BS: How blue collar are you?

Subject: Obit: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:44 PM

We got any "salt of the earth" working men out there?

Do you work with your hands?
In industry?
Do you have a fancy degree?
Are you part of a union?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:47 PM

Thanks clone!

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: pdq
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:56 PM

"Blue Collar" ~ B.T.O.


Walk your street
And I'll walk mine
And should we meet
Would you spare me some time
Cuz you should see my world
Meet my kind
Before you judge our minds
Blue Collar

Sleep your sleep
I'm awake and alive
I keep late hours
Your nine to five
So I would like you to know that
I need the quiet hours
To create in this world of mine
Blue Collar

I'd like you to know
At four in the morning
Things are coming to mind
All I've seen all I've done
And those I hope to find

I'd like to remind you at four in the morning
My world is very still
The air is fresh under diamond skies
Makes me glad to be alive

You keep that beat
And I keep time
Your restless face
Is no longer mine

I rest my feet while the worlds in heat
And I wish that you could do the same
Blue Collar

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:57 PM

Depends when you looked over the last 50 years...

Worked in a factory, worked on roads, gardened, played guitar, worked in broadcasting, ran a university library, retired... still play guitar.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:11 PM

Blue enough.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: olddude
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:17 PM

Well regardless of my technical background, I am so blue that I sing "nobody knows the troubles I sees" every night ...

I am so blue that when I get wet, I color the sofa when I sit down.

Blueberries are my favorite fruit

I love bluebirds
Love Art Thieme's song about his old blue dog

I even have black and blue marks on my shins from running into the coffee table

I could go on and on

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:17 PM

ALL of me is blue from time to time.

The collar, not so much. I've done hard labor at see, in gold mines, and as a yard-bird on Navy vessels, scraped paint and done assays and swung picks and shifting irons, but I escaped to pretty much white collar work before I was forty. Clawed my way through an BA and MA degree in my late thirties and forties, too, to assist in acheiving escape velocity.


A

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:20 PM

The color of my collar depends on which Hawaiian Shirt I have in that day.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: pdq
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:23 PM

oldude still has his wife wash his clothes with Bluing

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:25 PM

blue collar, white collar, pink collar

they are just boxes, "little boxes just the same."

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jane of 'ull
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:28 PM

I believe there is now a name for those people who work from home : 'open collar' workers!

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:28 PM

as long as its not that toilet bowl stuff

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 02:44 PM

I think the idea of the "blue collar" worker is pretty antiquated.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Dave Swan
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:58 PM

I'm proud of the blue collar I put on every day at work. I am a union man, so was my dad. My university degree isn't necessary for the work I do and I look around every day at guys who are smarter and more intelligent than many of my classmates.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:15 PM

Dave... ain't THAT the truth! I have shovelled it all from concrete to snow to gravel to shit. LOTS of shit, including fresh green horseshit with fresh green horse flies buzzing by the hundreds to bullshit of the bovine and human kind. I have an M.Sc.Eng. but MANY times would sooner deal with real shit than the shit I ecncounter in most boardrooms and staff meetings.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,Jim Dixon, at the Webster, WI library
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:36 PM

I have never done much physical labor, although I recently had a "post office" job that required me to lift packages a lot. Part time, I also drove a delivery van. I worked for a university, not the USPS, and only delivered mail around the campus. Is that blue-collar enough?

I definitely came from blue-collar stock. My father was first a farmer and later a janitor in a large office building.

The only handkerchief I carry is a bandana. For me, that's a fashion statement. I haven't worn a tie in years, except for weddings and funerals. Many years ago, I had jobs that required me to wear a tie at work, but many offices have become a lot more informal since then.

I think there are definite differences in point of view between blue-collar and white-collar people, and one of them is the amount of tolerance for corporate bullshit.

You can work for a corporation and either resist the bullshitters, or suck up to them. I didn't suck up, and I think that, more than anything else, makes me blue-collar.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: frogprince
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:40 PM

Grew up on the farm: definitely blue collar except for no-collar summer days doing things like stacking 70 lb hay bales over my head.
And yes, shoveling and pitchforking lots and lots of literal shit.

Spent more than my share of student days, before and after a 4 year Navy hitch. Working Navy days were in blue denim and chambrey.

