A Sense Of Class Identity (Unity, Solidarity And Power)

"Some of the biggest shifts taking place within the labor market are the downward pressures on workers involved in the reproduction of labor: teachers, university professors, doctors, hospital staff, etc., and the emergence—as public education comes under a sustained assault—of a substantial student labor force.

All of this has created both new challenges and opportunities for the Left. Much of the talk of the declining working class comes from those who in the past accepted a stereotype of the working class as blue-collar (predominantly white, male) manufacturing workers. Today, new sites of struggle are emerging. Public education and public health have been the center of some of the most militant industrial struggles in recent years.

The working class today wears as many white collars as blue and is younger, more multiracial, and includes far more women than ever before (and this is even more true outside the OECD countries). Any attempt at building a class-based movement against inequality must put issues of racism, sexism, and sexual equality front and center. And it must seek to patiently foster a sense of class identity among groups of workers who until very recently saw themselves outside (and often above) the manual working class. But it also must not lose sight of the very real power that workers have. [...] there are plenty of hostile class forces that already stress the fragmentation, atomization, and powerlessness of the working class as a means of disarming it. The role of the Left should be to highlight those moments that give a sense of class unity, solidarity, and power."

Geoff Bailey