Unions with white colar and blue collar workers - how do you navigate the differences?
Unions with white colar and blue collar workers - how do you navigate the differences?
I'm a member of a union that includes both office and field workers. It works well for all the big, common negotiations. We all want better wages, healthcare, retirement, hours, etc. But when it comes to working conditions, we have clear differences. The most recent example of "return to work" shines a light on this.
The field workers, understandably, don't give a shit about "return to work". Some even resent the office workers for having the ability to work from home. Meanwhile, some office workers will likely quit without the ability to work from home. My company has recently decided to completely remove the ability to work from home. In response, the union is completely split on how to react.
How should I approach the internal discussions? I'm hesitant to advocate for pushback because not everyone will benefit. On the other hand, no resistance at all feels like a concession of worker's rights.
TLDR: Work from home taken away. Should a union pushback?
Pushing back would show solidarity between the two. Having the two types of employees resenting each other only aids the employer obviously.
Like, obviously the Field techs can't work from home. But you have to get to the core of the issue. WHY do people want to work from home?
- Time to take care of at home work. Scheduling maintenance, doing chores, etc. Once you are off work you still have work to do. If you could do that work while also earning your living (say, running laundry between work tasks) it frees you for more personal time, creative time, leisure time.
- Outside of the panopticon. working in an office is like being in prison within a panopticon. Everything about your existence is observable, and scrutinized. From how you dress to how you talk etc.
- No commute. Let's be real everyone at this business is paying out of their own pocket to commute to work. The field text probably do not get paid for their commute to the field and if they do it may simply be a mileage reimbursement.
You get the idea. This will obviously be unique to your place of employment but if the two groups of people sat down and talked about why they want to maintain their work from home, they might find that the reasons they want it are things that the others would want as well. Then you can collaborate on how to achieve each of those items for everyone.
While the office workers may work from home you may be able to identify that the field workers should have the ability to work less days a week. Worst case they may be able to work longer shifts per day so that they may have the day off later in the week extending their weekend.
Ultimately the thing that working from home gives people is freedom. Freedom to accomplish tasks that are required as a result of owning a home, renting a property, or busy simply being alive. Because outside of work you have your personal work. Buying groceries, yard work, car maintenance, house maintenance, personal development, medical checkup requirements either mental or physical. Every hour spent on the clock locked in an office is an hour you cannot use to perform those tasks.
I think everyone understands why people want to work from home. And stressing all the benefits of WFH to field workers only seemed to further the resentment.
Office and field workers did sit down last month to discuss this. Tensions were high very quickly.
I've been thinking a better strategy is to explain we will lose workers because of this change. And if office staff is lost, the field will have less support. This makes everyone's job harder. Solidarity is easier if we have a common interest.
Why do the field workers care? Sounds like some people are kicking up shit that only benefits the bosses. Could be some wreckers about, intentional or not. Be careful.
Your common interest is improved working conditions and better wages. Nobody joins a union so that everyone has to work as if they're all the most exploited worker. It's not about stripping everyone of their benefits so that everyone's got the same. It's about fighting for everyone to get benefits so that everyone is the same.
If the white collar workers accept the logic that they won't fight for what they need because the tech staff can't get the same benefit, they should also accept that everyone should be on the lowest salary because not everyone will benefit from higher salaries.
It sounds like people in the union are doing that thing that people outside of unions do, where they look at e.g. traindrivers on good wages and say, 'how dare they strike for better pay and conditions when I'm not going to get a pay rise'. The obvious solution there is to join a fucking union and stop being a wet mop. But it's easier to be outraged because the right wing press told you to. It's annoying, but not entirely unexpected, when this happens inside a union.
Sounds like there's a real opportunity to explore what solidarity means within your union. This may require the white collar workers taking a stance in solidarity for something that benefits the blue collar workers but not them.
What are the wage differences like? If the tech staff start on lower wages, can you all demand the abolition of the lowest spine points on the pay scale at the same time as demanding WFH? The higher paid blue collar workers might not like this.