One year as a blue uniformed UAW member, working in a hell hole foundry. Might have been there a lot of years, but the foundry closed.

About 7 years as a retail clerk, a bottom-rung wearer of dress shirt and tie.

Quite a few years as a quality inspector, some in literal blue collar but all at that level.

So am I blue collar because of my work history, or somethin' else because I picked up a masters in divinity along the way in a past life?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:45 PM

froggy... "masters in divinity"

So you can find water? I thought all froggies knew how to do that without going to school?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 04:46 PM

Gee. I've only delivered newspapers by walking the route; scrubbed gym floors; worked as a dishwasher; cleaned the floors in a hospital (including the OR and Delivery Rooms); made and set gravestones; been in the Infantry, and earned an MS in Library Science. After the MS I've cleaned up leaky diapers, cleaned the library's gutters, plowed snow, cleaned rugs, installed computer networks (including running the cabling), climbed on roofs to find leaks....

Define your terms. A worker is a worker is a worker. OBU.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Don Firth
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:06 PM

I belong to two unions. The Communications Workers of America (worked a few years as a telephone operator) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (sang a fair amount on television and worked as a radio announcer at a couple of stations).

I don't think that necessarily qualifies as "blue collar" work.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Cats
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:27 PM

Union.. yep.. I am the National Executive Member for my union for Devon, Cornwall, Torbay, Plymouth and the Isles of Scilly.

Working with my hands... no, was the head of the biggest Special Education Department in the county before becoming full time union

working stock.. oh yes.

Fancy degree .. yes you have to to teach and especially to work with the students I chose to work with

2 out of 4.. what does that make me?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:28 PM

Does it really matter, as long as you are paying your taxes.?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: JennieG
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 05:53 PM

Do people still use terms like blue collar and white collar any more? Seems a bit 'classist' to me.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: frogprince
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:22 PM

JennieG, the tea party faction in the U.S. has at least one prominent spokesperson, Sarah Palin, who constantly presents herself as "blue collar", with the implication that that is the only really good, "true blue" type of American suitable for office. On the other hand, that faction try to brand the opposition as "elitist", meaning "out of touch with real loyal Americans." A few months back Palin had a short TV series on her life in Alaska. On the episode I saw, she went out on a salmon boat with her family. She pressured her daughter into clubbing salmon as they were pulled in, and stood aside bragging that she was raising a "real blue-collar kid".

Against that background, we're tossing around how we do or don't re;ate to that definition. I think we've already demonstrated that it isn't a particulary useful way to define anyone.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:29 PM

Someone claimed this. "I am the closest thing Mudcat has to a normal blue collar American."

It made me curious.

This is not meant as a swipe at anyone. I am just trying to get a picture of how people feel about themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:57 PM

OBU. We are all workers, and management and labor are necessary to each other as hydrogen and oxygen are to create water.

If you think life's a drudge, and work means pain,
And the New World Order is a world insane,
If you dream a better world -- the dream is not in vain.
Just make it a fact with a Class Act.
If we don't stand together -- together we fall
"Cause "An injury to one's an injury to all."
Sisters and brothers heed the words of the song
What the world really needs is a Class Act.
We can win the world with a Class Act.
          --Len Wallace, 2007, "Songs of the IWW", 38th ed., pp.15-16

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:55 PM

Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer
by Bob McDill, Chuck Neese, and Wayland Holyfield

There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my rednecks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

The barmaid is mad 'cause some guy made a pass.
The jukebox is playin' ``There Stands the Glass''.
The cigarette smoke kinda hangs in the air.
Red necks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

A cowboy is cussin' the pinball machine.
A drunk at the bar's gettin' noisy and mean.
Some guy on the phone says ``I'll be home soon, dear''.
Red necks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

    No we don't fit in with that white collar crowd.
    We're a little too rowdy and a little too loud.
    But there's no place that I'd rather be than right here
    With my rednecks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

The semis are passin' on the highway outside.
The four-thirty crowd is about to arrive.
The sun's goin' down and we'll all soon be here.
Red necks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

    No we don't fit in with that white collar crowd.
    We're a little too rowdy, and a little too loud.
    But there's no place that I'd rather be than right here
    With my rednecks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my rednecks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bobert
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 10:58 PM

You got a collar???

