Every region is different (for the record I’m in Western Canada) but I’m fascinated by the attitudes and political positions I have seen among (some of my) friends and acquaintances in office jobs versus trades and construction versus service work versus even the self-employed.
I have a broad array of working experience and while I primarily work in an office now (I use the word primarily because I do some moonlighting beyond my full-time job), I’ve spent a lot of time in manual labour and service work.
Here is what I think we need to learn from each other.
White-collar workers: We need to understand we’re not future executive vice presidents in charge of sales, we’re part of the working class and our 40k salary is going to increase, at best, in small increments if we don’t marshal our collective labour power.
Thoughts of a key to the executive washroom are, at best, akin to pipe dreams about winning the lottery where only one in a thousand might rise to that position. At worst it’s complete naïveté, since at many organizations those jobs are reserved for a kid from a wealthy family who was sent to a high profile school, no one is going to rise to that post from within.
The capitalists benefit from us thinking of ourselves as members of a separate managerial class, either actually or prospectively, they’ve literally dangled that over us for two centuries of office and clerk work and that’s why we are 99% non-unionized. It’s a bad deal for us. The small pay raise that comes with that team lead or floor supervisor position does not mean we are not still getting exploited like the rest of the cubicle suckers, we are all more than likely going to be exploited until we retire, get laid off, or die, if we keep thinking this way.
We’re labour, we need to act like it.
Note this also means we need to have solidarity with workers in other industries. And if you’re in management in a small office attached to a plant with a lot of unionized workers who do a lot better than you, support them instead of being mad at them (on the down-low if need be, but still, real support, be their conspirator). I don’t want to hear any resentment about their high hourly pay while you work an exempt salary job and put in way too much unpaid overtime. They’re not the ones exploiting you. I also don’t want to hear that they make too much money for only having high school diplomas. I repeat, they aren’t the ones exploiting you! See above comment about learning to act like labour.
Blue-collar workers: Depending on the region you may be well aware that you are doing as well or better than many/most people who wear a tie to work. Certainly my journeyman family members know I was not raking in the dough at the not-for-profit I worked at for a decade.
But I’ve seen comments on this sub-reddit throwing shade at office employees working from home while they worked their “essential” service or construction or trucking jobs without a break. Folks making those comments really seemed to think that anyone with a button-up shirt is living the high life.
You have a right to be angry at how much has been demanded of you and how little is still being given, but don’t be mad at fellow workers. I got to work from home for a few months in 2020. The money I saved on travel was significant, as was the extra hour or two each day (counting the lunch break that is actually a break if you’re not still physically at work). The momentary easing of financial and time pressure made me realize how great the burden has been for me all these years, and wonder how I’ve been doing it so long with not enough sleep or family time and never getting ahead on bills.
Don’t be angry when something goes well for a fellow worker. Don’t be angry when fast food workers get raises, office workers get to work from home some portion of the time, or government workers with the best pensions win a labour action to keep those pensions. We all lose when we tear each other down. The capitalist class is our enemy, not workers with a different kind of job.
You may think people with ___ job are doing better than you and need to be knocked down a peg. They may not be doing better than you at all, but even if they are, aim to leverage that and get more for yourself rather than supporting corporations in knocking other workers down to your level.
If they make more you deserve more too. If they have non-monetary benefits like WFH you deserve improved benefits, too, maybe but the same ones if your job doesn’t allow for it, but more PTO, better working conditions, something.
You deserve better, other workers don’t deserve worse.
Everyone: We’re all labour, we all deserve better, and we all need to support each other. No war but the class war.