Your union is going to have to work through people's assumptions about why workers should have to earn decent conditions as opposed to just being entitled to them. Your union will have to face the contradiction within the gap between bourgeois and revolutionary consciousness.
If it's the other way round and the tech staff get paid more, then the problem is related to that segment of the workers not understanding solidarity. Maybe they see the white collar workers as unnecessary or already getting paid too much for doing a cushy job.
I think I assumed at first that the blue collar workers were getting in the way of the white collar workers but this seems problematic. Do the blue collar workers think the white collar workers are getting in they way of what they want? This contradiction needs to be resolved.
It'll take time to build but it sounds like your union/branch needs to build it's internal solidarity and work out why anyone is resentful of others for getting the benefits associated with doing different work.
Part of this (a rather slimy solution, I think) is to outline the personal benefits that everyone gets when others get a benefit. For example, if those who can WFH do so, parking will be easier and there may be an argument for lowering the cost of parking because there will be less demand. Or you could also campaign for travel subsidies or free food/drink for those who have to go in—this will be more affordable if it's only for half the workforce.
I think the first thing to do is a fact finding exercise. Find out what they each want. Rank these things to make a priority list. Work out which ones can be achieved at the same time. Find out why people are resentful (on both sides). Institute solidarity sessions where you find common ground and have an education program to help people see that the enemy is not other workers but the bosses.
explain we will lose workers because of this change.
That could be a strong argument. You could also mention how long it takes for new workers to get used to their job, which further makes it harder for the others to do theirs.
I think through your argument and question you provide a false definition or perceived difference and others here respond based on the false premise of this difference.
The difference between "blue collar" "white collar" is not whether the one is working inisde an office/lab/building or outside in the field/machine room/dock etc. The difference has to do with the hierarchy of work/production itself. Whether you are doing the actual work that is part of production or overseeing the work done by others. Whether you are a secretary, a truck driver, a lab analysis technician, or a stock room clerk is not what makes you white collar. To oversee and direct the work of others doing work is what makes you white collar, even if you are in the field, whether you wear a suit or blue overalls doesn't matter. I even had worked in a machine shop many ages ago where the owners themselves (2) would wear blue overalls and come to the shop and actually work the machines and tell new comers how to do something right, or how they wanted it done. Meanwhile there were people who wrote code/programmed machines to do mass-production (3d printing they call it 40y later) and never wore blue uniforms, they sat on a desk, read blueprints and typed in codes.
In some work settings those who are "managers" and oversee others' work can terrorize them to do it right or do more or face unemployment, they do evaluations and if they don't like your face or think threatened by you as knowing more than they do, especially when you prove them wrong, and will burry your future of raise or promotion. Those are problematic when they are in union as they act as snitches of the bosses and are really never on the side of the worker.
There can be engineers, material scientists, expert machinery technicians in the field, with construction boots whose only office may be a trailer parked in the mud. The bosses (owners) can not live without them, but their actual role of getting work done correctly or snitching on who is lurking and who is not, is a different issue.
Who tells you what to do and what to not do, who threatens you with having work tomorrow or not having any, or how necessary it is to put in overtime (sometimes for free) or don't expect to work too long or at a higher pay, or in a better position, are they in the union?
Work for home is some bullshit notion that never did and never will work. The pathology of the capitalist is to actually see the army of the exploited and their managers on their means of production, not invisibly having work done off-site. There is "out-sourcing" for those things that can be done off-site. It is almost as a test to see who and when are essential and with the production can do without. So if your boss says take this task and do it home and bring the results in (or mail them in), it is a trap for being able to do without you. Those that physically must be at work are always more secure than those that work from home. Say people working on IT who must have access to the systems that need to be available for those lurking at home on their pijamas. If the servers are down and don't respond there is not much you can do remotely to reset them or solve the problem.