Geeze, wish I had one...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: frogprince
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 11:18 PM

Then again, on summer holiday weekends we generally camp at a little resort and go no-collar-all-over...

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Musket
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:02 AM

Apologies to those who have heard this before, I am getting lazy in my anecdotes. (Got some tablet for it though.)

When I was a miner, I used to shout "Mint Sauce!" at sheep in fields. Now I am a retired chief executive blah blah blah I shout "Rosemary and garlic!"

Not necessarily funny but does have the sad attraction of being true....

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:37 AM

Here in S.Wales we used to have lots of Collar'y workers!
Here

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 06:51 AM

I've done all kinds of things ranging from clerical, motherhood, playgroup assistant, school playground patrol, working in a nautical bookshop to working in an engineering office environment. But I don't consider myself blue or white just a worker who could do with a bit of a holiday!

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:04 AM

Not sure this qualifies but I did race in the mini-stock division for several years, built my own car, engine, etc and had a VW shop many years where I turned wrenches, did body and paint work and restorations... Sounds kinda blue collar-ish...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:34 AM

EVERYBODY works for somebody else. The self-employed carpenter works for himself (a tough boss), legislators work for the moneyed (and they work to please the stockholders), the farmer works to provide food, even the drug lord words to provide shit to the users.

We're ALL blue collar but just don't realize it.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:36 AM

That's purdy much it, Rap...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: bobad
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 11:41 AM

Workin' For The Man
Roy Orbison


Hey now you better listen to me everyone of you
We got a lotta lotta lotta lotta work to do
Forget about your woman and that water can
Today were working for the man

well pick up your feet
we've got a deadline to meet
I'm gonna see you make it on time
Don't relax
I want elbows and backs
I wanna see everybody from behind

'Cause your working for the man working for the man
you gotta make him a hand when you're working for the man

Oh well I'm pickin' 'em up and I'm laying 'em down
I believe he's gonna work me into the ground
I pull to the left I heave to the right
I wanna kill him but it wouldn't be right

'Cause I,m working for the man working for the man
gotta make him a hand when you're working for the man

Well the boss man's daughter sneaks me water
everytime her daddy's down the line
she says meet me tonight love a me right
and everything is gonna be fine
So I slave all day without much pay
'cause I'm just abiding my time
'cause the company and the daughter you see
Their both gonna be all mine

Yah I'm gonna be the man gonna be the man
Gotta make him a hand if I'm gonna be the man

working for the man working for the man
gonna be the man gonna be the man
Gotta make him a hand working for the man

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 01:08 PM

I got me one of them 'fancy degrees'.... it, and $3-$4, will get me a beer in 'some' local bars. (turned out when I graduated, the demand for philosophers was ummmmm.... down.

Most of my life I have been under-employed. I worked delivering papers, checking in grocery stores, working as a carpenter's helper while getting that fancy degree, loading boxcars with canned goods (big muscles!) and being a beginning cabinet maker.

Oh.... in that canned goods factory (Stokley-Van Camps) they found out I could read & write, and I spent a year as a bean-counter! Literally! I did inventory in a plant the canned Pork & Beans!.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: olddude
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 01:19 PM

Took my dog for a walk, his coller is blue ... I like a blue sky

Marge on the Simpson's cartoon with the big blue hair is a sex symbol to me

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 02:33 PM

pdq... BTOs Blue Collar is a fav of mine... BTO

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 02:53 PM

"and I spent a year as a bean-counter! Literally!"

There are times I'm glad I've cut down my coffee intake. Chances are I'da had a mouthful, and it would now be on the laptop. Thanks, Bill.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: pdq
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 03:00 PM

Dave Van Ronk once had the job of painting the eyespot on Mickey Mouse dolls.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 03:01 PM

"I did inventory in a plant the canned Pork & Beans"

"Pork Counter" would have a different connotation.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 03:55 PM

I used to wear blue collar shirts all the time. Still do sometimes. Lots of my ties "work" well with them.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 04:54 PM

Did a count and I have 6 blue shirts.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 05:40 PM

Lemmee wander thru some of the high lights of the shit I've done at one point in time in my life:

Ran addresso-graph machine
Mowed lawns
Fixed lawn mowers
Rebuilt car engines
Mucked stalls
Worked at a riding stable saddling and hosing down horses
Worked as a draftsman
Worked as a plumbers assistant
Framed houses
Auto mechanic
Race car driver
Built houses
Electrician
Renovated old buildings

And still squeezed in 2 college degrees and 18 years combined teaching 5th-6th grade (2 years), GED in the Richmond Jail, counselor in a drug program and Social Worker...

