collar Work

165

production workers to carry out their work as they see fit, and then the managers depend on the laborer to explain what is going on. Several workers reported that they must frequently veto the directives of their white-collar supervisors when they find mistakes in their directions or in the design of their products. Many of the manual workers never take orders directly from white-collar managers. Collectively, these conditions question the extent to which working-class identities are a result of cognitive dissonance or the need to compensate for their subordination. The inferior status of the working class is also in question when the informal authority of blue-collar workers is acknowledged. Theory that defines blue-collar workers as subservient was not reflective of the experiences described in the interviews of this research.

Resurrecting the Concept of Class

Social class is still a central focus of social science, but it has not been directly measured in most sociological research for a long time. Substituting a socioeconomic status index for social class was a big mistake, and the variable must be brought back to life in order to represent the many dimensions of working-class identities. The calculation of the index represents only a narrow piece of what it means to be working class, and that part is presented as an exceedingly negative image. The way the index is measured addresses only a few characteristics—characteristics in which the working class has a deficit—and thus identifies those in bluecollar jobs as having inferior status. From a working-class perspective, and perhaps from any standpoint, there are things about blue-collar work and working-class life that are positive if not superior to whitecollar jobs and to “middle-class” lifestyles. Socioeconomic status indexes create the perception of a hierarchy that has little legitimacy outside of middle-class culture. The SES index is an invalid measurement of working-class values. The index is based upon the assumption of a cultural consensus on occupational prestige, but the blue-collar workers represented in this research clearly do not admire white-collar professionals. They do not want whitecollar occupations and they would consider taking a white-collar job as a step down from their current status, not up. The factory and construction workers respect and appreciate work at all levels of the production process as valuable and necessary, but they regard that as especially true for blue-collar jobs. They have different standards for judging occupations as honorable and important than those from white-collar back-

166

Working Class

grounds. Not only is prestige understood differently, but the other indicators of socioeconomic status—income and education—each have different meanings in working-class circles than they do in the culture of the professional class. The blue-collar workers do not associate high incomes with high prestige, and while for them education may be useful, it is often seen as irrelevant, if not an impediment, to practical knowledge. The indicators of SES are too narrow to capture the range of meanings that positions can have, and the concept is not consistently interpreted across class boundaries. It merely reflects the worldview of the whitecollar class and reinforces its own perception of superiority.

Breaking Free from Old Theoretical Paradigms

Researchers are hampered by the theoretical models through which they view manual labor. The conventions of positivist social science direct sociologists to establish explanations for behavior prior to its measurement. Data are then compared to those preexisting claims. The real world is not simple enough to nicely fit into this vision of science. Multiple factors motivate thoughts and actions, but the theories of social science dismiss or ignore the complexity of human behavior. Workingclass values may motivate behavior according to a different set of standards than those of white-collar professionals. That translates to behavior that is not accurately explained by the logic of social theory. Research findings are too often squeezed into existing theoretical frameworks, rather than inductively analyzed for patterns that do not fit the model. The dominant theories of class each have merit, but they also skew the interpretation of data. Marxist theory flatly denies the prospect of rewarding, meaningful labor in a capitalist system. Marxism contains valuable insights regarding relations of power and the importance of work, but the theory’s sweeping assertions about the dehumanized production process go too far. The old functionalist perspective contributed an important awareness of the various roles played by different groups in the social system, but it was too quick to justify imbalances in formal authority and compensation as a function of relative superiority and inferiority. Early scholarship on manual labor, beginning with Taylor but extending through Lipset and Kohn, was clearly marred by classist rhetoric that presumed the simplicity of blue-collar work and the deficiency of working-class individuals. Understandings of work must allow for more complexity. Experiences are not simply good or bad, fulfilling or stunting, dignifying or stigmatiz-

Recasting the Image of Blue-Collar Work

167

ing, and powerful or powerless. Blue-collar labor may be subordinate in some ways, but it also requires that workers take charge in other ways. Formal channels of authority often break down at the point of production, requiring workers to override the institutional lines of power. What may be the typical experience for some workers is a rarity for others. Deskilling may have impacted particular jobs, but that does not mean that skill has been completely removed. Managers may give orders to workers, but their general directions may still require workers to figure out the details of how to proceed. Blue-collar work can be exploitive in a variety of ways but at the same time be a source of dignity and other intrinsic rewards. Complicating the issue even more are the alternative sets of cultural standards that define blue-collar work in different ways for the working class and the white-collar class. Researchers must recognize complexity in the meaning of blue-collar work, but they must understand this from the standpoint of the blue-collar workers.

The Hesitancy to Attribute Behavior to Cultural Differences

Scholars have resisted ascribing misunderstood behaviors to alternative cultural prescriptions with good reason. There was a flawed assumption of functionalist theory following World War II that overemphasized the homogeneity of cultural values across the social spectrum. At the time, sociologists also placed too great an emphasis on structural variables out of the desire to promote sociology as a mathematically precise science. That agenda discounted cultural variation that could complicate quantitative analysis, but sensible suggestions from scholarly critics for incorporating cultural characteristics into the research process were misconstrued. Cultural explanations for group behavior were unfortunately distorted by the debate over the “culture of poverty.” The culture-of-poverty debate followed from anthropologist Oscar Lewis’s assertion that impoverished people created rational adaptations to the value systems of the wider society so that their choices were sensible in their situation, but that they also acted to keep people in their disadvantaged circumstances. In reply, James T. Patterson, a historian of twentieth-century poverty, after writing that “observers who recognized the distinctive traits of different cultural groups were . . . right to employ cultural perspectives,” went on to detail many ways that the cultural argument for explaining poverty was twisted in popular discourse to blame the poor for their own misfortune.1 For instance, “Lewis said that

168

Working Class

people in such cultures were ‘provincial and locally oriented and have little sense of history,’ [and] they showed a ‘high incidence of material deprivation, of orality, a lack of impulse control, a strong present-time orientation, with relatively little ability to defer gratification and to plan for the future.’”2 Such statements, Patterson shows, were used to shift the blame for economic misfortune from systemic disadvantages to the personal traits and choices of impoverished individuals themselves. The debate revealed another example of deductive logic being applied by prejudiced observers who failed to recognize how their biases shaped their interpretations. The issue began with the question of why some people in poverty did not have the same motivations for “success” as other, more “successful” groups. The emphasis was placed on why the values of the poor were not the same as those of prosperous citizens, rather than on trying to understand the subculture on its own terms. All the while, the assumption was made that the values of middle-class culture were correct. There were also scholars who argued that cultural explanations had little to do with reproducing poverty, showing evidence that structural variables could explain cross-generational patterns. Once again, the issue was couched in an either/or choice between competing explanations. The issue was set up so that those who defended the importance of cultural traditions as motivation for behavior were forced to embrace the unfortunate position of blaming the victims of poverty for their own impoverished fate. The theme of a working-class subculture has been central to the argument of this book, which posits that an alternative value system defines blue-collar work as a meaningful and honorable vocation. It is necessary to distinguish how this argument differs from the old cultureof-poverty thesis. First, in the culture-of-poverty literature, the culture in question was inextricably associated with impoverishment. The culture of impoverished people was identified as that which held people down, even as it was seen as a rational adaptation to unfortunate circumstances. Second, the culture was applied to a limited economic condition, rather than a broader and more complex social-class experience. Not only was the culture of the poor seen for only its negative attributes (negative in that it did not promote middle-class values) that created purely negative consequences (how could one argue that poverty was positive?), the constructive human relationships and the practical, purposeful interaction patterns of this social class were often overlooked. Every social class has advantages and disadvantages, but the “culture of poverty” narrows the focus simply to the overtly negative traits.

Recasting the Image of Blue-Collar Work

169

In the case of working-class culture, the values expressed in the interviews in this study provide ample reasons for interpreting the workers’ situations as rewarding, satisfying, and dignifying. Some of the workers spoke of their circumstances as producing a “better type of person” than those of the white-collar professions. They had the opportunity to create tangible, useful, important products. They saw themselves and their products as important elements of their work crews, their companies, their industries, and the wider society. They identified their manual occupations as keys to living an honorable and satisfying life. As a result of the divisive culture-of-poverty discourse of the 1960s and 1970s, there is still a hesitancy to discuss working-class culture. When the subject of working-class culture does come up, it is often seen as a negative force that holds people back from success. A case in point is an article published in the scholarly journal Sociological Spectrum in 2000. The author presents the ethnographies of Paul Willis (1977) and Jay MacLeod (1987) as evidence that a workingclass subculture leads to problems; it holds kids back by instilling values that honor blue-collar labor while devaluing white-collar work. He suggests, “The seed of the idea that one has a chance of attending college must be planted before the roots of success can grow.”3 The author equates success with college and, one may deduce, a white-collar career. Another article from the same year published in Social Forces provides a similar example. The authors review the research of scholars such as David Halle (1984), Rick Fantasia (1988), and Sennett and Cobb (1973), whose ethnographies focused on working-class culture. According to the Social Forces article, each of these studies provides data that illustrate working-class “disdain, or at least ambivalence, toward efforts to achieve middle-class status.” The article continues, “Inequality is thus perpetuated by discouraging individual striving.”4 Middle-class normative standards are used to judge working-class values as an obstacle to “upward” mobility, which is equated with white-collar work. Blue-collar workers who do not want white-collar jobs are characterized as failing to strive for that which would make them better. When workers say they want to remain working-class, it is defined as a fault of the person. This line of thinking accepts the devalued image of blue-collar labor, assuming that remaining in the working class reflects a lack of desire for “success” that comes with a white-collar job. Working-class cultural values that perpetuate inequality along class lines are regarded negatively only if working-class lifestyles are identified pessimistically. Defining working-class culture in negative terms,

170

Working Class

as an adaptation to a subordinate position, places those who behave according to working-class cultural norms in a light of inferiority and powerlessness. By this reasoning, those who wish to remain in the working class are seen as irrational, ignorant, and foolish, if not plain lazy. It is difficult for researchers to conclude otherwise when their theories, along with their concepts and language, are infused with assumptions that the working-class experience is negative. The working-class men in this study explain why blue-collar jobs are a good thing, and that they provide positive self-esteem and intrinsic satisfaction. The workers show how their work is meaningful even though there are inescapable disadvantages, just as with white-collar work. Contrary to the assumption that remaining in the working class is negative, the argument of this book is that there are many positive experiences associated with blue-collar work, especially from the perspective of the working class. Blue-collar work is misunderstood partly because investigators defined it as limiting before they actually conducted their research, blinding them to the varieties of ways that blue-collar work manifests itself in the lives of workers. The reproduction of inequality that results from working-class disdain for professional positions is not a problem. Working-class jobs are important, if not necessary, and they are rewarding. There is a problem with the conception of inequality such that working-class positions are defined negatively in the first place. Such an assertion motivates those who wish to help working-class people to advocate for blue-collar workers’ escape from the working class through accepting white-collar employment. That does not help the working class; it aims to eliminate it by making blue-collar workers more like the middle-class reformers.

The Underside of Complexity in Blue-Collar Work

The interviews revealed many dimensions in which manual labor is intrinsically meaningful. They are present for each of the workers in varying degrees. These numerous qualities are not mutually exclusive, but rather they exist simultaneously. Also present, in conjunction with the appealing features of work, are numerous negative characteristics. The multiple dimensions of blue-collar work can be both good and bad. The negative facets of blue-collar work cannot be denied, even among those who profess a love for their jobs. The trying circumstances make it difficult to understand how workers could find their jobs rewarding.

Recasting the Image of Blue-Collar Work

171

The workers themselves appear to contradict their own claims of enjoyment in their jobs. The thirty-seven-year-old union excavator, enumerating a laundry list of hardships associated with his job, mentioned, among other things, diesel fumes and ear plugs—hearing is a big thing with operators. The constant motor noise and . . . rock is really hard on the body. That’s another thing a lot of people don’t realize. I’ve got two ruptured disks in my back; my father [a retired operator] has had two back operations, both of his knees replaced, all directly related to heavy equipment. Vibrations, banging around; it looks like it’s fun running that machine but it is hard on the body. Later in the interview, this man claimed to have “the perfect job.” Similarly, the fifty-three-year-old pipe fitter from the silicone plant described his job as dreadful. He even said it was “slave labor.” The man also reported the frequency of injuries among his fellow crewmembers: “I work with guys who have half a leg, half a finger, blind. Out of eight guys maybe four have only one eye. A lot of them have fingertips that are gone.” Even worse, this man remembers three fatalities at the factory since he was hired. One of them was a good friend of the man. Still, he said, “It’s a great place to work. . . . I enjoy doing it. I like to work anyway. All these guys like to work.” Explaining these incongruent statements is difficult. On the surface they seem to defy common sense. Still, there is logic to the workers’ attitudes, tricky as it may be to represent. The best way to begin is with the obvious: some jobs are simply hard to do. Not to be flippant, this statement simply acknowledges that some desired outcomes require tasks for which an easy way does not exist. For example, the sixty-threeyear-old laborer still recalled the day that he and a coworker were given an especially formidable assignment: We were on a scaffold, him and I, with a hundred-pound hammer, out straight, and you ought to know what we looked like—from our chests down to out beltlines, black and blue. We would take turns, and what we had to do was make this hole [in a concrete wall] big enough to take a boiler out. There’s a job I wouldn’t wish on anybody. And how else would you do it? You start in and after about the first hour, I mean your arms are already like, already dead. The vibration, we were black and blue from here to there, but we done it. We did it because it was a job that had to be done.

