Revering Sweat

...The men debated everything from saluting the flag at union meetings to bomb testing in Nevada...

...After flunking out of an engineering program because his education as a child of migrant workers had not included long division, he settled briefly in English literature, only to return to "fruit tramping"—and then a longshoreman's life—himself...

...Independent-minded individuals are routinely weeded out through pre-employment drug and personality testing...

...Mobility is discouraged, unless you're willing to start all over again in every site...

...When Theriault has to raise $2,000 overnight to bail out a son who's been arrested at a fruit tramps' picket line, old friends and fellow workers dig deep into their pockets, no questions asked...

...Their rising pay inspired, in no small part, the decimation of the longshoreman population through the introduction of containerized shipping...

...In an indirect way, what made the old style blue collar jobs pleasurable also made them untenable from management's vantage point...

...The pleasure, for example, of mobility: Fruit tramps, who could still recall their anarchist (Industrial Workers of the World) heritage in Theriault's youth, loved the tramping life...

...But it wasn't history that depopulated the docks, he insists...

...And camaraderie shades over into its harder-edged version— solidarity...

...Workers who know their skills, who support each other socially and collegially, and who have, on top of all that, a conscious history of class struggle, are in a good position to get what they want...

...But most were simply doing what Marx had witnessed among nineteenth century European industrial workers: imagining how their power in the workplace might someday be extended to the larger world...

...Congressional candidates came down to the docks to woo them...

...The unions have been beaten back with the help of a $2 billion a year union-busting industry...

...Moreover, what's wrong with a little nostalgia when the recent past offered so much more to the blue collar worker than the present begrudges him or her...

...There's a lot—about pride, defiance, and solidarity—that the new, postindustrial, working class could learn from the old one, and Theri-ault's wry, unsentimental reflections are an excellent place to start...

...But what shines through here are the pleasures—and I don't think that's too strong a word—of the kind of jobs he held until an accident on the docks forced him to retire...

...Theriault knows he is vulnerable to the derisive charge of "nostalgia...

...He had other options, having been pushed toward college by his mother, an itinerant fruit-picker...

...By striking repeatedly over the years, the longshoremen had brought their average pay up to over $77,000 a year in 1998...

...Among the longshoremen, Theriault reports, "almost everyone, including most of the rank and file, were seriously caught up in politics, both in the union and the world outside...

...Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of "Nickel and Dimed," is a columnist for The Progressive...

...by Barbara Ehrenreich Back around the middle of the twentieth century, when my father was working night and day to escape from the blue collar working class, Reg Theriault decided to stay...

...Longshoremen could, and perhaps still can, apply for a permit to spend a few months at another port...

...The Unmaking of the American Working Class does not extend to its "re-making," in the last couple of decades, as a class of short-order cooks, janitorial workers, hospital aides, and big-box floor clerks...

...As for the farm workers, it was the introduction of tough-skinned tomatoes and other fruits that undid the fruit tramps—de-skilling the work of picking and packing, which could then be left to machines and grossly underpaid immigrants...

...With the talk came politics or, beyond that, an entire culture of egal-itarianism and vigorous participation...

...These jobs are not inherently less dignified and compelling than the old forms of industrial labor—at least as far as I can see—but their occupants have been pounded into a level of servility that would appall a self-respecting longshoreman...

...This decision passes by without much comment in the foreword of The Unmaking of the American Working Class, but there is never any doubt it was the right one: When The-riault's sons reach their teens, he makes sure they have at least a summer-long fruit-tramping experience...

...As for the workplace "gabfest" that enriched the longshoreman's life with political zest and intellectual challenge, a growing number of employers have instituted rules against talking...

...Camaraderie was another attraction of the old style blue collar workplace, which Theriault describes as a "gabfest...

...It was "economic class warfare...

...For me, it was a good feeling," he writes...

...A few longshoremen, notably longtime union president Harry Bridges, were Marxists...

...There is, as there has to be in any book about blue collar work, plenty of pain and difficulty in Theriault's memories of life on the docks and in the fields of the American West...

...I'm leaving town, heading for a new place, new people, and a job is waiting for me when I get there...

...We are urged," he says, "to get on the side of history and quit revering sweat...

...Talk goes on constantly," he reports, "and the conversation can cover just about every topic imaginable," including, in one instance, the nature and fate of the indigenous Tas-manians...