BTW, I'm also the P-Vine's 'Under-gardener" and rebuilding a dumb boat while bringing this abused house back from the edge...

I'm tired!!! I need a nap!!! LOL...

B~ (for "blue" collar)

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 06:51 AM

White collar 1957 - 1970 Analytical chemist specialising in brewing. When it dawned on me that the men (and even the women, who were paid less) in the bottling room got between twice and three times my salary. I was at the time assistant chief chemist at Goldwells (remember "Snowball"?), so I gave the boss instructions (quite explicit, as I recall) re the insertion of my rolled up contract of employment in a suitable aperture, and departed.

I was better paid as an apprentice than as an assistant chief chemist, and five years on I was a time served carpenter and joiner.

So off with the white collar and on with the......bib & brace overalls!

Not a blue collar in sight.

When building work was scarce, I did anything I could get, right down to cleaning sewers. Blue collar at last?.........NOPE! Boiler suits.

So never a blue collar did I wear, but still a straightforward working class grafter.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 07:14 AM

We got any "salt of the earth" working men out there?

Sexist much?

I have done day care in my home, worked fast food (food prep), early morning (4am) retail stocking and modular specialist work (constructing shelves and displays), cleaned houses (between 2 to 5 a day 6 days a week), all of which means I had a very sweaty collar whatever colour it was.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 07:36 AM

Inverted snobbery rules OK

Sorry, but I find threads like this divisive.

Not to mention, as VT noted, sexist.

What is it meant to prove?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: frogprince
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:16 AM

My take: I seriously doubt that JTS had any intention of being divisive. Most people in the U.S. would be aware that there has been a lot of "blue collar" rhetoric around that is deliberately intended to be divisive. This comes accross more as a chance to discuss how any one of us actually relates to the phenomenom, and, as I referred to before, I think we have for the most part taken the opportunity to say in effect "blue collar schmoo color, this doesn't define anyone in any legitimate way."

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:21 AM

Thank you for your considered criticism, though it seems clear that you haven't read and tried to comprehend my subsequent posts.

No it is not sexist and it is only divisive if you make it such. It was a response to a comment in another thread, and nothing more than an informal poll. Plenty of women have answered without taking offense.   
There has not been a single divisive comment until...

"Sexist much?"

and

"Sorry, but I find threads like this divisive."


If you do not like it, there is not a single bloody thing forcing you to read the thread and participate.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:38 AM

Well said Jack, and a very mature reaction if I may say so.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Beer
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:39 AM

Worked a year as a garbage man. Dollar and hour and all you could eat.1963.
ad.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 09:23 AM

John,

The only divisiveness in the thread at this point, is snarky comments from you. It would seem that the removal of the divisiveness should seem pretty clear to you. You may remove the divisiveness by either A. Growing up. of B. Focusing your attention elsewhere. I never imagined that you would invent option C. Doubling down on acting like an arsehole.

Congratulations on having outsmarted me.

Now would you please choose A. or B. ?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 11:09 AM

Jack, I grew up trying to make it as a musician doing blue collar jobs without growing up with much money, a trust fund, school scholarships or an upper middle class background which means I had to learn to live on less, my mother and father ravaged by the Depression of '29 and guess what, here we go again.

I worked in industry, a paper plant, a hospital orderly, cleared fields of weeds as a part time hire, was a box boy, in the stock room of department stores, and finally found that I could supplement my music by teaching. I had blisters on my hands from work. Never made a lot of money but understood the plight of the working-class through personal experience.

Barbara Ehrenreich is one of my heroes as this country "nickels and dimes" us through their greedy selfishness. John Boehner may cry about his humble beginnings but he has turned his back on those who come up the hard way.