172

Working Class

As this man said, his is “a noisy, dirty, tough job that has got to be done.” He realized that there was no easy way around it, but if a building was to be erected it would require difficulties that could not be avoided. His only choice was to grit his teeth and endure the pain. Fortunately, most days did not require such overwhelming difficulty, but most of the time the sense of accomplishment that this man recalled could not be achieved without suffering at least some physical hardships. By definition, blue-collar work is physical work and with that comes physical fatigue. The dirty, heavy, physical work that must be done on a construction site is not necessarily duplicated in a factory setting, but factory work often involves lifting heavy objects and enduring physical strains of heat, exhaust, noise, and repetitive movement. The factory that the pipe fitter works in, he explained, “is so loud it hurts your face.” A winder in the turbine factory describes some of the difficulty that he must go through to perform his job duties: “We’re the ones getting dirty; we’re the ones sweating during the summertime in costume at a hundred and six degrees, damn-near passing out because it is so hot, with no ventilation. And when the fumes come in from the pits next door and you want to throw-up and you know you can’t throw up inside a million dollar job because if you throw-up inside of a million dollar job you might as well hang your job up.” Sometimes doing blue-collar work requires the workers to go through incredibly trying circumstances to get their job done. An assembler described the difficult situations that he had worked in while doing blue-collar labor: “I’ve worked outside in almost thirty-five [degrees Fahrenheit] below with howling winds. You know, fifty or sixty feet in the air taking stuff apart. And then on the other end of the extreme, I’ve worked inside of steel working furnaces, okay, that make steel. I’ve had to weld on the inside of them.” Another factory worker explained that his job is “dirty—it’s a grimy job. The oil, the oil-and-water mix, it’s a grimy job. I get filthy all the time. I don’t mind getting filthy [but] if you want to be clean, this isn’t the job for you.” These statements, such as the last comment that describes that worker’s job as “grimy,” explain that the uncomfortable and, at least occasionally, arduous nature of the work are things that simply must be tolerated. The factory worker says that he “doesn’t mind” being filthy all the time, but he doesn’t say he likes it. The winder is obviously uncomfortable working in extreme heat and nauseating conditions—in fact, he is outright complaining about it—yet he still claimed to “take a lot of pride in the work that I do.” The thirty-two-year-old constructionsite supervisor said that the construction trades are great career choices

Recasting the Image of Blue-Collar Work

173

for a young person in search of a rewarding career, “but you explain the hard facts to him: you’re going to sweat; you’re going to bleed. [You] take the bumps with the bruises and you go on.” The forty-five-year-old welder warned, “If you do any work in the blue-collar trades, sooner or later you are going to get hurt; it’s part of the job.” Blue-collar work is not simply good or bad. In many ways, it is both. It is not necessary to go beyond that point to challenge those sociologists who write blue-collar work off as simply negative. All work, whether blue-collar or white-collar, has rewarding traits as well as those that are unfortunate. One must take the good with the bad, and frequently it is impossible to be satisfied by the creation of useful, important products without enduring the hardships that go into it. There is more intricacy to the issue than that, however. On one level, the adversity that must be undergone, especially the physical suffering, add a dimension to the workers’ connection with a product. The workers literally put part of themselves into it. Bearing the strain of a difficult job and persevering displays the character of the worker and it reflects highly on the individual. The pipe fitter spoke proudly: “Not everybody can do it and do it well. It is something I can do well, still making big money.” Heavy, strenuous physical labor also has an appeal because of its effect on the body. A twenty-nine-year-old union laborer said that the work “keeps your body fit.” A mason was proud to say that his work made him “strong as shit.” He continued, “I always felt like I was stronger than the other guy. . . . [We’re] the baddest people on the job, you know. We get down and dirty, you know, we do the toughest work that there is.” The work may be exhausting, but some men said that the physical prowess developed from it made them feel, as a thirty-oneyear-old laborer declared, “Invincible!” Every one of the workers in this sample was physically fit, and some of them were exceptionally so. Some workers stated that they did not just enjoy their jobs in spite of the hardships; in some ways, they found their work appealing because of the hardships. The pipe fitter was asked how it made him feel, working in such a dangerous job. He replied, “The truth is I probably like it. I think a lot of guys do. You get a rush. There is something about working on something that not everybody can do.” Getting “a rush” from difficult, dangerous work was described by others as well. When asked why a twenty-six-year-old concrete laborer enjoyed strenuous work, he replied, “Because I’m sick.” He continued, “It’s like an addiction. You know what I mean? Getting in there and, ‘We’ve got to pull. Argh!’ It’s like a demanding thing—‘We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to get this done. I don’t care if there is only one spot on the foundation we can

174

Working Class

get the truck in, we’ve got to make this thing happen.’” A recurring theme among these workers was expressed by a thirty-one-year-old construction laborer who relished doing hard work: “There are not too many that can. . . . It takes a rare breed to do it.” The words rare breed were used frequently. One of the concrete finishers actually had the words tattooed on his back. In the end, even some of the men who had articulated deep satisfaction from their trade said that the sacrifices boiled down simply to providing for their families. As the sixty-three-year-old machinist put it, “What am I busting my balls for? But you have to because you need to do the best you can to maintain your employment for your family.” The forty-five-year-old house painter also supported this expectation when referring to others who do unpleasant work: “It doesn’t matter what kind of job he does: the guy is doing the best he can, and that’s what it is about—providing for your family.” This relationship of work to the role of breadwinner is yet another dimension that makes work meaningful, which presents another manner in which difficult labor can be turned into a virtue. Taking income home for the family is an affirmation of traditional masculine gender expectations. Also, the danger and physical hardship in blue-collar work are associated with conceptions of masculinity. Sam Keen, in his 1991 analysis of masculinity, describes the identity of warrior to be paramount to cultural definitions of masculinity. Men, he says, are conditioned to seek circumstances that simulate the act of going to battle, including facing death, suffering, and conquering through physical struggle. 5 Factory work and construction work live up to these images. In his study of working-class men at work, Peter Stearns corroborates this, but, writing as a middle-class researcher, he admits to finding the physicalness of “the working class style of manhood” to be intimidating.6 The traditional image of men as strong, tough, courageous, and capable of surmounting tall odds is, in some jobs more than others but always at least a little, a part of the performance of the bluecollar jobs represented in this study. If not always involving physical trials, work put the men in danger of injury from a variety of sources. This validated their self-image of manliness. Lawrence Ouellet, in his 1994 book on truckers, remarks, “Gender prescriptions for traditional manhood positively value the capacity for high, sustained, and effective effort”; and Herbert Applebaum has observed that physical strength and stamina are attributes that “play a large part in giving construction workers self-respect.” Applebaum writes:

Recasting the Image of Blue-Collar Work

175

Strength and stamina are associated with ideas about maleness and manliness; sometimes they are also associated with requirements of the job. Construction work involves hard physical labor under trying conditions. Construction workers must develop stamina to persevere through adverse conditions—extreme cold, arm-weary shoveling, leg-weary sloshing through mud, the chilling effect of high winds, and the back-straining lifting of heavy weights. Workers who do this work are proud of their physical capabilities and admire those who perform great physical feats.7

As the twenty-seven-year-old excavator declared, “You get a masculine feeling on a construction site. You really do.” Three of the workers were confident that women could do just as good a job as men in any of the blue-collar trades. The rest considered construction work and factory work to be best suited for men, though most of them had qualified opinions that reserved only some of the work as beyond the capacities of women. The connection of manhood to physical labor was a powerful reason that the hardships of blue-collar work were perceived in a positive light. In this way, the difficulties of their jobs were actually appealing. The connection between masculine labor and the self-esteem of the workers is difficult to comprehend for white-collar professionals, which adds to the misunderstanding in social theory. Blue-collar work reflects highly upon the workers’ self-esteem by supporting their masculine identities (some men were stronger in this feeling than others) when it is perceived as something only men can do. This is not the whole story though. Even two of the three men who said that women stood an equal chance of doing their job recognized that many, if not most, men could not do their job because it was too physically demanding. White-collar workers fit into this category, as a thirty-one-year-old laborer said, “Oh, they’re definitely not masculine, you know. Do you think? Some of them are; some of them take care and work out and, you know, but I’d say a majority of them are not. They are more worried about their appearance and their fingernails than the women are.” A forty-nine-yearold factory maintenance worker concurred, “I probably would look down on someone that, if I shook their hand, [it] was like a marshmallow.” A mason discussed how the masculinity associated with his construction job made it appealing to him as a young man: “Back then being big and strong meant a lot to me. . . . When I would see a guy in a suit, me being a little kid at the time, I would say, you know, ‘Wimp!’” These workers describe another way that white-collar work lacks prestige in working-class circles. Office work would compromise their

176

Working Class

masculinity.8 This highlights yet another way that class-based cultures define situations differently. For nearly all of the men represented in this book, associations of their work with (working-class) masculine gender norms are just one more dimension among the multiple meanings and rewards that are part of their work. The negative aspects of manual labor that truly matter to the workers in this study extend from their devalued identity in the institutional order. Managers treat the workers as inferior, such as the supervisor in a paper factory who was described by the printer as walking around the plant “like he was God.” The factory and construction workers ignore such attitudes most of the time, passing them off as ignorance, but they do take note when their livelihoods, and even their lives, are put in danger. One of the proud workers at a GE factory was disturbed by CEO Jack Welch’s famous statement that workers should be squeezed hard to extract as much “juice” as possible. White-collar management had little regard for worker safety, a thirty-four-year-old carpenter said. The thirtyseven-year-old excavator claimed that managers were concerned about fatalities only when it would cost the company money. “Nothing is done [about safety] until the action happens and then it’s too late. And then it’s checked for a couple of weeks. [Management] comes around and says, ‘Let’s fix this or let’s fix that,’ and a month down the road it never happened and it’s the same old thing, until somebody else gets hurt or they get turned in or whatever.” The winder also spoke of dangers that come from management pushing for production regardless of the risk to worker safety. “But we are supposed to be protected by OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration], but the company doesn’t always go by OSHA’s rules. They’ll say, ‘Do this or go home; it’s your job.’” Once again, it is not the actual work that is unappealing but the injustices that extend from the negative way they are regarded by white-collar professionals.

Notes 1. Patterson (2000), America’s Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century, 112–121. 2. Ibid., 116. 3. Gorman (2000), “Cross-Class Perceptions of Social Class,” 703. 4. Schwalbe et al. (2000), “Generic Processes in the Reproduction of Inequality,” 428. 5. Keen (1991), Fire in the Belly, 41–48.

Recasting the Image of Blue-Collar Work

177

6. Stearns, (1979) Be a Man! 61. 7. Applebaum (1999), Construction Workers, U.S.A., 30. 8. This is also reflected in other ethnographies of blue-collar occupational settings, such as William Pilcher’s 1972 The Portland Longshoremen. Pilcher writes, “Clerical and many other white-collar workers are often referred to in contemptuous terms (‘Pencil Pusher,’ ‘Office Pinky’) that clearly reflect the longshoremen’s attitude that such work is clearly effeminate and only an effeminate male or one who was in some way inferior would resort to such employment,” 25.

11 Conclusions and Implications

THE AIM OF THIS BOOK IS SIMPLE: challenge the overly negative definition of blue-collar work. Of course, more rides on the argument than just the way we think about manual labor. The meaning of blue-collar work is central to understanding social class and the class structure of society. What we think about blue-collar work shapes the way workingclass people are treated in interpersonal relationships and by social institutions. For the variety of blue-collar workers represented in the previous chapters, work is a source of pride and satisfaction. For middle-class professionals on the other hand, blue-collar work is shameful. It is seen as simple, subservient, and alienating. By association, those who perform blue-collar labor are regarded as simple-minded, incompetent, and inferior. The old devalued images of blue-collar work in sociological theory legitimate an extensive number of harmful consequences for working-class people and others. Changing the way blue-collar work is defined is central to changing the misfortune of working-class people. If society is to become more just, more democratic, and more egalitarian, adjustments to the image of blue-collar work are essential. Confronting such a deeply entrenched notion as working-class inferiority begins with the critique of social science, because that is the legitimate authority for defining and interpreting social life. Transformative thinking requires the backing of science in order to have power. The institution of science also provides an opportunity for critical ideas to be judged on the merits of their evidence and their logic. Within the profession of sociology, there is a process for vetting challenging ideas, whereas presenting arguments for institutional change in the milieu of popular culture stands to be drowned in a sea of competing media images and agendas.

