Moreover, our new appreciation of these poorly paid and precarious strata of the working class reflects not just the vital role they play in the current crisis, but the centrality of these workers to firms and industries—food processing, fulfillment centers, mass retailing, and health care—that now constitute a new “commanding heights” of Western capitalism. This realization echoes the great social and economic shift that took place 90 years ago when our conception of the American working class was transformed, from that of the tradesman, railroader, or victimized immigrant to a stratum of self-confident mass-production workers organized into a set of powerful trade unions led by “the new men of power,” to use a phrase first coined by C. Wright Mills. Read Full Article »
Workers Should Determine When Workplaces Are Safe
When
it comes to our collective understanding of the American working class, this pandemic marks a decisive inflection point. In our moral and social imagination, we have finally displaced the white male autoworker and construction worker, let alone the vanishingly small remnant of those who mine coal, with a multicultural army of all those who staff the distended supply chains, the vital hospitals, the home care services, the warehouses, the poultry and meat disassembly lines, the sales counters, and the grocery aisles, performing the mundane jobs we once disparaged or ignored. Now denoted as essential workers by no less an entity than the Department of Homeland Security, we recognize them both for their indispensability and for their moral dignity.
Moreover, our new appreciation of these poorly paid and precarious strata of the working class reflects not just the vital role they play in the current crisis, but the centrality of these workers to firms and industries—food processing, fulfillment centers, mass retailing, and health care—that now constitute a new “commanding heights” of Western capitalism. This realization echoes the great social and economic shift that took place 90 years ago when our conception of the American working class was transformed, from that of the tradesman, railroader, or victimized immigrant to a stratum of self-confident mass-production workers organized into a set of powerful trade unions led by “the new men of power,” to use a phrase first coined by C. Wright Mills. Read Full Article »
Moreover, our new appreciation of these poorly paid and precarious strata of the working class reflects not just the vital role they play in the current crisis, but the centrality of these workers to firms and industries—food processing, fulfillment centers, mass retailing, and health care—that now constitute a new “commanding heights” of Western capitalism. This realization echoes the great social and economic shift that took place 90 years ago when our conception of the American working class was transformed, from that of the tradesman, railroader, or victimized immigrant to a stratum of self-confident mass-production workers organized into a set of powerful trade unions led by “the new men of power,” to use a phrase first coined by C. Wright Mills. Read Full Article »
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