I guess the point of this thread is to ask if those who advocate for working-class America have experienced any of the hardships that they are now and have formerly gone through.
Those of us who have not have everything handed to them support unions and the rights of workers. I think that this is an important aspect of the power of the folk music revival.
It motivated Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, and so many others to dig into this music and find its humanitarian roots.

Labor movements in the US are an ignored but crucial insight into our history. The gains by the IWW, the Knights of Labor, the early AFL/CIO, NMUA, and now AFSCME and SEIU are part of what makes this country what it has become and now Republicans are starting to destroy and dismantle democracy. If you think that the Republicans are on the side of working class Americans, you are sadly deluded.

There is a class war in this country and working America didn't start it.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: olddude
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 11:15 AM

Let me see
I been
a Janitor
a steel worker
worked in a brake line plant
lawn keeper
paperboy
short order cook
Waiter
painter
worked at a car wash
logger
VP of Software Engineering
Professor of Computer Science
CEO of my own company

and now that I am a CEO of my own company ... I get to do most all of the above myself once again

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 11:34 AM

I have always been an accountant - and I'm very useful!!!

I was suited from 1964 to 2002 and in casual gear ever since.

What is all this blue collar nonsence???

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 11:42 AM

The point is that I think jack wants to make us all hypocrites because we support the goals of working class Americans without necessarily being in the position of coming up the hard way.
If I'm wrong, here, Jack, tell me.

I think that honest Americans can support the working class and middle class in this country without having to be poor themselves. People who have been educated in the meaning of democracy know that unions, working and middle class people have made this country exceptional by rejecting the elitists in the corporatocracy (Republicans) who greedily want to keep what they have stolen from average Americans.

I would say that many on Mudcat know what it's like to work for a living and if they decided to become musicians, they would have to supplant their career goals with day jobs. There is nothing phony about this.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 12:47 PM

That's it Stringsinger. It's asking people to put a label on themselves, and in so doing, possibly, (and I do mean possibly) totally altering other peoples perception of them. For better or for worse.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 01:05 PM

Scholar's collars are what color? That was fun to say and type!

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 01:13 PM

Gee... I was enjoying reading about the varied careers the people I have met and have befriended here. Just now, I very much liked Dan's post and the joke at the end of it.

Let's take a break.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 02:28 PM

>>>The point is that I think jack wants to make us all hypocrites because we support the goals of working class Americans without necessarily being in the position of coming up the hard way.
If I'm wrong, here, Jack, tell me.<<<

This is only the point I tried to make. I made it. in plain and clear English. Anything other than that came from somebody else.

"Someone claimed this. "I am the closest thing Mudcat has to a normal blue collar American."

It made me curious."



READ THE FUCKING THREAD BEFORE COMMENTING PLEASE!!!

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 03:37 PM

Don't bother Jack. It's Saturday night.

And, yeah, I know I do it too. Perhaps a support group?

>;-)

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 06:24 PM

""That's it Stringsinger. It's asking people to put a label on themselves, and in so doing, possibly, (and I do mean possibly) totally altering other peoples perception of them. For better or for worse.""

I think that, and String's last comment , misses Jack's pint entirely. None of us have belittled the working class or wanted to.

The "blue collar" stereotype needs to be debunked, as it's origin is as a pejorative term enabling office workers and management to feel superior.

What has come out of this thread you find divisive is the exact opposite.

I see a bunch of people proud to be working class but not prepared to be stereotyped as "blue collar" or "white collar".

More cohesive than divisive, wouldn't you say?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 07:00 PM

It's still putting labels on people. So many people are straight jacketed by labels, put on them by other people.
Blue collar is just another way to say working class. and I hate the class system. It's a nomenclature that's usually employed pejoratively.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 07:30 PM

I asked people if they wanted to label themselves. Now quit braying like an ass and quit making things up to criticize.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 07:57 PM

I think most people are proud of their blue collar jobs and/or heritage. Some jobs are too dangerous and some are too painful to do for long periods, but some are healthy and pay well enough and people are happy doing them. It is all work that has to be done(oh maybe not all of it)..we should share it so no one has to do too much of it, and we should have appropriate conditions etc....but if someone voluntarily labels him/herself, I can't see the problem at all. The fewer skills we have distributed throughout a country or a community, the worse off we all are. mg

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 09:16 PM

Sorry Jack to have brought my own baggage into the thread.