179

180

Working Class

The conception of blue-collar work in sociological theory is the reasonable place to confront the devalued image of working-class people. The stigma of blue-collar work is more than simply a justification for class disparity. The negative identity that is inappropriately tied to bluecollar work has a wider impact because of the interconnection of class with other identities such as race and gender. Some racial and ethnic groups are disproportionately represented among the working class,1 and the negative stereotypes that are tied to blue-collar work can be mixed with the discriminatory labels of other minority statuses. Furthermore, the conception of the social-class system as a vertical hierarchy rests on the devaluation of blue-collar labor. For social science to still hold fast to the notion that some classes of people are inferior to others and that some groups are identified by name as superior to others (“upper-class,” “uppermiddle-class”), the full weight of the most legitimate authority in Western society grants tacit approval of the age-old belief that some groups are inherently better than others. Social class is the last major social identity to maintain the blessing of science as establishing one group as intrinsically above or beneath another. The negative depictions of blue-collar work are the last unquestioned barrier to removing the ideological justification for human inequality. The devalued identity of blue-collar workers was not introduced by social scientists, but incorporating the negative image of the working class into the theories of sociology provided the discriminatory view with the authority and legitimacy of scientific truth. College sociology courses present the future professional leaders of society with scientific evidence in support of prejudiced attitudes about the working class. Legislators make economic policy based upon social-science data, provided by scholars who are the most accurate source of information available. The data relating to social class is interpreted and presented according to biases that are embedded in guiding paradigms that define the working class negatively. Since the beginning of social science, scholars have placed work at the center of their observations. Karl Marx defended his belief that work is central to the human spirit. He fought for the dignity—even the humanity—of work, which he saw as being compromised by capitalism. In doing so, he alerted people to what was being lost as work was transformed by capitalist social relations. The exploitation of blue-collar work was at the heart of Marx’s theories. Unfortunately, the alarm over a reduction in the intrinsic meaning of work that Marx foresaw was assumed by intellectuals to have already taken over the production process. Blue-collar jobs at the extreme of Marx’s depiction of the

Conclusions and Implications

181

exploitive potential in industrial labor became the theoretical ideal-type of blue-collar work. Blue-collar work became known as meaningless, alienated labor, as the following quotation from sociologist Mike Donaldson shows: Work made meaningless by capitalist social relations is given significance by patriarchy. The necessity to do boring, repetitive, dirty, unhealthy, demeaning, self-destructive, mind-numbing, soul-destroying work is turned into a virtue. . . . Doing (some) manual work provides a source of self-esteem; a job is done that not everyone is willing, able or permitted to do. And yet the sense of self-esteem that is integral to masculinity, and so avidly sought in the world of work, is just as consistently eroded there. Masculinity involves being confident, dominant and self-sufficient [Donaldson cites Holloway (1983), 136]. These are the qualities that paid work destroys.2

Donaldson’s description of blue-collar work is about as negative as it could be. All manual labor is included in this description, thanks to the legacy of Marx, which makes it impossible to think positively about bluecollar work. Theories of scientific management also portrayed manual labor in a negative light, but there, unlike in Marxist theory, there was an assumption of inherent inferiority in the working class. The management theory detailed in Frederick Winslow Taylor’s important 1911 book Principles of Scientific Management made extreme claims about blue-collar workers that illustrate how the inferiority of the working class was built into the conceptual framework that guided social research. For example, Taylor writes: Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental makeup the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character. Therefore the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work. He is so stupid that the word “percentage” has no meaning to him, and he must consequently be trained by a man more intelligent than himself into the habit of working in accordance with the laws of this science before he can be successful.3

Taylor did not limit his negative opinion of blue-collar workers simply to material handlers: “In practically all of the mechanic arts the science

182

Working Class

which underlies each workman’s act is so great and amounts to so much that the workman who is best suited to actually doing the work is incapable, either through lack of education or through insufficient mental capacity, of understanding this science.”4 Taylor was an extreme example, though he was influential. Then again, in 1960 the negativity toward the working class was still an underlying assumption of theory. By then it had become less overt. In this example from the book Political Man, the prominent sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset claims that his depiction of working-class deficiencies has the backing of science: Several studies focusing on various aspects of working-class life and culture have emphasized different components of an unsophisticated perspective. Greater suggestibility, absence of a sense of past and future (lack of prolonged time perspective), inability to take a complex view, greater difficulty in abstracting from concrete experience, and lack of imagination (inner “reworking” of experience), each has been singled out by numerous students of quite different problems as characteristic of low status5

This award-winning book (the 1962 MacIver Award) inspired the derogatory portrayal of blue-collar work and working-class people by a generation of researchers, among them Melvin Kohn and Sennett and Cobb. These scholars paraphrased Lipset’s statements on the working class, building that negative description into their theoretical categories, and their writing is still widely cited today. The stereotypes of the working class that explained social inequality in the 1950s and 1960s were unwittingly incorporated into social theory by scholars who were unaware of the extent to which cultural biases informed their viewpoints. At that time, many biased assumptions, such as the superiority of Western societies, the privileges of whiteness, the naturalness of heterosexuality, and disregard for women were built into the conceptual framework of sociological theory, just as working-class inferiority was. Many of these theoretical suppositions have been challenged or corrected by postcolonial theory, critical race theory, queer theory, feminist theory, and other poststructural theoretical paradigms, but theories of class continue to reinforce the inferior identity of the working class. Before the sociological conception of class faced serious question in the wave of postmodern critique in the 1970s and 1980s, the concept had already been transformed into the tidy, precise, and reliable socioeconomic status index that hid the biases behind the appearance of mathematical accuracy.

Conclusions and Implications

183

Challenging the Hierarchy

Blue-collar work is not entirely negative. Social theories that define it as such were constructed using distorted logic and faulty interpretation of data. The negative conception of blue-collar work is the key to theoretical depictions of the social-class hierarchy. That is the underlying premise for defining the working class as inferior (and for identifying whitecollar professionals as superior). The subordinate status is verified for sociologists by the evidence of occupational-prestige surveys, empirical studies such as the Affluent Worker research, and by other misinterpretations of data. The belief that drives research on blue-collar work and on the working class is the supposition of working-class inferiority, based in blue-collar work. It clouds the interpretation of working-class behavior and survey data, and this assumption is built into theories that explain class dynamics. Let’s not forget that sociological depictions of the class structure have done enormous good over the years by dispelling myths that America is a “classless” society, showing that equal access to success is not open to all people regardless of their class circumstances. Sociologists have enhanced our understanding of structured inequality, which is the first step toward improving the distribution of social rewards. Scholars used empirical evidence to reveal the class divisions in society that create systemic advantages and disadvantages through the unequal distribution of resources. This important knowledge has raised awareness of inequality that is embedded in social institutions, making it possible to address imbalances in resources through social policy. Looking back on the twentieth century, it is difficult to imagine where our society would be if not for the enlightenment offered by social scientists. Looking forward, however, sociological theories about class inequality are an obstacle to change. When stratification theories represent the class structure in terms of specific resources, whether of prestige, income, authority, autonomy, power, or some combination of variables, they embody a shortcoming that follows a centuries-old pattern in Western society by conceiving of the social order as a linear, vertical hierarchy. It is important to identify the unequal distribution of particular resources, but there is a danger in defining the social order rigidly in those terms because each class then becomes associated with a specific rank relative to others in the social system. When depiction of the class structure recognizes only those variables whereby the working class is limited and the “middle” or “upper-middle” classes are relatively advantaged, even if those variables are measured accurately the identity of the working class is mistakenly

184

Working Class

seen as limited not just in those specific variables but across the board. Depicting the class structure in such narrow terms identifies some classes of people as generally inferior—beneath those classes that are ranked above them in the class system—because they are lacking in some particular set of resources that researchers have determined are salient. The rewarding aspects of the working-class position are discounted, and the label of inferiority then compounds those disadvantages from which that class already suffers. The positive and negative dimensions of working-class life, as for any social class, exist side by side. They shape people’s lives in complex ways, and to disentangle the good from the bad is impossible. In some dimensions, the economic elite live on Easy Street, while many in the “lower” classes are literally dying for their daily bread. Conversely, other dimensions of human life are experienced and celebrated only by those of meager means and with a physical connection to their productive labor. The working-class experience is defined in generally negative terms based on limited, albeit important, circumstances. Highly paid white-collar professionals are recognized as “upper middle class,” yet the negative dimensions of living and working in those circumstances—those dimensions in which their lives may be disadvantaged relative to the working class—are left out of the equation. Social inequality is too complex a phenomenon to consistently fit into a tidy model that depicts classes as consistently above or below one another. When theory singles out a limited set of variables as the determinant for the distribution of class position in a rigid hierarchy, even if that variable set is crucial to understanding the relative possession of social resources, entire classes are sweepingly and mistakenly defined as inferior. The disadvantages of class membership must be recognized, but exploitive circumstances need to be seen alongside the aspects of life that are a source of honor and satisfaction, particularly as defined through the values and perspectives of the people themselves. Concurrently, theory must acknowledge that conditions that give a class an advantage in terms of power, prestige, or income, which typically determine a position on the upper rungs of the social ladder, may come at the price of an inferior allotment of resources in other dimensions. There are logical reasons for inhabitants of each class to prefer their experience over the experiences of others. The blue-collar workers in this book describe several ways in which their work is superior to white-collar work. From their perspec-

Conclusions and Implications

185

tive, blue-collar jobs are preferable. At the very least, they said bluecollar positions are equally important as white-collar jobs. Many of the men considered white-collar jobs to be of little value, barely worthy of even being regarded as work. The meanings of work in the terms of the working-class men make blue-collar work a source of respect, importance, and worth. Work for white-collar professionals is defined in ways that recognize dignity, prosperity, and importance in different ways. There is no consistent measure of the relative importance or rank of social positions. Notions of superiority and inferiority, particularly related to other social classes that have different standards for judging dignity, honor, rewards, and quality, are so relative that objective means for determining where on the hierarchy other classes exist are impossible. Sociologists who have tried to construct a hierarchical representation of classes or occupations have been guided by value judgments—biased assumptions that clouded their interpretation of evidence. Rather than reflect inequality, such theoretical models may actually promote inequality. There are clear differences in work and other life experiences for inhabitants of the various social classes. Thinking of them as generally arranged in a hierarchy is a mistake. Social classes must be conceived as arranged on a horizontal plane, each superior or inferior to others in some dimensions but not in others. A hierarchical model may be a useful heuristic in some cases, but only when it is limited to specific aspects of class-based experiences along with the acknowledgment that in other ways the hierarchy may be reversed or nonexistent. Workers may be subordinate and de-skilled according to formal organizational models, but informally the situation is often quite different. The difficulties involved in blue-collar work can be negative, but they also produce important outcomes for individuals and for society. Working-class exploitation must be recognized alongside recognition of the rewards of skill and meaningful labor. Theoretical depictions of society as a vertical hierarchy were conceived via biased assumptions, improper methodologies, and faulty data analysis. They serve only to perpetuate injustice in the distribution of resources along class lines. The assertions of social science that define the class system in hierarchical terms are based on an incomplete understanding of blue-collar work, and that prejudiced conception is an important justification for a social system that looks down on workingclass people.

186

Working Class

A Call for Change

The argument and evidence of this text is not the last word on the meaning of blue-collar work, but it ought to prompt a reassessment of theories related to social class and work. Hopefully, it will draw plenty of critical attention. The accuracy of social science depends upon a reassessment, both of research related to social class and of the research methodologies that simplify the representation of social circumstances. The empirical evidence for depiction of the social-class system as a vertical hierarchy has been challenged, and evidence has been presented that reveals alternative, working-class understandings of the social-class system that regard blue-collar positions to be superior to white-collar positions in many ways. To the blue-collar workers in this research, the social system is horizontally structured. Stratification theory cannot continue to ignore the alternative perspective of working-class people. Science cannot base its theoretical categories only upon the cultural logic of the class represented by the scientists themselves. It must allow for a more complex and multidimensional depiction of the social order. There is also much more at stake than the accuracy of social research. Sociological theories, especially those regarding class inequalities, present justification for discriminating against blue-collar workers. The critique presented here challenges sociologists to overturn old conceptions of social inequality that define groups as above and below each other. Mobility is simply mobility, not “upward” or “downward” mobility. Changing class positions leads to improvements on some levels but disadvantages on others. Once the narrow, negative definitions of blue-collar work are expanded to multidimensional conceptions that acknowledge the positive as well as negative aspects of work, it becomes possible to envision a society in which all members are treated with dignity and respect. Calls for social justice and equitable distribution of rewards are impotent as long as the underlying identity of working-class people is formally defined as inferior. As currently construed, theories of social class—even Marxist theories that honor and defend blue-collar workers—devalue the working-class experience and make it impossible to practically conceive of a just and honorable distribution of society’s resources. Work of all types is better understood in its complexity, without narrow “good” or “bad” characterizations. From there, social divisions can be made less acute and even the concerns of white-collar workers can be addressed. The differences between white-collar and blue-collar work are not as profound as theory suggests through the devaluation of manual labor. This creates artificial divisions between occupational groups

Conclusions and Implications

187

that reduce their potential political force. The collective power of society’s workers would be tremendous if they were to recognize their common interests and unite on political issues of mutual concern. Reassessing the way work is conceptualized in sociological research is the starting point for dismantling the cultural bulwark that defies the creation of a more just, egalitarian, and democratic society. Through the critique of sociology’s definition of the concept, and with the presentation of data that supports an alternative conception of blue-collar work, this book aims to construct the logical foundation upon which a new social order may be built. The concept of blue-collar work in social research is the key thread through which the fabric of class inequality can be unraveled. From there can come insight into a number of society’s most glaring problems, each of which can trace either its origins or the obstacles to its solution to the devalued identity of blue-collar work.