There is much of capitalism producing and reproducing psycho-pathology that results from the insecurity of the bosses, which of course is caused by class struggle. They have no illusion there position in wealth and power is never secure, everyone around them can benefit from their demise. In this respect they want to see faces, they want to employee people who are actually useless in production but assure them their ownership and operation is secure. So they pay extra for some white collar thugs to maintain a buffer zone between the exploiter and the exploited. They want someone else to be mean and nasty to workers so they don't have the emotional weight of doing it themselves.
Umm. Sorry, didn't mean to provide flase definitions or anything like that. I was unsure how much information I wanted to share for the sake of anonymity. But let me provide additional context.
The "company" is an Irrigation District. Its a non-profit, community owned, public utility company.
By blue collar, I meant field workers. Linemen, operators, etc.
By white collar, I meant office workers. Engineers, technicians, and clerks.
All of those people are in the union. The managers (non-union) are pushing for removal of WFH. The managers are mostly chosen by the board of directors, who are elected every 5 years by the customers.
I guess by the "correct" definitions, everyone I've been talking about is blue collar?
That's how I'd use blue/white collar, too.
iriyan does raise an interesting question, though: are there any workers in either camp who are also managers? Maybe gang leaders in the linemen? Or a chief engineer who instructs you and a few technicians/clerks? These people, if they exist in your org, will be most used to people doing what they say. Are these the loudest voices in the union, too?
I think you're right to point out a difference between the role of different workers (some to do the work and some to manage those who do the work). And this probably is crucial in working out how to build solidarity in a union.
That said, I wonder if blue collar / white collar does map onto the concepts of proletariat / professional-managerial class? Are these consilient? It seems like there are two separate thought-systems / models here. Similar to the difference between 'working class – middle class' and 'proletariat – bourgeois'. They both have their uses ('proletariat – bourgeois' is perhaps more useful) but they don't really align and the terms are not generally interchangeable.
I've always seen blue collar as referring to manual work and white collar to office-type (mental?) work. To say that the small-business-owner-plumber is 'white collar' when they're down in the sewage everyday with their employees doesn't feel right to me. And I'd say the plumber's self-employed accountant would be white collar, even if they don't have any employees to instruct. At the same time, the plumber would likely be petite-bourgeois and the accountant would be petit-bourgeois/professional managerial class. And both (possibly along with the plumber's employees) would be labour aristocrats. Assuming the workers are in the imperial core.
Think of a biologis, working at a lab, wearing a white robe and being in a nearly sterile environment, alalyzing sample after sample. They are not managing anyone, neither is their opinion on other workers weigh in firing, demoting or promoting anyone. A teacher or professor on the other hand is managing students, and can be abusive due to the power she/he holds on them (pass/fail them).
A plumber, or an electrician can work alone, they are self employed (meaning they work for a different boss in every site they go to work at) but are they above workers, maybe industrial plumbers working for a large manufacturer/constuction co. In some repair work due to the nature of the work one may need an assistant because 2 hands are not enough, or are not long enough, .. (AC installations).
So what boils down as the difference among them is the authority they exercise within the workplace. The higher in hierarchy the more their interests are closely resembling the owners', the lower they are the more likely they are to be in alliance at least with workers struggles.
I suspect the reason that white collar workers get paid more than blue collar workers is because the owners of the company see and interact with them regularly and it is harder for bosses to see them just as a number on a spreadsheet.
That's my two cents anyways. As a white collar worker that doesn't do much considering how much he's paid, I don't mind if blue collar workers get paid a little more. I think it would be cool to demand higher wages for blue collar workers and more work from home days for white collar workers.
Wages are very much based off industry standards. The company is non-profit and the "owners" are elected, so its not as clear cut as that.
I provided a little more context in my other comment.
The particular of your community institution follows the standards set by the general of capitalist mode of production of the industry as a whole.
Glad to hear about you working for such a potentially progressive institution.
I do hope you promote solidarity with the field workers. Divide and conquer is an effective tool of the bourgeoisie state.