The Working Class Rediscovered

...Presidential elections, health care...

...The repressed groups, it goes on, "actually have the same basic interests...

...According to some seers, it is vanishing down the throat of a cybernated monster...

...But there are also inherent limitations in its position...

...These new "revolutionaries" could become, if ignored and neglected, the most destructively explosive political force in America...

...In addition, 53 per cent of the Wallacites and 44 per cent of the blacks feel that "what I think doesn't count very much," a sentiment shared by 42 per cent of the total population...

...Since the newly dominant forces— white-collar, service, professional, public employes—lacked a union tradition, organization lagged...

...The afl-cio has learned the same thing over the last three decades while politicking in a coalition, and has evolved a program that reflects its growing capacity to go beyond the "tribal" to the "societal...

...This "solidarity" imparts an institutional stability: money, manpower, hierarchy, discipline, inner communication, common language...

...And there are erstwhile revolutionaries who, having "made it" by beating a union or two, have converted personal necessity into social principle with theories about labor's backwardness and selfishness...

...In a critique of student insularity, the New York Labor Committee of sds recently set forth its view of the proper relation between collegians and workers...

...The former Alabama Governor's appeal among workers, like the black militants' appeal in the ghettos, stems from a sense of economic poverty and political powerlessness...

...While individual unionists may differ on sex, race, war, or religion, they can agree on pay, hours, work conditions, fringe benefits...

...And just as natural that blacks would fight to wrest their advantages away...

...To others, the great unwashed mass exists only to be media-manipulated...

...During the seething '60s, observes the same editorial, "it was not the middle- and upper-income groups who had to bear the major burden of change...

...Finally, unions tend toward programmatic consistency, being driven by their members' compulsion to "make a living...

...He described the Federal tax system as "rigged against income from work...

...Its platform, far from being predominantly concerned with legislation on union rights, includes planks on housing, education, taxes, civil rights, civil liberties, consumers, fiscal policy, foreign affairs, imports, apportionment...

...The 1968 campaign saw labor check and reverse blue-collar sentiment for George Wallace...

...All three, moreover, are innate...

...Symbol of the old radical, symbol of the new reactionary, in the rare cases when they were noticed at all, they were seen as the enemy, The Backlash...

...For a time, it grew like a weed under the cultivation of George Wallace...

...For the nouveau gauche—many of them the children of old Leftists —the rejection of labor is a simulIn this piece, the eleventh of his series, Gus Tyler returns to a discussion of the nature of the liberal coalition and the need for its revivification today...

...Indeed, precisely this issue has confronted the Students for a Democratic Society (sds)—as it must any serious political movement...

...If since last year's election liberal politicians have started to take their grievances seriously, it is of course for the same reason that the needs of blacks and students were finally acknowledged: fear...

...Everyone else—including the poor and the militant blacks (at least as their image was cast by the media)—seemed to be moving forward, while only they stood still, waiting in a twilight zone somewhere between hunger and plenty...

...They are consistently economics oriented, and that preoccupation sometimes slows labor's sensitivity to the other dilemmas of our society...

...This is why unions are most effective in coalition...

...taneous rebellion against past, parent and proletariat: a psycho-political triple-play...

...Still others consider the workers, especially as organized in the labor movement, the enemy, the populist pillar of the Establishment...

...It was natural that they would try to hold back efforts to advance blacks at their own expense...

...Who cares about the once-venerated proletariat...

...They gave increasing taxes to the government, their sons to the Army...

...The gut compulsion of workers to organize was blunted in the transitional years 1957-62, when the unionized proportion of the labor force fell...

...Commenting on Mario Procaccino's victory in New York's Democratic mayoral primary, Peter Kohler noted on wcbs-tv that to interpret this "as a white backlash...

...Testifying before the House Committee on Ways and Means earlier this year, afl-cio President George Meany declared that workers are "tired of paying the share of those Americans whose incomes are greater and whose taxes are lower—the loophole set...

...Social Security, full employment, poverty programs, and hardcore job training, etc...

...This is exactly where labor can be crucial, since unions are inveterate income redistributors...

...That sounds like the query of a Marxist fuddy-duddy mired in the past...

...After 1962, unions reached out to the top and the bottom of the "new labor force": to professionals like teachers, lawyers and social workers, and marginals like the Memphis sanitation men, Charleston, South Carolina, hospital workers and California grape pickers...

...Campaigns which turn black and white against each other, or students against working people, are absolutely wrong...

...Conversely, these same people can be a constructive force if properly motivated by a meaningful program, pursued in tandem with other progressive elements in our society: blacks, youth, intellectuals...

...Recent installments have examined the frustrations of the contemporary American middle class, previous efforts made to reform the two-party system, and the 1969 mayoral primary contests and elections in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and New York City...

...They are cohesive, yet the unity at work cannot be automatically transplanted to the ward...

...This belated discovery of the white lower middle class (the worker) by the media is born in no small measure out of fear...

...The dimmest view of the workers' contribution to progressive politics is often held by those who have only recently liberated themselves from the illusion that the proletariat is the savior of all mankind...

...Thus organized labor will loom large in the next decade...

...Of the choices before the movement, argues the committee, one "is anarchism, action for action's sake, guerrilla tactics, destruction of buildings, fighting among students and between students and teachers...

...The reason for this, very simply, is that labor has three important characteristics of a successful political movement: numbers, cohesive-ness and consistency...