The Broader Importance of Blue-Collar Work

An important step in expropriating resources from certain groups in society is the act of devaluing those groups, both in their identities and in their contributions. One example of such devaluation is the historical construction of the concept race, which was created to justify enslaving and conquering “others.”6 In a similar but less overt way, blue-collar workers have been devalued. Several of the interviews reported in this book contained the recognition by workers that their jobs had been defined as low-skilled so that their employers could justify lower wages or to reinforce lines of authority. Blue-collar labor is regarded negatively by management because it is profitable to do so. Others in the white-collar classes benefit in less explicit ways. They profit indirectly through the greater importance given to college training and to their professional skills. In addition, they receive the benefits of esteem that are granted them from others as well as from themselves. White-collar workers can feel superior to the working class even as they rely upon blue-collar workers for their everyday needs. From the comfort of their offices and suburban homes, the professional class is barely ever reminded that the offices in which they work must be built and maintained by working-class people, as are the roads and bridges on which they commute. Their mail is delivered, the electricity flows to their appliances, their trash is removed, and their lawns are manicured with barely any recognition of the skills and efforts required to make those things happen.

188

Working Class

The premise of working-class inferiority justifies the marginalization of the people who perform the necessary activities for making society run. It validates paying low wages to those in those jobs. It rationalizes the elimination of blue-collar jobs if they can be done elsewhere for lower cost. The same premise absolved the destruction of labor unions, many of which maintained standards of quality and taught the principles of quality to the rising generation of workers. It also excuses the deterioration of quality in the trades and in the products, now imported, that were once created by skilled craftspeople. Many contemporary trends have their roots in the devaluation of physical work: the outsourcing of manufacturing, the industrialization of agriculture, the collapse of local food production, and the promotion of consumerism and the creation of the consumer identity, as well as the subsequent indebtedness of individuals and governments. Some may argue that those trends have been positive, but it cannot be denied that the benefits have been distributed unevenly at best.7 A more defendable argument is that these changes have created the downward economic slide of postindustrial society. Enhancing the image of blue-collar work is integral to making the social changes necessary for improving the lives of working-class people, but it is also needed to balance the wider institutions that support social stability. One of the criticisms leveled against the research in this book was that it lacked relevance. One anonymous reviewer questioned the importance of interviews with workers from industries in decline, as though blue-collar jobs will disappear. The retort offered here is that, to the contrary, blue-collar jobs are, far from being important only as history, even more important for the future. It is doubtful that anything short of rebuilding the productive capacity of the economy will turn around the institutional troubles that plague society. Economic stability depends upon the creation of value that can occur only through the extraction and production of raw materials and through the transformation of those materials into value-added commodities through labor. In order for that added value to be realized, the producers of value must have highenough wages to drive the economy through their consumption.8 The illusion of wealth creation from speculation, from currency manipulation, and from compound interest that is at the heart of the United States economy today is not sustainable.9 The social problems that extend from the deterioration of blue-collar jobs are enormous, but elaboration of such a large topic will have to be left for a sequel. For now it will suffice to say that sociological depictions

Conclusions and Implications

189

of blue-collar work are inadequate. The limitations of dominant theories on work and class have consequences that go far beyond merely misrepresenting manual workers in obscure social-science endeavors. The misunderstanding of blue-collar work is related to many problems affecting working-class people, and it extends into the problems of the general society and beyond. Solving such problems will not be easy, but it starts with the critique of one simple idea: sociologists must work through the concept of class to come up with a representation of social difference that does not insinuate inferiority and superiority in general classes of people. That work will be challenging, and it may be stressful and time consuming. Several negative factors are associated with a career in sociology, as in any job, but positively impacting the beliefs by which people identify each other can be among the endeavor’s more honorable aspects.

Notes 1. Beeghley (2005), The Structure of Social Stratification in the United States, 213. 2. Donaldson (1987), “Labouring Men: Love, Sex, and Strife,” 167–168. 3. Taylor [1911] (1998), The Principles of Scientific Management, 28. 4. Ibid., 50. 5. Lipset [1960] (1981), Political Man, 108. Notice the similarity between Lipset’s description of the working class and the description of those in poverty given by Oscar Lewis in the preceding chapter. 6. See Smedley (1998), “‘Race’ and the Construction of Human Identity.” 7. The ratio of income between the average worker and the average CEO mushroomed from 40:1 in 1980 to 419:1 by 1997 (Kevin Phillips cited a 1999 Wall Street Journal article when he gave this statistic in 2004 in his American Dynasty, 66). Top executives continue to reward themselves with multimillion dollar payouts, directly at taxpayer expense in recent years (see Naomi Klein’s 2008 article “The New Trough”), even as the earnings of most Americans have fallen below those of their counterparts in the 1970s (reported in the 2009 textbook Introduction to Sociology (221), where Giddens et al. calculate changes in income over time from US Census and Bureau of Labor statistics). Sadly, Americans are working more hours to earn fewer dollars, while their medical benefits and retirement prospects are dwindling. The solutions to these problems offered by government, academic, and industry leaders consistently demand more of the policies that created the problems in the first place: more free trade, outsourcing, expanding the service sector, and pushing more citizens into college for training in white-collar professions. 8. See Walters (2003), Unforgiven. 9. Brown (2010), The Web of Debt.

Appendix: Methodology and Data

I DID THE FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH FOR this study while I worked

for a small, nonunion masonry company in the summer and fall of 1991. Fifteen years later, I was still employed by the same masonry company, although I had by then acquired the skills of a mason rather than simply those of a laborer, as in 1991. At that time, the company built block walls, did brick work, flat concrete work (such as floors, sidewalks, pool decks, etc.), and poured concrete foundations. The family business was started by the father, who was then partially retired, and is now run by his two sons. Eight other men worked with the company during the seven months in which I recorded observations. Most of them worked for a few weeks at a time and had worked for the company in the past. They were all white, ranged in age from middle twenties to early thirties, and mostly knew each other through having grown up in the same geographical area. Many, if not most, had not graduated from high school (as was the case with the business’s elder brother), and many had been in trouble with the law. No women worked at this company at this time; nor had women ever done so. I chose this business as my site for observation for many reasons. First, I had worked with the company for the preceding two summers and was well accepted by all those associated with the business. A workingclass friend from the local area near the university I was attending had given me the name of this company when I needed summer employment in 1989. I was hired as a laborer. The company owner was impressed with my work and retained me for whenever I desired work. I began as a laborer, and as I gained experience and knowledge I was taught most of the skills required in masonry and pouring concrete foundations. My identity was as an insider of the group. 191

192

Working Class

From my experience with masonry work, I recognized that this would be an appropriate setting in which to address the question that Robert and Helen Lynd had asked in their Middletown study in 1929: “Why do they work so hard?” The question is appropriate when considering the work done by this masonry company. In a word, the work was difficult. Everything about the work was heavy, from hauling around the forms used in pouring concrete walls to pulling the concrete itself and finishing it when pouring floors. Building walls with cement block was no relief, and all the while the pace demanded by the company owners called for tremendous physical exertion. Masonry work involves working with dirt. It is always begun on the ground or in the ground—the latter to get below the winter frost line, to prevent frozen earth from heaving the foundation and everything resting upon it as the ground expands after the freeze. So the work is dirty, and muddy when there is wet weather. Developers usually denude the environment when building a housing development, so there are no trees for shade from the sun in summer, no grass to prevent mud in spring, and nothing to stop the wind in winter. Working around heavy, sharp objects on rough terrain at an exhausting pace leads to many injuries. Days are often measured not by how much work has been accomplished but by how much blood has been spilled. I wondered why people do this work. At a starting wage of around seven dollars an hour, it seemed there must be easier ways of earning a living. Even the owners of the company barely held on financially. Work slowed in the winter, often wiping out savings from working long hours in the summer. Times had been good in the past, but real-estate development is a cyclical industry and the end of the decade of the 1980s brought recession and retraction, particularly in the construction industry. As with many blue-collar jobs, workers arrived home at the end of the day exhausted, dirty, and unable to afford the status symbols of privilege and comfort. It is no wonder that professional-class observers conclude that such a life is the result of limited choices. It appears as though that type of worker has such limited human capital that a different kind of employment is beyond reach. From a professional-class viewpoint, the only logical explanation for taking on such labor is that the social structure has placed these people in the cruel position of having few options. As a participant observer, however, I could see that there was more motivating these workers than simply the need for income in a society that granted few alternatives. I recorded field notes after I returned home from work each day. My identity as a researcher was de-emphasized. I kept my note-taking secret, although I had expressed my interest in writing about what it is

Appendix

193

like to be a worker and that my experiences would serve as the basis for such a manuscript. I began recording observations of why the men worked as they did. However, I quickly narrowed my focus to concentrate on the multidimensional meaning of work to the worker.1 Twenty-one individuals were observed that summer and fall of 1991. This number would have been greater had it not been for the hardhitting recession that limited the number of employees a small company could maintain. At one point, work became so slow that I was forced to take other employment, with a framing crew, as a laborer working for six dollars an hour. I chose the framing crew in order to investigate a different type of construction work. A friend had notified me that the crew was in need of a worker after a man had an accident with a circular saw, severing all the fingers of his left hand. I recorded my experiences and conversations with ten framers in the company for the few weeks I worked with them. Then my job with the masons was reinstated. Some sociologists have written that working-class people’s desire for monetary reward and the commodities money could bring were the only motivation for working the jobs they do.2 My grounded, hypothesisgathering study produced evidence that made this explanation unsatisfactory. The observed workers were proud of their occupation, derived satisfaction from its performance, perceived respect from their peers through work, and displayed a sense of superiority over associated white-collar workers in terms of technical knowledge and ability. While monetary reward remains an important dimension of work’s meaning, preliminary research suggested that there are multiple dimensions of the meaning of work that are also important for the performance of bluecollar work and for the identities of blue-collar workers. This is consistent with the findings of Loscocco.3 I developed themes from the several dimensions of meaning that were observed in the masonry work group. I analyzed field notes by searching for themes that appeared often and seemed to be related to each other. The themes were categorized and interview questions were developed so that each theme could be addressed further in a semistructured interview. The interviews sought to clarify what some of the dimensions of work are, how they relate to the lives of working-class men (at work and beyond), and what is the logic by which blue-collar work is considered meaningful. The interview schedule is included below. Each of the questions responds to issues that are recorded in numerous places throughout the field data. After systematic analysis, my field notes suggested, among other things: (1) College education, especially as the exclusive source of knowledge among industry “experts,” has been devalued among these

194

Working Class

construction workers, at least at a surface level; (2) Work that requires intense effort is regarded favorably and is granted status. Those who do such work are respected. Status related to occupation is understood by some as a function of the physical effort required, with skill and knowledge factored into this equation; (3) Improving one’s material standard of living through struggling physically and financially is admired. These issues were the focus of the second phase of research. My observations suggested that work has a multidimensional meaning for these construction workers. In order for construction workers to describe the meaning of work in their own words, I interviewed a sample of fifteen such workers. In order to make a comparison, I also interviewed sixteen men with blue-collar factory jobs. The interviews were semistructured and open ended—a type of interview most suited for allowing each worker to describe in depth the meaning of his experiences and feelings.4

