Unions are so blue-collar, sez the gen-xer in me. Is there a tradition of unionizing the office workers, the college
graduates? You talk about factory workers, but you don't seem to be talking about me.
(Below is my reponse to a comment made to my post "Election Reflections.")
My short reply to your question is to ask -- What alternative is there? I think the only good choice is to start educating the vast majority of the people who benefit least from the distribution of resources in our society, about their interests in relation to those who own most of the wealth My longer answer is to try to explain why the alternatives of how to educate people are so restricted.
First, perhaps I should make a few premises of my note on the election explicit.
The first premise is that we on the left need grassroots organizations that are independent of the five-percent of U.S. citizens who own and rule the United States. Another premise is that those independent institutions must be long-lasting. The reason for this is that most of the institutions of those who own the wealth in this country are permanent, highly class conscious and always operating to set a political agenda. If we are to develop countervailing institutions our institutions must also be permanent, highly class conscious, and always operating to set a political and social agenda. They must not be groups tied to a single individual and they must have some stable social base. We on the left have a harder job maintaining such organizations than the Generals Motors and Electric. Corporations are powerful and permanent organizations that are always campaigning for their own narrow interests, and are always buying and creating organizations to look out for their own class interests. The huge public relations industry, which also runs our elections, is an industry that caters to the narrow interests of business entities. G.E. can buy a television network and one can be sure that the people who run the network will have approximately the same worldview as the people who run G.E. General Motors and the auto companies, Microsoft and the high-tech companies, can set up lobbying and public relations organizations, that propagate their worldview by simply spending money and modeling their organizations after hierarchical corporate institutions. Our organizations cannot be set up this way. They must always maintain a consensus among its members and must always educate its own membership. In other words our organizations must at least try very hard to be democratic and consensus building. And this is another premise of my comment. Unless our organizations are always educating, organizing and trying to involve people in democratic decision making, at least by building a consensus, they will fail, or eventually be bought off.
Second, the point of my comment on the recent election was to state that those of us who believe in progressive politics must do the hard work of collecting our resources to educate and organize people. The only way to do this is by creating and building standing institutions that look out for the interests of most of us who are excluded from the councils of power. Most of us look at electoral politics, correctly in my view, as irrelevant to our daily lives. My observation is that the only two institutions that are able to maintain some amount of independence from those who own and rule the country are those organized around religion and those organized by employees around the workplace. In practical circumstances that comes down to "church" and "unions." These are simply observations of the structure of our society and what opportunities we may have to participate in institutions that can educate and mobilize all of us who believe in maintaining a world where we can live decent lives, without constant fear of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, hunger, and lack of medical care, and beyond that, organizations that may help us to build greater opportunities for democracy in industry and social investment. If there are any other institutions that are both independent from the small minority of people that own our society and are relatively permanent I do not know of them. If we can create other kinds of institutions instead of church based or union based institutions which can fill our need to educate and mobilize people around a progressive agenda, I am all for them. But I think that our range of choices are for at least the near future set by the structure of our institutions.
So my first answer to your question is, unless "white collar" workers organize collectively around their workplace and try to educate themselves about the world and their place in it, unless they realize that their interests are not the same as those who own the country, we will fail. As long as white collar workers identify with the interests of their company more than with the interests of their fellow workers they will lose ground as a group. If "white collar" workers, most of whom are no better off than "blue collar" workers, do not realize that it is in their interest to form their own organizations based in the workplace, then they will simply become more and more insecure in their lives, following what ever ruling class agenda that seems best to them, letting other people rule their lives, while they accept the "fact" that the only way to look after themselves, is to adopt the slogan "me first." Unless we work collectively with others who are in similar situations to our own, we will fail. If we don't organize collectively we will leave the field of play to the only group that is self-conscious and has its own organizations, the business classes, the elite producers of culture, and right-wing church groups. We must use the organizational tools that we have and I don't think that there is any alternative to organizing in the kinds of institutions that I have suggested.
I think that the main point of your question actually has very little to do with what is the best method of organization or how to organize or where to organize. The thrust of your question seems to me the idea that unions, etc. are simply old fashion and why should anyone participate in organizations that limit the individual's independence? I think many people who consider themselves middle class have bought into the idea that the only way to be a success is to follow the rules of what ever organization they happen to be in or that somehow they will strike it rich by becoming a "star" or an entrepreneur. All I can do is point out that in places where worker organizations are strong people live better and have more opportunities to live a decent life.
Your basic pessimism that "white collar" workers will not join unions is not easy to answer. In some respects I think that your question is too general to answer in its current form. You ask if there is a tradition of organizing white collar workers. Outside the United States there is such a tradition. Inside the United States the tradition of organizing white collar workers only exists within the public sector. That is an interesting observation for several reasons. One, because the time period for the organization of workers in the public sector was during an historical moment when it was not politically feasible for the people in control of the state to crack down on unionization. In other words white collar workers were organized in the public sector because it was harder to break the union through "legal" means, such as delays of recognition, lay-offs and terminations. But there is another reason why public sector white collar employees were organized. Traditionally, public sector jobs were the first step-up out of marginal working class jobs for first generation college educated sons and daughters of industrial workers with a strong tradition of solidarity in their own right. The teachers who organized the teacher's unions across this country were mostly the sons and daughters of the workers who organized unions in the '30s. So there is an unstated premise to your question that I agree with; tradition matters and what is most important is a tradition of solidarity between people in similar situations. How that tradition is inculcated and developed is another question altogether. I do not have an easy answer to that question. All that I know is that it must be inculcated or else what we love most in our lives will begin to whither away.
Jerry Monaco
New York City
15 November 2004
Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy & Culture
Hopeful Monsters: Poetry, Fiction, Memories by Jerry Monaco
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