...For the Labor Committee, this credo is a prelude to summer infiltration of the job market to sow the seeds of revolution among the "toilers...

...But the task is far from complete...

...Putting aside their questionable strategy and chiliastic convictions, the new revolutionaries are rediscovering an old truth: The workers still do have a crucial role in historical development...

...Though unions possess great numbers, they are not strong enough to go it alone...

...That is what collective bargaining is all about...

...A thicker pay envelope is too easily thinned by taxes and inflation—two sly thieves who can only be apprehended by governmental action, that is, by political "pow...

...these students should know enough to explain, for example, that a black-skinned man without a job is a threat to the job of an employed white-skinned man...

...Consequently for them 'change itself became the enemy...

...Alliances increase their strength...

...They seemed to get little in return: only conflict, and sometimes mortal combat with the emerging black poor over jobs, neighborhoods and schools...

...Much more could be done," New Generation concludes, "to improve the lot of the working class white along with that of the black and the poor...

...Although Wallace types represent an extreme, they are part of a broad reaction...

...in favor of unearned income," and then spelled out a detailed program to "close loopholes currently costing the Federal Treasury about $15 to $17 billion...

...Tax reform—radical and rapid— has been the major (almost the exclusive) concern of the labor confederation in 1969...

...It is the opening volley in what is likely to become a wide-front war on excessive wealth...

...The essence of the statement is the view that the working class is the pivot of social change...

...It is learning the limitations of the bargaining table...

...When asked by Lou Harris in December 1968 if they thought that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," 61 per cent of both Wallace people and Negroes agreed (as opposed to 54 per cent of the general public...

...Meantime, the affluent groups of the nation could polish their social conGEORGE MEANY sciences and wax superior about the bigotry of working class whites or the destructiveness of angry blacks...

...As one prominent labor leader put it to me recently, "You know, there is a difference between running a country and taking care of your own flock...

...During that period the unions' traditional base of blue-collar production workers shrank in relative size...

...What many of the established disestablishmentarians fail to understand is that the present revolt of the alienated worker is a revolt against what he conceives to be the Establishment: an omnipresent ogre that includes not only the rich but also the politicians, the militant blacks, the long-haired whites, starry-eyed kids, the knee-jerk liberals — and even their union leaders when insensitive to the insensate...

...They don't explain to white workers that they themselves are being held down and weakened by the low pay, unemployment, and the poor condition of the non-white working class...

...They are doomed to failure...

...The last is particularly important for coping with an eternal dilemma —the occasional conflict between labor's responsibilities to its members and to the community at large...

...is a mistakenly narrow view...

...Here is fertile soil for the growth of resentment...

...Much more, that is, if the national goal were to expand and redistribute the economic pie so that all get a more equal share...

...In previous installments of this series, I have discussed the origins of this trend...

...As a result, membership has risen from the post-World War II figure of 20-30 per cent of the labor force to 30-40 per cent, with the probability of more growth in the 1970s...

...Now that these radicals have become disabused of the notion, they blame the proletariat (or its leaders) for failing to play the ordained role...

...Some comforts came to them through expanded consumer credit, but the credit exacted high costs in tension, insecurity, and interest rates...

...Newspaper inch for newspaper inch, tv second for tv second, political promise for political promise, they probably received less attention than members of any other group in America, less than many abroad as well...

...Sexton adds significantly: "The trap almost sprung by Wallace was set by 'opinion-makers' who dismissed all Wallace supporters as rednecked bigots and opponents of Negro aspirations...

...Moreover, labor is increasingly recognizing the need for broad-based political action to achieve effective redistribution...

...The contact and cross-pollination with intellectuals, minorities, youth, etc., diversifies their interests and involvements...

...Unions tend to be cohesive, having become hardened by constant exposure to hot and cold wars...

...In the 1970s, unions will have a very special role: to reverse the drift to the Right among workers...

...The Labor Committee advocates the creation of "a movement of students, working people, and unemployed . . . fighting together for what we all need...

...In the neighborhoods, workers can build precinct-level organizations together with other citizens...

...In an article in the May-June issue of Dissent, "Middle Class Workers and the New Politics," Brendan Sexton gives added testimony: "In real life the typical worker has lived on a treadmill, except where union contracts have protected him from rises in the cost of living...

...Unions embody large numbers not because they have charismatic leaders or sexy programs, but because they are inevitable in any free industrial society once occupational groups become aware of their collective existence and power...

...and that the only solution for them is to demand a job for everyone who wants to work...

...This common denominator provides the broad base for labor politics...

...It was the jobs and income and autonomy of working class whites that were most threatened...

...This is deemed futile, leading activists to "make militant speeches against racism, often blaming or directing their fire at white workers...

...Intellectuals could help this campaign by devising specific reform proposals...

...It proposes "to take the profits now under their [capitalist] control and invest them in building up our country and for the working man's benefit—instead of bleeding it down for the bankers...

...Tyler, Assistant President of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, is the author of many books, including the forthcoming The Great American Riots...

...Procaccino drew his vote from the white home-owning working class, an increasingly alienated group of people who see their hard work buying them little peace in a time of racial revolution, youth rebellion, inflation, high taxes, declining schools, a decaying environment, and a confusing war...

...This sparked a resurgence in the old sectors...

...New Generation, in an issue entitled "The Other Other America: The White Working Class," comments: "During most of the 1960s they were either ignored or attacked...