Interviews

Each interview took its own direction, depending on how the interviewee responded to questions: the interviewer “does not explicitly define boundaries for the respondent.”5 When one question led to a response that covered another question, that other question was not asked. Probes, or follow-up questions, were used to elicit further information if unexpected, relevant issues arose during the interview (see Table B on page 208). This semistructured format allowed for the respondent to speak candidly, in his own words. However, it also meant that no two interviews necessarily followed the same course. I wanted to know if workers themselves described their work as intrinsically meaningful and important to their gender identity. I also asked about workers’ understanding of their own position in the overall social-class structure. I had a number of reasons for choosing to interview construction workers. As already seen, I had been granted access, and working in the industry taught me the vocabulary and the job requirements, allowing me to speak in the construction workers’ own language. My skill and work abilities enhanced my access to this population. Construction work also allowed for the investigation of a group of blue-collar workers that does not fit the stereotype that academics consider when referring to working-class people. As described by Jeffrey Riemer,6 building construction workers are autonomous, multiskilled specialists. The physical and mental demands of this field provide an opportunity for male con-

Appendix

195

struction workers to fulfill gender role prescriptions of strength, skill, and intellectual ability. Because of the level of skill and autonomy associated with construction work, work may mean different things for construction workers than it does for people working in a more controlled, de-skilled environment. Factory workers provide a good comparative case because they, to a great extent, are described by the scholarly literature as lacking the autonomy and high skill levels of construction workers. Factory work and construction work are on the opposite ends of the occupational spectrum, according to researchers such as Arthur Stinchcombe. 7 Factory work is also the “ideal type” of blue-collar work in the literature. Hence, factory workers were selected because their work situation can be considerably different than that of construction work. This comparison shows that attitudes and values regarding work are similar across occupational categories, suggesting that they may be based in a commonly held “working-class culture.” Snowball techniques were used in gathering a sample, beginning with individuals I knew personally. This sampling method allowed me to interview people who knew me as one who relates to the workingclass experience. This may have helped to establish a blue-collar identity when I was introduced to others who did not know me. I gained access to four of the workers from locomotive plants after snowballing from an assembler I met while pouring the foundation for his new house. I personally worked with about half of the construction workers in the sample. Others were working on houses in the same development in which my crew was pouring foundations. I approached them about participating in my study after work, when it was obvious from my appearance that I had been working with concrete all day. The winder at the turbine factory was a student of mine at the local community college. The future construction worker also had been a student of mine while I was teaching social studies at a high school. A fellow teacher at the high school introduced me to the shipping and receiving worker when we visited the air-compressor factory where the teacher had worked the previous summer. One factory worker interview was arranged through his union, and one factory worker was a customer of mine when I owned and operated a general store. Other interviews were arranged with “my wife’s friend’s brother” and “the brother of a friend,” and basically anyone I ran into that worked in a factory or in construction. I drove around the area looking for factories in which to attempt gaining access. I was denied at all factories except an automotive machine shop, and there I gained two inter-

196

Working Class

views. The construction workers generally knew me as a worker. Those that did not, like all the factory workers, I made aware of my identity as a mason. This image was useful in establishing me as an insider. As many of the factory workers commented, “If you’re a mason, you know what hard work is all about.” As I argue below, the identity of the interviewer may be crucially related to getting valid responses. An effort was made at the beginning of each interview to emphasize my role as a mason and my experience with other blue-collar occupations in an attempt to lessen the extent to which I was identified as a professional-class academic. Some of the factory workers were impressed when I revealed that I have workingclass roots: one of my grandfathers was a union machinist; my other grandfather was a union plumber; and I made it known that my father (though in management) worked in the Uniroyal factory in my home town, Detroit—famed as a heavily unionized industrial center. The interview schedule focused on (1) the factors that led the individual to work in his particular occupation; (2) pride in work; (3) the relationship of masculinity to the performance of the job and to identity; (4) perceptions of white-collar work and workers; (5) attitudes toward college education; and (6) preferences for the interviewee’s children’s future regarding occupation and college. The definition of “real work” became an issue after it came up during the first several interviews. I looked for differences as well as similarities between the factory workers and the construction workers. Interviews took place in a variety of settings. Occasionally I met workers at a local pub, diner, restaurant, or cafe. One interview took place at a VFW hall and one was done at a table in a convenience store. Several interviews were conducted in the home of the informant, while two of the factory workers came to my home. One man gave an interview in the general store that my wife and I owned during a slow season when customer patronage was infrequent and interruption was rare. Two construction workers gave interviews at the job site after the workday was over, and one provided an interview on his lunch hour. One of the factory workers took me to a back office of the factory where the interview took place on his lunch break. Another factory worker was interviewed at the union hall where he was a member. Confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed. Interviews that were conducted during a lunch break were generally less than an hour, but most others took considerably longer than that. Many informants were anxious to have their working-class experience acknowledged and were excited to share their thoughts and opinions. Interviews were tape-recorded and verbatim transcripts were typed for coding purposes, using the “cut and paste” method of coding.

Appendix

197

Interview transcripts were analyzed and coded to represent particular themes. Themes included: (1a) the degree of choice the interviewee had in accepting his current occupation; (1b) the interviewee possessed college experience and previously had a white-collar job but currently had a blue-collar job; (2) enjoyment of work; (3) positives of the job; (4) negatives of the job; (5a) “men’s work”; (5b) dangerous, dirty, arduous work; (6) money; (7) physical toughness; (8) mental/manual aspects; (9a) conception of white-collar work; (9b) white-collar mistakes; (10) why not want a white-collar (office) job? (11) white-collar compensation; (12) importance, or lack of importance, of white-collar work; (13a) did the interviewee look down on white-collar workers? (13b) did he see them looking down on blue-collar? (14a) the importance of experiential knowledge; (14b) skill; (15) is white-collar superior? (16) Does a whitecollar person see the whole production process? Worker statements were coded as they fit into each of the above categories and grouped together as evidence of reflections on a particular theme.

Identity Issues

One of the problems for middle-class researchers who attempt to investigate the meaning of work for working-class people is that the middleclass researcher is seen as an outsider. Lawrence Ouellet has argued that researchers may not be judged as worthwhile individuals to whom workers can express satisfaction in their work.8 He explains that workers prefer not to admit to enjoying work that they know professionals consider demeaning, so may not tell the truth when asked about job satisfaction. Paul Willis, William Pilcher, and David Collinson9 each add that mental labor, done by the social researcher, may identify the researcher as inferior in the eyes of the working-class laborers. Social theories, conceived under a professional-class conception of status, often fail to recognize the different ways in which the working class orients itself to the world, making the gathering of valid data problematic. Katherine Archibald remarks that academics stand out among the workers in a shipyard regardless of attempts made by academics to conceal their identity. 10 Archibald also mentions “resentment and contempt” toward such individuals. My status as a college student gave me a dubious identity. Had my work ability not completely convinced the crew that I was “one of them,” they would not have been willing to share their personal beliefs and opinions with me. My own identity as a “college boy” was occa-

198

Working Class

sionally the object of teasing and sarcastic remarks during the first five or six years, but my sustained full-time employment and skill as a mason eventually distanced my identity from that of a scholar or graduate student. I went to great lengths to lessen my identity as an outsider to the work environment in order to gain valid data. My residence was in a working-class community. My hobbies and recreational activities were those that are associated with the working class and have included many individuals who are part of my sample. I had a long history as a worker and I was a valuable employee. That allowed me to be accepted as a worker by the men I work with daily. My identity as a working-class man was an important part of my research strategy. Because I could relate to the working-class experience, I believe that other workers were willing to give me information that they probably would not have shared with someone perceived as an outsider. My identity also allowed me access to people who otherwise would not regard me as one of similar background. A working-class friend of mine said when introducing me to one of his friends, “Don’t worry. He’s not like the rest of those students. This guy’s a mason.” As a blue-collar worker myself, I was seen as someone who could relate to the men’s experience. I had personally worked with some of the informants, and I had firsthand experience that gave me an inside view of the nature of other construction jobs. Since I was a mason, even the factory workers assumed that I was a hard worker and that I was committed to my trade. The workers could speak of the enjoyment of their work without fear of me thinking negatively of them for doing so. I was also able to recognize statements that were not completely forthright. My identity as “one of them” was important in helping the men to feel at ease when interviewed. For example, the winder from the turbine factory said in his interview, “I feel that I earn my money when I get dirty. Like today, the way I look today. I said [to my girlfriend], ‘I’m going over to [the interview in a diner].’ She said, ‘Aren’t you going to clean up?’ I said, ‘This is Jeff. There is nobody else. He’s a construction worker. He’s just like me. He knows what you look like when you work all day.’” It is likely that my identity as a fellow worker allowed the men to give a more honest assessment of their beliefs and attitudes because they knew that I could relate to their experience. There was the potential for me to influence the thoughts of those I worked with because of the strong presence I have on the job. Being an active and important member of the group may have influenced the lives and attitudes of those under observation, but I argue that this had a smaller impact on the validity of the data than would the attempt to

Appendix

199

gather information by a researcher who was not accepted in that way. As a participant observer, I could also observe individuals in a natural setting and without direct indication that behaviors and statements would be recorded for study. Information gathered was not tainted by workers’ perceptions that research was being conducted. Information was later offered in interviews with the assumption (accurate in most cases) that I could personally relate to the worker’s attitudes. Controlling for Gender

Because of the important role that gender identity plays in the meaning of work, I have controlled for gender by including only men in this research. I am aware of the problem, common in years past, of basing conclusions related to groups consisting of men and women (such as social class) upon investigation of men only. Because of the important role masculinity plays in the research literature regarding working-class men, and because of the theorized importance of masculinity in the meaning of work for those in this study, I have excluded women in order to narrow my focus. Given the importance of masculine gender identities and their relationship to the performance of blue-collar labor for men, it is essential that the meaning of blue-collar work for women be addressed as it relates to women’s experience. I regret not including the views of women in this study, but that was beyond the scope of possibilities for research on this scale. I would like to see further research undertaken, specifically to address the meaning of work for workingclass women, the role of feminine gender identity in this meaning, and the implications of masculine definitions of blue-collar work for women who engage in such occupations. The Sample

The interview sample consisted of thirty-one men, each of whom had a blue-collar job either in the construction trades, including laborers, or in a factory (see Table A on page 206). The diversity of skill levels and job descriptions in the sample reflects that of the jobs in each of these industries. As for the factory workers, only two of the men worked on what could be called an assembly line. Two of the larger factories represented in the sample produced locomotives and large turbines in which assemblers and other workers did not have a work position at which products stereotypically moved past them on an assembly line. Rather, they performed their tasks on and around an object that weighed up to several

200

Working Class

hundred tons and was fixed in one place. Neither was a machinist from the turbine factory on an assembly line; he operated a machine at his station and was paid a piece rate. Other factory workers represented in the sample were support workers, machine operators, and warehouse or shipping and receiving workers. About one-half of the factory workers were employed by small factories, while the other half worked for large multinational corporations. The skills of the workmen ranged from simply material handlers to semiskilled machine operators to skilled craftsmen. Workers’ experience ranged from the highest-paid pieceworker in a huge multinational conglomerate who was about to retire to young men still learning to operate their machines. A union represented ten of the sixteen factory workers. The fifteen construction workers similarly represented a wide range of job categories. One-third of the construction workers were laborers, two in the union and three that were not. Three of the tradesmen were carpenters, one of whom was in a union, and one was the supervisor of the construction site. There was a mason, an electrician, and a painter. Two construction workers who were heavy equipment operators, skilled at running the excavation and site-work machinery. One of these men belonged to the operator’s union. Of the two remaining construction workers, one was sole proprietor of a general construction business whose skills included all aspects of building a house, the other a young man soon to enter a construction-technology course of study at a state college with the intention of developing a career as a construction worker. The latter, who already had some experience in the building trades, was included in the sample to lend insight into why a young man who recently graduated high school with honors would choose construction work as a career goal in spite of a multitude of academic options. Five of the construction workers (one-third) were union members. The men in my sample had a wide variety of skill levels. Of the factory workers, slightly less than one-third possessed craft knowledge that could be transferred to the factories of other companies. Among them were a pipe fitter, two welders, a printer, and a maintenance worker. A warehouse worker possessed skills that could be transferred to other factories, but this man is not considered to be a craftsman. It was unclear if the shipping-and-receiving worker’s skills were too specific to his company to be easily transferred to another factory, but they probably could be. A machinist who owned his own machine shop definitely was a craftsman. The skills of one-half of the factory workers were specific to the factories in which they worked. Their skills were highly developed, but they were learned with the limited objective of performing a narrow-

Appendix

201

ly defined task within the production process. Two of the men worked on what could be considered an assembly line and had jobs requiring the least amount of skill. The sample of construction workers ran the gamut of skill and authority levels. Four of the men clearly possessed craft knowledge within their chosen trade. These men could perform virtually any task in a wide range of jobs and conditions. To use the example of a mason, he must, in order to be considered a craftsman, have expertise with anything masonry. This includes brick, stone, block, flat concrete finishing, and poured concrete walls and footings. It also includes structural and decorative aspects of all these mediums for residential and commercial applications. A mason must have experience enough to interpret the best way to do a job regardless of an almost infinite number of variables that may complicate the task. Of the carpenters, two had such knowledge within their trade, although for one of them his knowledge went beyond the carpentry trade but was specific to the residential housing market. The electrician’s knowledge and abilities were sophisticated. He had wired houses, but also could design, diagnose, install, and repair the most sophisticated electronic circuitry and systems. A fifth man, an operator of excavation equipment, had achieved the highest level of advancement within his trade and could expertly operate any heavy equipment in any environment. Other construction workers were highly skilled at what they did but had not reached the level of craftsman. One operator of excavation equipment could run most machines around a construction site but did not have the experience of the operator mentioned above. Three other workers had craft knowledge, but this knowledge was not as complete as that of the craftsmen; for example, the concrete worker who knew almost everything there is to know about setting up and pouring concrete foundations, footings, and piers as it applies to commercial as well as residential construction had no experience with other types of masonry. One of the carpenters could perform any task involving wood that is related to building a house, but his skills were not far beyond what is necessary to be a framer, and they were limited to the residential market. One man whom I have labeled as a mason’s laborer had begun his own business in which he used his masonry experience to build retaining walls and patios of brick pavers, but his skill level was not that of a mason. The skill level of the painter is difficult to classify. He is very good at painting, hanging wallpaper, and much more; but mastering that trade is not as complicated as some of the others. The builder, though highly skilled and with advanced theoretical knowledge of the entire

202

Working Class

industry, must be considered “a jack of all trades, master of none” because he is not a craftsman in any particular field; he can, however, do the basics concerning almost anything to do with building a house. On a building site, laborers are at the bottom of the hierarchy ladder. Often their job consists simply of moving objects from one place to another, but frequently they must perform duties that are quite complicated. Good laborers understand the entire construction process of the tradesmen they are laboring under; the sample, however, includes experienced laborers as well as laborers that were just starting out and had only rudimentary knowledge of the production process. Lastly, the future construction worker had little experience in construction and had not yet worked a regular, full-time job in the trades.