But may I point out the tone I pick up from your words "fancy degree" seem to me perjorative. I happen to have a hard won BA in English and Education (licensed by the state of Virginia to teach), mainly as a result of having done the hard graft and knowing my body could not keep it up forever.

I cleaned those houses in between taking courses from a teacher college independent study programme which meant I studied and wrote and typed (before the days that home pcs were common) up papers at night and on weekends. I completed that coursework in the normal four years much to the chagrin and disbelief of my academic advisor. Before anyone makes comment about the energy of youth, I was 38 and had 3 kids and directed children and youth choir and drama programmes in my church as well as being soloist in church choir.

After diploma I worked as substitute teacher, teacher aid, (full time teacher posts were in short supply in the area of the state we lived in and with 3 kids I couldn' t take jobs over an hour drive away) part stocker in a card and gift shop, part time evening weekend manager of a university distance ed site, part time HR/payroll assistant, office manager of career center, and finally full time coordinating editor for US Federal Code online product. Upon moving to UK (2003) and discovering my degree is not honored here, I have worked as business support administrator which at times includes some surprisingly heavy hands on work. I have belonged to a union since I got employment in this country, an option not available to me in any job I worked in the US.

I think most people will do what they have to do, if given the chance. I suppose I should mention that the hard times fired the creativity in me. I wrote much more powerfully when times were toughest (in particular the house cleaning years) than I have at any other time.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 09:34 PM

I was trying to be light-hearted in the first post. I apologize if anyone was offended.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bugsy
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 03:43 AM

My collar is so blue, it makes my red neck look purple!

Cheers
Bugsy

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 04:14 AM

No problem mate... we all understand each other a little better and that's a good thing. Sometimes takes a little sniffing and snarling to get there.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 04:22 AM

Calm down Jackie boy, try to separate the conceptual from the personal. I'm not attacking you or anybody else, I'm criticising the concept of social labelling.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 09:47 AM

Here's the deal... Yeah, "blue collar" is something that the Republican Party has used it's PR people as a hook to get folks to vote against their own interests... They have done this going back to Daddy Bush who perfected it and passed it down to his boys who also are very good at it... It is class warfare but the Republicans, who stink at governing, are very good with PR and propaganda... They have convinced "Southern Man" (and his Midwestern and northern counterparts) that ***everyone*** with a higher education (college) is a silver-spoon elitist???

I mean, one has to give the Republicans credit for this but it is so far from the truth that if it didn't mean anything in terms who gets to run the country, it would be laughable...

Here's what has to happen: The Democrats need to counter this 3 decade old misconception about educated people with their own PR... They need to talk about their blue collar roots and how they and their families had to work hard and make sacrfices for the education... When the Democrats get this then they can crack the Southern Strategy...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 11:15 AM

The rubric doesn't cover all the people who are both blue collar and white collar.
I don't think I missed the point, Don. This is a divisive comment intended to separate people by their economic status. I think that contrary to trying to belittle the notion of a working-class, there is a Rousseauan attempt to glamorize the Proletariat by denigrating those who don't fit into that role.

Working class is not always by choice, though in some cases it is an honorable alternative to the crooked business white collar crimes by some of those in corporations, the military and Washington.

Roosevelt, a wealthy man, was a real friend to the working class though I doubt he was as Gordon Freisen has said about Woody Guthrie, "He was never on the business end of a steam drill". Blue collar has become more of a description of those who support the working-class rather than those who necessarily came out of it.

Trying to establish some bona fides for commenting on this issue as having come from a factory or garbage collecting job is not constructive and helpful to the real hurting working class out there in America.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 01:15 PM

"I'm criticising the concept of social labelling."

Then you are in the wrong thread. This is the one with the light hearted descriptions of work histories and clothing choices. And again, it is YOU who is being divisive.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 01:30 PM

And YOU who can't tell the difference between a point of view and a personal criticism.
You ought to see if there's an anger management course local to you. I think you need help.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Allan C.
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 02:01 PM

Lessee, I am a water and wastewater treatment plant operator. I am not very sure as to what defines "blue collar" but would guess that such an occupation would be likely to exemplify it to a greater degree than, say, donut baker - which I have also been, BTW.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 02:27 PM

Wrong thread....