How the Workers Came to Their Jobs

Several men took on their blue-collar jobs as a result of limited choices. A fifty-two-year-old carpenter recalled being in college studying music when he learned he would be a father. He needed immediate, steady employment that could support a family. He had a music student who happened to belong to a local carpenters’ union, and the student got him in. A second man also was in college, studying to be an electrician, when his girlfriend became pregnant. The situation led him to the concrete masonry company of his brother-in-law, where he was a laborer. A construction supervisor also had early family responsibilities, while he was in high school, and he found employment building houses with his older brothers. One other man reported his high-school girlfriend becoming pregnant. The event led him to choose to leave school to join his father’s line of work as a mason. He already had experience at the trade and was making at least the average annual income for that line of work. Spending valuable hours in class in order to complete high school seemed not to provide many advantages, and it kept him out of work. Another construction worker, a laborer, went to work for a masonry business owned by a friend’s father after he was kicked out of high school. This person was thinking of working as a cook at the time, but construction provided a greater income. He enjoys his current occupation, but revealed regret for the mistake that cost him his high-school diploma. Only one of the men in the sample had a parent with a white-collar job—in this case, the man’s mother. Two men reported having whitecollar stepfathers at the time of the interviews. It is significant that all of

Appendix

203

those in the sample were of working-class origins. In a working-class family, children see examples of what is possible and expected as potential employment. They learn that blue-collar work has, at least, a reasonable potential for earning a living, and, at most, is the right or best way of livelihood. Just as professional-class children learn professional-class tastes, values, and expectations, along with expectations that their careers will be white-collar, working-class children gain a worldview that makes membership in the ranks of blue-collar workers reasonable and, perhaps, desirable. Eight of the men followed in a father’s (or uncle’s or elder brother’s) footsteps to become second-generation, if not third-generation, tradesmen or factory workers. They learned skills from working with their older relatives, usually the father, and had an advanced ability to earn a living at an earlier age than most. This experience also brought the young men into an occupational culture that imbued their work with honor. Two of the men recalled that as teenagers working with “men” and not “boys” made them feel mature. The kids looked up to the older family members who were proud of their work. Two others worked summer jobs in and around construction sites and were acclimated to the work at an early age. They were given responsibility, not to mention money, which surpassed that of their peers. The most common reason for taking on work in a factory or in construction was that the pay was decent. As discussed below, income was the primary reason for working, and considerations of intrinsic meaning for one’s work could only be achieved from one’s job if the income met an acceptable minimum.11 The interview data presented in this book spell out many ways that the men define construction and factory work positively, but they might not have taken such work to begin with if the pay had not been adequate. Older men in the sample spoke of the days when they took blue-collar work as different from today. They claimed that in those days going into the blue-collar workforce was more stable and could be relied upon to support a family more so than today. Even so, younger men as well as older men gave the need to earn money as the factor that originally took them to the factory or construction site. As discussed in Chapter 4, many of the interviewed workingmen had feasible opportunities to take white-collar jobs. A thirty-eight-yearold assembler at a locomotive factory had been to college in the Air Force and had had more than four hundred people working under him while in the service; he did not, however, pursue a management position in the civilian economy. A mechanical job was what he wanted upon retiring from the military. Most men, however, did not see white-collar

204

Working Class

work as an option. Many of them did not want it; others did not have the prerequisites for it. A machinist from an automotive machine shop said that his grades were too poor for advancement to college. Four of the men never finished high school. Six others were from poor backgrounds and college did not appear to be an option for financial reasons. Four of these six were young enough to live in an era where financial aid existed and they surely were of low enough income to qualify. Their workingclass background probably played a role in producing a worldview in which this alternative was not considered. A highly skilled welder did have a bachelor of science degree from a prestigious technical university. Some of the men had some college; for example, another factory welder. He began college after high school but dropped out: “I wanted to make money. I wasn’t getting good grades. My head wasn’t into it; I wasn’t really studying.” Another man stopped attending college just one semester shy of graduating as an accountant, deciding he did not want that profession. Two other men had attended college courses while in the armed services. A painter who owned his own house-painting business spoke of having a full scholarship to North Carolina State University to study environmental science, but he gave it up to stay with a woman with whom he had fallen in love.

Sample Size

The sample—thirty-one men—is not large. Access to factory workers became problematic as factory management closed me out of interaction at all but two small shops. My full-time job—in fact, full-time-plus— enhanced my identity as a blue-collar worker, but it also made scheduling of interviews problematic. It was another factor, however, that was responsible for my finally settling on the relatively small sample size: remarkable consistency in the interview responses from men in diverse situations and occupations made further sampling appear redundant. And anyway, quality research based upon in-depth, open-ended interviews can never gather the sample size large enough to be generalizable to a population as large as “the working class.” Continuing to push for a greater n would increase the validity of this research only in symbolic ways. Conclusive, generalizable findings are never the goal of research such as this. Rather, I seek to present evidence that is rich, deep, and open to the multidimensional conditions of people who are free to discuss their beliefs and attitudes in their own words and at their own pace. Because of

Appendix

205

the richness of the data, insight into the thoughts and behaviors of the informants goes beyond that which is achieved through quantitative research12 and is suggestive, but only suggestive, that conclusions pertain to others as well. I am confident in the accuracy of the findings and, while I often claim this evidence to be reflective of a general working-class culture, such claims are only suggestive. I can make no legitimate generalizations from my findings to other groups or circumstances. The conclusions of this research ought not be assumed as true across all social circumstances, but, rather, as insight that may direct further investigation into the meanings of work for different occupational cases, in different regions, for different gender and racial groups, and even for different social classes. I hope that quantitative research can be done using the information that this qualitative study has produced so that generalizations can be made, but caution must be taken so that the multidimensional properties that make up meaning systems remain intact in respondent’s answers. Also, even for qualitative researchers, issues of identity must be considered in order to maintain validity.

Notes 1. See Glaser and Strauss (1967), Discovery of Grounded Theory, 35–39, for discussion of allowing concepts to emerge from the data. 2. For example, see Lynd and Lynd (1929), Middletown; Goldthorpe et al. (1968), Affluent Worker; Moorhouse (1983),”American Automobiles and Worker’s Dreams,” 403–426. 3. Loscocco (1989), “Instrumentally Oriented Factory Worker,” 3–25. 4. Richardson, Dohrenwend, and Klein (1965), Interviewing, 260; see also Weiss (1994), Learning from Strangers, 2–3. 5. Ibid. 6. Riemer (1979), Hard Hats, 159–160. 7. Stinchcombe (1959), “Bureaucratic and Craft Administration of Production,” 168–187. 8. Ouellet (1994), Pedal to the Metal. 9. Willis (1977), Learning to Labour; Pilcher (1972), Portland Longshoremen; Collinson (1992), Managing the Shopfloor. 10. Archibald (1953), “Status Orientations Among Shipyard Workers,” 398. 11. See Ouellet (1994), Pedal to the Metal. 12. See Fantasia (1984), Cultures of Solidarity, 5–8; Weiss, Learning from Strangers, 2–3.

Table A Characteristics of the Sampled Blue-Collar Workers Construction Workers (15 total)

Occupation carpenter carpenter supervisor/ carpenter laborer laborera laborer

206

masona,b electrician excavator excavator general contractorb laborerb laborer painterb,c student in construction technology

Age

Union member

Craftsman/ transferable skills

residential commercial

34 52

yes

yes

residential commercial residential/ commercial commercial/ residential residential residential/ commercial commercial residential

35 63

yes

yes

29

yes

yes

31 32

yes

51 37 27

yes yes

residential residential residential residential

31 30 29 45

Sector worked in

Intermediatelevel/plantspecific skills

Lower-end skills

yes

Worked for one company regularly

College experience

yes

Followed father yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes yes

yes yes yes

yes

yes

yes yes yes

yes

18

Notes: a. Never graduated high school; b. Owned the company; c. Had white-collar experience in the past.

yes

yes yes yes

yes (continues)

Table A (continued) Characteristics of the Sampled Blue-Collar Workers Factory Workers (16 total)

Occupation assembly line assembly line assembler assemblerc

207

winder machinista welder welderd pipe fitter warehouse laborer mechanic/welder shipping and receivingc machine operatora machinistb short-shop cuttera printera

Type of plant confectionery factory insulation factory locomotive factory locomotive factory turbine factory turbine factory locomotive factory factory silicone factory book-printing factory felt factory air-compressor factory automotive machine shop automotive machine shop sawmill paper mill

Craftsman/ transferable skills

Intermediatelevel/plantspecific skills

Age

Union member

49

yes

yes

31

yes

yes

39

yes

yes

38 42 60

yes yes yes

37 46 53

yes

31 49

yes

37

yes

yes

Locally owned company

yes

College experience

yes yes

yes yes yes yes yes

yes

yes yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes yes yes

yes yes

Followed father

yes yes

yes yes

yes

32 39 47 71

Lower-end skills

yes

yes

Notes: a. Never graduated high school; b. Owned the company; c. Had white-collar experience in the past; d. Identified himself as black. All others were ethnically European.

208

Working Class

Table B Interview Schedule

The interview schedule contained the following questions (potential follow-up questions, uncapitalized, appear indented beneath the question). 1. What do you do? How long have you been doing this job? • when did you decide to be a [interviewee’s occupation]? • how did you come to have the job you do? 2. When you were young, what did you want to be? • what influenced your decision? • what were your friends doing? • did your parents influence you as to what to do? • did your parents influence your work ethic? 3. What do you like/dislike about your job? Why? • how do others view your work? • how/why is it something to take pride in? • do you work hard? why? • where did you learn “how to work”? 4. Have you ever thought of having an office/white-collar job? • why/why not? • would that have been easier? • what do you think of college education? • what do you think about those that do white-collar work? 5. Do you work with women? What is it/would it be like? • why aren’t there women doing this job? • do you consider this man’s work? • then what is manly work? • who does it? who doesn’t? • how important is it for you to do man’s work? 6. What do you want your children to do for a living? • what are your hopes, expectations for them? • will you try to influence what they do for a living? • what about college? 7. What do you think a workingman’s chances are of getting to the top in society? • how do you think the workingman fares in terms of who does the work and who receives the benefits? • do you think about this often/ever? • how do you deal with this? do you get angry?

Bibliography

Adler, Paul S., ed. 1992. Technology and the Future of Work. New York: Oxford University Press. Ainley, Pat. 1993. Class and Skill: Changing Divisions of Knowledge and Labour. London: Cassell. Applebaum, Herbert. 1993. Construction Workers, USA. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Archibald, Katherine. 1953. “Status Orientations Among Shipyard Workers.” In Class, Status, and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification, ed. Reinhard Bendix and Semour Martin Lipset. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Attwell, Paul. 2005. “Skill and Occupational Changes in U.S. Manufacturing.” In Technology and the Future of Work, ed. Paul S. Adler. New York: Oxford University Press. Beeghley, Leonard. 2005. The Structure of Social Stratification in the United States. 4th ed. Boston: Pearson. Bender, Frederick L. 1988. “Historical and Theoretical Backgrounds of the Communist Manifesto.” In The Communist Manifesto, ed. Frederick L. Bender. New York: W. W. Norton. Bendix, Reinhardt. 1956. Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization. New York: Wiley. Berry, Wendell. 1996. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Beynon, Huw, and Robert Martin Blackburn. 1972. Perceptions of Work: Variation Within a Factory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blau, Peter M., and Otis Dudley Duncan. 1967. The American Occupational Structure. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Blauner, Robert. 1964. Alienation and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. In Other Words. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Braverman, Harry. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press.

209

210

Bibliography

Brock, Karen, and Rosemary McGee. 2002. Knowing Poverty: Critical Reflections on Participatory Research and Policy. London: Earthscan. Brooks, David. 2007. “Truck Stop Confidential.” New York Times, August 14; accessed http:// topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/ columnists/davidbrooks/ index. html?inline=nyt-per. Brown, Ellen Hodgson. 2010. The Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. 4th ed. Baton Rouge, LA: Third Millennium Press. Burawoy, Michael. 1998. “The Extended Case Method.” Sociological Theory 16, no. 1: 4–33. _______. 1979. Manufacturing Consent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cass, Bettina, and Henrietta Resler. 1978. “Some Thoughts on Reading Norman Blaikie’s ‘The Meaning and Measurement of Occupational Prestige.’” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 14, no. 1: 78–80. Catano, James V. 2001. Ragged Dicks: Masculinity, Steel, and the Rhetoric of the Self-Made Man. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press. Chambers, Robert. 2005. Ideas for Development. London: Earthscan. Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. 1980. “The United States: Seedbed of Managerial Capitalism.” In Managerial Hierarchies: Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Modern Industrial Enterprise, ed. Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and Herman Daems. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chinoy, Eli. 1955. Automobile Workers and the American Dream. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Cockburn, Cynthia. 1983. Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change. London: Pluto Press. Collinson, David L. 1992. Managing the Shopfloor: Subjectivity, Masculinity, and Workplace Culture. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Coxon, Anthony P. M., P. M. Davies, and Charles L. Jones. 1986. Images of Social Stratification: Occupational Structures and Class. London: Sage. Crawford, Matthew B. 2009. Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. New York: Penguin Press. Crompton, Rosemary. 1998. Class and Stratification: An Introduction to Current Debates. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Davis, Kingsley, and Wilbert Moore. 1945. “Some Principles of Stratification.” American Sociological Review 10: 242–249. Davis, L. E., and J. C. Taylor. 1972. Design of Jobs: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Donaldson, Mike. 1987. “Labouring Men: Love, Sex, and Strife.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 23, no. 2: 165–184. Dubin, Robert. 1956. “Industrial Workers’ Worlds: A Study of the Central Life Interests of Industrial Workers.” Social Problems 3: 131–142. Durkheim, Emile. [1933] 1984. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press. Edgell, Stephen. 1993. Class. New York: Routledge. Edwards, Michael, and John Gaventa. 2001. Global Citizen Action. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Edwards, Richard C. 1979. Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books.

Bibliography

211

Ehrenreich, Barbara. 1990. Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class. New York: Harper Perennial. England, Lynn, Jeff Torlina, Scott Amott, and Kindra Amott. 2009. “Identity, Community, and the Crandall Canyon Mine Disaster: An Analysis of Crandall Canyon Voices.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, August 1. Madison, WI. Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs. 1990. “The Cultural Perspective and the Study of Work.” In The Nature of Work: Sociological Perspectives, ed. Kai Erikson and Steven Peter Vallas. New Haven: Yale University Press. Erikson, Kai, and Steven Peter Vallas. 1990. The Nature of Work: Sociological Perspectives. New Haven: Yale University Press. Estrella, Marisol. 2000. Learning from Change: Issues and Experiences in Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation. London: Institute of Development Studies. Fals-Borda, Orlando. 1998. People’s Participation: Challenges Ahead. New York: Apex Press. _______. 1996. “Research for Social Justice: Some North-South Convergences.” Sociological Imagination 33, no. 2: 154–163. Fantasia, Rick. 1984. Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary American Workers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Finlay, William. 1988. Work on the Waterfront: Worker Power and Technological Change in a West Coast Port. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Fox, Alan. 1980. “The Meaning of Work.” In The Politics of Work and Occupations, ed. Geoff Esland and Grame Salaman. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Freud, Sigmund. 1937. The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. London: Hogarth Press. Friedland, Roger, and A. F. Robertson, eds. 1990. Beyond the Marketplace. New York: Walter de Gruyter. Friedrichs, Robert. 1970. A Sociology of Sociology. New York: Free Press. Fromm, Erich. 1961. Marx’s Concept of Man. New York: Frederick Ungar. Gay, Peter, ed. 1989. The Freud Reader. New York: W. W. Norton. Giddens, Anthony. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press. _______. 1981. The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies. 2nd ed. London: Hutchinson. _______. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. _______. 1976. New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies. New York: Basic Books. _______, Mitchell Duneier, Richard P. Appelbaum, and Deborah Carr. 2009. Introduction to Sociology. 7th ed. New York: W. W. Norton. Gilbert, Dennis. 2008. The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Complexity. 7th ed. Los Angeles: Pine Forge Press. Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Goldthorpe, John H., David Lockwood, Frank Bechhofer, and Jenifer Platt. 1968. The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

212

Bibliography

_______. 1969. The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gordon, David, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich. 1982. Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gorman, Thomas J. 2000. “Cross-Class Perceptions of Social Class.” Sociological Spectrum 20: 93–120. Gouldner, Alvin Ward. 1980. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Basic Books. Guppy, Neil. 1982. “On Intersubjectivity and Collective Conscience in Occupational Prestige Research: A Comment on Balkwell-Bates-Garbin and Kraus-Schild-Hodge.” Social Forces 60: 1178–1182. _______, and John C. Goyder. 1984. “Consensus on Occupational Prestige: A Reassessment of the Evidence.” Social Forces 62: 709–726. Gutman, Herbert G. 1987. Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class. Ed. Ira Berlin. New York: Pantheon Books. Habermas, Jurgen. 1972. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press. _______. 1981. The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon Press. Halle, David. 1984. America’s Working Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hauhart, Robert. 2008. “The Blue-Collar Comedy Tour: Southern Fried Humor in the Context of Class Society.” Journal for Cultural Research 12, no. 3: 269–279. _______. 2003. “The Davis-Moore Theory of Stratification: The Life Course of a Socially Constructed Classic.” American Sociologist 34, no. 4: 5–24. Hauser, Robert M., and John Robert Warren. 1997. “Socioeconomic Indexes for Occupations: A Review, Update, and Critique.” Sociological Methodology 27: 177–298. Hirschhorn, Larry. 1984. Beyond Mechanization: Work and Technology in a Postindustrial Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hirst, Paul, and Jonathan Zeitlin. 1989. “Flexible Specialization and the Competitive Failure of UK Manufacturing.” Political Quarterly 60: 3164–3178. Hodge, Robert W., P. M. Siegel, and Peter H. Rossi. 1964. “Occupational Prestige in the United States, 1925–1963.” American Journal of Sociology 70: 286–302. Holloway, W. 1983. “Heterosexual Sex: Power and Desire for the Other.” In Sex and Love: New Thoughts on Old Contradictions, ed. S. Cartledge and J. Ryan. London: Woman’s Press. Homans, George C. 1964. “Bringing Men Back In.” Presidential address for the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, September 2, 1964, Montreal, Canada. Published in American Sociological Review 29, no. 5: 809–819. hooks, bell. 2000. Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York: Routledge. Hughes, Everett C. [1951] 1971. “Work and Self.” In The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers, ed. Everett C. Hughes. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton. Hurst, Charles E. 2003. Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences. 5th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Bibliography

213

Jackman, Mary R., and Robert W. Jackman. 1983. Class Awareness in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jensen, Barbara. 2004. “Across the Great Divide: Crossing Classes and Clashing Cultures.” In What’s Class Got to Do with It? American Society in the TwentyFirst Century, ed. Michael Zweig. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Juravich, Tom. 1985. Chaos on the Shop Floor: A Worker’s View of Quality, Productivity, and Management. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Keen, Sam. 1991. Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man. New York: Bantam. Kenney, Martin, and Richard L. Florida. 1993. Beyond Mass Production: The Japanese System and Its Transfer to the US. New York: Oxford University Press. Kerbo, Harold R. 1996. Social Stratification and Inequality: Class Conflict in Historical and Comparative Perspective. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. _______. 2006. Social Stratification and Inequality: Class Conflict in Historical and Comparative Perspective. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Kern, Horst, and Michael Schumann. 1987. “Limits of the Division of Labour: New Production and Employment Concepts in West German Industry.” Economic and Industrial Democracy 8: 151–170. _______. 1989. “New Concepts of Production in West German Plants.” In Industry and Politics in West Germany: Toward the Third Republic, ed. Perer Katzenstein. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Klein, Naomi. 2008. “The New Trough.” Rolling Stone.com; accessed November 13, 2008; http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/24012700/ the_new_trough. Knights, David, and J. Roberts. 1982. “The Power of Organization or the Organization of Power?” Organization Studies 3, no. 1: 47–63. Knights, David, J. Roberts, and Hugh Willmott. 1985. “Power and Identity in Theory and Practice.” Sociological Review 33, no. 1: 22–46. Kohn, Melvin L. 1969. Class and Conformity: A Study in Values. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press. Komarovsky, Mirra. 1962. Blue-Collar Marriage. New York: Random House. Kornblum, William. 1974. Blue Collar Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kusterer, Kenneth C. 1978. Know How on the Job: The Important Working Knowledge of “Unskilled” Workers. Boulder, CO.: Westview Press. Lamont, Michèle. 2000. The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lawler, Edward, Susan Albers Mohrman, and Gerald E. Ledford. 1995. Creating High Performance Organizations: Practices and Results of Employee Involvement and Total Quality Management in Fortune 1000 Companies. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1958, Anthropologie Structural. Paris: Plon. _______. 1966. L’Homme: Revue Francaise D’Anthropologie. The Hague: Mouton. Lipset, Seymour Martin. [1960] 1981. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Expanded ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. _______, and Reinhardt Bendix. 1959. Social Mobility in Industrial Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

214

Bibliography

Littler, Craig R. 1982. The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies. London: Heinemann. Lockwood, David. 1966. “Sources of Variation in Working Class Images of Society.” Sociological Review 14: 249–267. Lopez, Steven Henry. 2007. “Efficiency and the Fix Revisited: Informal Relations and Mock Routinization in a Nonprofit Nursing Home.” Qualitative Sociology 30: 225–247. Loscocco, Karyn A. 1989. “The Instrumentally Oriented Factory Worker: Myth or Reality?” Work and Occupations 16: 3–25. Lucas, Kristen, and Partice M. Buzzanell. 2004. “Blue-Collar Work, Career, and Success: Occuaptional Narratives of Sisu.” Journal of Applied Communication Research 32, no. 4: 273–292. Lukacs, Georg. 1971. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lynd, Robert S., and Helen Merrell Lynd. 1929. Middletown: A Study in American Culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace. MacLeod, Jay. 1987. Ain’t No Makin’ It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Marx, Karl. [1867] 1967. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1 Friedrich Engels, ed. New York: International Publishers. _______. 1978. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” In The MarxEngels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: W. W. Norton. _______. 1978. “Wage Labour and Capital.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: W. W. Norton. _______. 1988. The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers. _______, and Friedrich Engels. 1967. The Communist Manifesto. New York: Penguin. Metzgar, Jack. 2000. Striking Steel: Solidarity Remembered. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Mills, C. Wright. [1959] 2000. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. _______. 1951. White Collar. New York: Oxford University Press. Moorhouse, H. F. 1983. “American Automobiles and Workers’ Dreams.” Sociological Review 31, no. 3: 403–426. Nakao, Keiko. 1992. “Reviewed Works: Blau, Peter, and Duncan, Otis Dudley, The American Occupational Structure.” Contemporary Sociology 21, no. 5: 658–662. _______, and Judith Treas. 1994. “Updating Occupational Prestige and Socioeconomic Scores: How the New Measures Measure Up.” Sociological Methodology 4: 1–72. Narayan, Deepa, Raj Patel, Kai Schaft, Anne Rademacher, and Sarah KochSchulte. 2000. Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? Washington, DC: World Bank. Nash, John F. 1950. “Equilibrium Points in n-Person Games.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 36, 48–49. Noble, David F. 1987. Forces of Production: Social History of Industrial Automation. New York: Oxford University Press. Oakland, John S. 1989. Total Quality Management. Oxford: ButterworthHeinemann.

Bibliography

215

Oppenheimer, Martin. 1975. “Women Office Workers: Petty-Bourgeoisie or New Proletarians?” Social Scientist 4, nos. 4/5: 55–75. Ouellet, Lawrence J. 1994. Pedal to the Metal: The Work Lives of Truckers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Paap, Kris. 2006. Working Construction: Why White Working-Class Men Put Themselves—And the Labor Movement—In Harm’s Way. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Parenti, Michael. 1992. Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Parkin, Frank. 1971. Class Inequality and Political Order: Social Stratification in Capitalist and Communist Societies. London: MacGibbon & Kee. Patterson, James T. 2000. America’s Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century, 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Perrucci, Robert, and Earl Wysong. 1999. The New Class Society. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Pfeffer, Richard M. 1979. Working for Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Phillips, Kevin. 2004. American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and Deceit in the House of Bush. New York: Viking. Pilcher, William W. 1972. The Portland Longshoremen: A Dispersed Urban Community. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Piore, Michael J., and Charles F. Sabel. 1984. The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity. New York: Basic Books. Pitt, Malcolm. 1979. The World on Our Backs. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Pyke, Karen D. 1996. “Class-Based Masculinities: The Interdependence of Gender, Class, and Interpersonal Power.” Gender and Society 10, no. 5: 527–549. Reiss, Albert J., Jr., Otis Dudley Duncan, Paul K. Hatt, and Cecil C. North. 1962. Occupations and Social Status. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Reissman, Leonard. 1959. Class in American Society. New York: Free Press. Richardson, Stephen A., Barbara Snell Dohrenwend, and David Klein. 1965. Interviewing: Its Forms and Functions. New York: Basic Books. Riemer, Jeffrey W. 1979. Hard Hats: The Work of Construction Workers. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Roediger, David. 2002. Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past. Berkeley: University of California Press. _______. 1991. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London: Verso. Rose, Mike. 2005. The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker. New York: Penguin Books. Rossides, Daniel W. 1990. The American Class System: An Introduction to Social Stratification. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Rothman, Robert A. 1978. Inequality and Stratification in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Roy, Donald. 1954. “Efficiency and ‘the Fix’: Informal Intergroup Relations in a Piecework Machine Shop.” American Journal of Sociology 6, no. 3: 255–266. Rubin, Lillian Breslow. 1976. Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family. New York: Basic Books.

216

Bibliography

Russo, John, and Sherry Lee Linkon, eds. 2005. New Working Class Studies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sabel, Charles F. 1982. Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry. New York: Cambridge University Press. _______, and Jonathan Zeitlin, eds. 1997. World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization. New York: Cambridge University Press. Savage, Mike. 2005. “Working-Class Identities in the 1960s: Revisiting the Affluent Worker Studies.” Sociology 39, no. 5: 929–946. Scheff, Thomas J. 2000. “Shame and the Social Bond: A Sociological Theory.” Sociological Theory 18, no. 1: 84–99. Schwalbe, Michael, et al. 2000. “Generic Processes in the Reproduction of Inequality: An Interactive Analysis.” Social Forces 79, no. 2: 419–452. Seidman, Steven. 1983. Liberalism and the Origins of European Social Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press. _______. 2004. Contested Knowledge. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Sennett, Richard, and Jonathan Cobb. 1973. The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Vintage Books. Smedley, Audrey. 1998. “‘Race’ and the Construction of Human Identity.” American Anthropologist 100, no. 3: 690–702. Stearns, Peter N. 1979. Be a Man! Males in Modern Society. New York: Holmes & Meier. Stinchcombe, Arthur. 1959. “Bureaucratic and Craft Administration of Production: A Comparative Study.” Administrative Science Quarterly 4: 168–187. Stone, Katherine. 1975. “The Origins of Job Structures in the Steel Industry.” In Labor Market Segmentation, ed. Richard C. Edwards, Michael Reich, and David M. Gordon. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Sturdy, Andrew, David Knights, and Hugh Willmott, eds. 1992. Skill and Consent: Contemporary Studies in the Labour Process. New York: Routledge. Tausky, Curt. 1969. “The Meaning of Work Among Blue Collar Men.” Pacific Sociological Review 12: 49–55. Taylor, Frederick Winslow. [1911] 1998. The Principles of Scientific Management. Mineola, NY: Dover. Treiman, Donald J. 1977. Occupational Prestige in Comparative Perspective. New York: Academic Press. Vallas, Steven P. 1999. “Rethinking Post-Fordism: The Meaning of Workplace Flexibility.” Sociological Theory 17, no. 1: 68–101. Vanneman, Reeve, and Lynn Weber Cannon. 1987. The American Perception of Class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Villemez. Wayne J. 1977. “Occupational Prestige and the Normative Hierarchy.” Pacific Sociological Review 29, no. 3: 455–472. Wagner, David. 1984. The Growth of Sociological Theories. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Walker, Charles R., and Robert H. Guest. 1952. Man on the Assembly Line. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Walters, Charles. 2002. Unforgiven: The American Economic System Sold for Debt and War. 2nd ed. Austin, TX: Acres.

Bibliography

217

Wegener, Bernd. 1992. “Concepts and Measurement of Prestige.” Annual Review of Sociology 18: 253–280. Weiss, Robert S. 1994. Learning from Strangers: The Art and Methodology of Qualitative Interview Studies. New York: Free Press. Wharton, Amy S., ed. 2006. Working in America: Continuity, Conflict, and Change. New York: McGraw-Hill. Williams, Lee. 2005. “Researching, Organizing, Educating, and Acting: Social Change and Participatory Research.” Humanity and Society 29, nos. 3/4: 239–259. Willis, Paul. 1977. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press. _______. 1990. “Masculinity and Factory Work,” In Culture and Society, ed. Jeffrey Alexander and Steven Seidman. New York: Cambridge University Press. Witte, John F. 1980. Democracy, Authority, and Alienation in Work: Workers’ Participation in an American Corporation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Woollacott, Janet. 1980. “Dirty and Deviant Work.” In The Politics of Work and Occupations, ed. Geoff Esland and Graeme Salaman. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Wright, Erik Olin. [1985] 1997. Classes. London: Verso. Yanowitch, Murray. 1977. Social and Economic Inequality in the Soviet Union. White Plains, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Zandy, Janet. 2004. Hands: Physical Labor, Class, and Cultural Work. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. _______. 2001. What We Hold in Common: An Introduction to Working-Class Studies. New York: Feminist Press. Zetka, James R., Jr. 2001. “Occupational Divisions of Labor and Their Technology Politics: The Case of Surgical Scopes and Gastrointestinal Medicine.” Social Forces 79, no. 4: 1495–1520. Zhou, Xueguang. 2005. “The Institutional Logic of Occupational Prestige Ranking: Reconceptualization and Reanalysis.” American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 1: 90–140. Zweig, Michael. 2000. Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. _______, ed. 2004. What’s Class Got to Do with It? American Society in the Twenty-First Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Index

Affluent Worker. See Goldthorpe, et al. Ainley, Pat, 4, 83, 84 Applebaum, Herbert, 120, 174-175 Beeghley, Leonard, 4 Bender, Frederick L., 149 Blau, Peter M., (and Otis Dudley Duncan), 42, 55, 87, 88 Blauner, Robert, 11, 21 blue-collar work, common perceptions, 3, 102, 187, 188; common perceptions from sociology, 46, 153, 181, 182; common perceptions from managers, 98, 127; negative perceptions of, 7, 19, 99, 101; contradiction, 171; positive perceptions of, 8-11, 25, 26, 40, 108 Bourdieu, Pierre, 118-119 Braverman, Harry, 89, 127 Brooks, David, 92 Burawoy, Michael, 85 Buzzanell, Patrice, (and Kristen Lucas), 52 Catano, James, 52 Cobb, Jonathan, (and Richard

Sennett), 20, 108, 109, 114-115, 169, 182 cognitive dissonance, 12, 20, 114, 115, 116, 117, 120, 121, 165 college education, 72, 94, 134, 155; choice of not attending, 69, 90, 91, 124, 187 Collinson, David, 115-116 consumerism, 49, 51, 65, 163 Crawford, Matthew, 1, 5, 43 Crompton, Mary Beth, 88 culture of poverty, 167-169 Davis, Kingsley, (and Wilbert Moore), 54, 87 Donaldson, Mike, 181 Dubin, Robert, 48 Duncan, Otis Dudley, (and Peter M. Blau), 42, 55, 87, 88 education. See college education. England, Lynn, 2, 117-119 experiential knowledge, 128-142, 159 false consciousness, 20, 48, 115, 117, 120, 150-151, 152 family, 63, 64

219

220

Index

Fantasia, Rick, 169 Finlay, William, 153 flawed scientific thinking, 12, 113, 114, 118, 119, 123, 166; assumptions in, 49, 179 Florida, Richard, L., (and Martin Kenny), 154 Fromm, Eric, 150 Giddens, Anthony, 118 Gilbert, Dennis, 88 Goldthorpe, John H., (and David Lockwood, Frank Bechhofer, and Jenifer Platt), 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 119, 183 Gorman, Thomas, 52, 169 Habermas, Jurgen, 118 Halle, David, 169 Hodge, Robert W., (and P. M. Siegel, and Peter H. Rossi), 86 income, 38-41, 73, 91, 92, 94, 104 independence, 35-37, 75 Jackman, Mary and Robert, 84 Jensen, Barbara, 53 Juravich, Tom, 150 Keen, Sam, 174 Kenny, Martin, (and Richard L. Florida), 154 Kerbo, Herold, 4, 21, 83, 84, 134, 153 Kohn, Melvin, 21, 50, 55, 166, 182 Komarovsky, Mirra, 121-122 Kornblum, William, 153 Lamont, Michele, 53 Lewis, Oscar, 167-168 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 119, 166, 182 Lopez, Stephen, 157

Lucas, Kristen, (and Patrice Buzzanell), 52 Lynd, Robert and Helen, 2, 47 MacLeod, Jay, 169 manager power/manager myth, 13, 156-159 Marx/Marxist theory, 52, 55, 147, 148; critique of, 149-152, 166, 180, 186; misunderstandings in, 1, 180, 181 masculinity, 21, 23, 63, 132, 174176 meaning of work, 3, 7, 11-15; extrinsic/instrumental, 15, 67; intrinsic, 19, 33-35, 67, 93, 110, 170 mental work, 39, 127-142 Meztgar, Jack, 153 Moore, Wilbert, (and Kingsley Davis), 54, 87 Nakao, Keiko, 84 Noble, David, 153 occupational identity, 16-18 occupational prestige, 51, 86, 92, 165; challenges to, 83, 88, 90, 93, 111 Ouellet, Lawrence, 18, 21, 121, 122, 153, 174 Paap, Kris, 153 Parenti, Michael, 3, 20 participatory research, 120 Patterson, James T., 167-168 Pilcher, William, 177 positivism, 15, 16, 47, 55, 182, 183 pride in work, 13, 32, 102, 143, 144, 173 professional class culture, 7-8; blue collar perceptions of 103, 104,

Index

107; ignorance, 89, 94, 97, 114, 120, 122; oversight due to, 4, 5, 7, 44 163 Rose, Mike, 5 Roy, Donald, 153 Rubin, Lillian, 121 Sabel, Charles, 6, 53 Savage, Mike, 18, 46, 47, 56 Sennett, Richard, (and Jonathan Cobb), 20, 108, 109, 114-115, 169, 182 Seidman, Steven, 147-148, 149 social class, 84, 85, 86, 94, 165 social ladder, 79-81, 124, 180, 184 social stratification, 19, 55, 84, 89, 120; changes in, 52, 85; challenge to, 93, 113, 154, 183 socio-economic status, 45, 89, 97, 113; importance of, 51, 84; critique of, 86, 90, 94, 165

221

Stearns, Peter, 174 structural functionalism, 51, 54, 55, 87, 166, 167 surveys, critique of, 84, 85, 94 Tausky, Kurt, 49, 50 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 7, 8, 166, 181-182 Wharton, Amy , 52 white-collar work, 142; common perceptions, 6, 39, 59-62, 77, 129, 137, 175; role reversal, 66, 133, 136, 155; middle class, 98 Willis, Paul, 169 working class, 6, 89, 93, 179; values, 57, 119, 166, 169, 170; culture, 6-7 working-class studies, 45, 53 Zweig, Michael, 45, 89

About the Book

JEFF TORLINA CHALLENGES THE conventional wisdom about the attitudes of blue-collar men toward their work. Torlina highlights the voices of pipe fitters, welders, carpenters, painters, locomotive assemblers, and factory workers to reveal the complexities—and advantages—of working-class life. These men see blue-collar labor as a desirable alternative to white-collar occupations; their work involves integrity, character, pride, and a connection with being “a real man,” values that they perceive as lost in white-collar office jobs. The result is a penetrating critique of many commonly held assumptions, and a compelling case for a new understanding of our social class system.

Jeff Torlina is assistant professor of sociology at Utah Valley University.

222