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 11:07 PM

""I don't think I missed the point, Don. This is a divisive comment intended to separate people by their economic status.""

Which, in this case, it signally failed to achieve, having rather the opposite effect insofar as the majority responded along the lines that we are all working people, the colour of whose collars matters not a whit.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Musket
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 01:29 PM

Yeah, unless you are minted and go through life enjoying it, you are a worker.

The old blue collar tag, which is very much an American tag but fully understood in The UK can denote getting your hands dirty as opposed to wearing a suit, or it could denote financial reward, but of course all is blurred.

My responsible adult, bless her, is a surgeon so she gets her hands dirty, or at least her gloves, and wears protective workwear, but I doubt blue collar would be an adequate description of her role. Likewise, I wear a suit and try to look important these days as a retired Chief Executive who helps interfere in government business. But I started out down the pit, so in some peoples' eyes, I might be blue collar after all?

Buggered if I know.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Willie-O
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 02:35 PM

My dad, diehard Marxist that he was, had this simple test to determine if you are working-class: do you have to work to earn a living?

Yes? Congratulations. You're working class and you have a lot in common with the other members of same whatever covers their neck.

Dad was a scientist and civil servant, previous to that an intinerant industrial chemist and university teacher. We looked as middle-class as it is possible to be.

His point was that there is no such thing as a middle class, (which could be classified as white-collar) only a middle income group, and the definition of middle-class as a higher status than working (aka lower) class leads to artificial divisions of interests which are only useful to those who don't want to see all working people engaged in pursuing their common interests.   

W-O

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: ripov
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 04:05 PM

The concept 'Black suit + white shirt + bow tie = overalls for playing classical music' doesn't always go down well. Probably "Bowler hat + pinstripes = overalls for pinching peoples savings" wouldn't either.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 08:04 PM

I really thought this thread was about "what do you do and what did you do". Fuck the philosophy and the definitions... WHO ARE YOU AND HOW DID YOU GET TO BE WHO YOU ARE?

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Joe_F
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 08:45 PM

60 years ago, when I was coming of age, there was a fairly well-defined class system even in America. The working class was characterized, not precisely by its income and certainly not by having to work for a living, but by various cultural stigmata. There was, as the term "blue collar" suggests, a difference in clothing: those people's pants did not have creases. They had very little interaction with the banking system; almost all their monetary transactions were in cash. Their sexual morality was not bourgeois, but was constricted in its own way; young men were expected to whore around, but foreplay was considered perverted.

There was a lower middle class, which paid the most for respectability & got the least out of it; it was therefore tight-assed and fearful. There was an upper middle class (I was in it), which had its own anxieties; I heard it said that the hardest income to live on was $10,000 a year: you were tempted to a lot of things, such as private schools for your children, that you couldn't well afford.

Since then it seems things have gotten mixed up a good deal.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: CamiSu
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 12:12 AM

Hmmm..

Carpenter.
Farmer. (member of the Manure Movers of America and have the shirt to prove it)
Stone Broker
Volunteer tutor of adults (Math)
Designer (did not finish my Arch degree. Was too poor to keep it up and too pissed at the powers that be that allowed harassment of women students by male critics)
Jeweller
Set designer & builder
Tech Director

A real mixture. I came from a definitely upper middle class family, but really did not know it. (and got little to no help when I could have used it, so no matter anyway.) Once had an exchange student whose parents were a doctor and a lawyer. He considered carpenters peons (literally. He was Venezuelan) But after a few weeks he was saying "My father or mother could not do that, at most of the stuff I did. And he was AMAZED that my husband was the main cook!

My son did finish college and now is a quarry manager in a sandstone quarry, where he is often fixing fairly specialized machinery, or running a backhoe to open up a new area, or various other odd things. He realized that he would not be happy in a lab, and loves his work (most of the time). My daughter teaches and tutors, and loves that. It takes all kinds. Truly.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Mooh
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 04:35 PM

With a lot of overlap as I usually worked more than one job until 6 or 7 years ago, in this order (I think), with musician all the way through: gardener, tree planter, gardener, musician, retail sales, janitor, public sector labour negotiator, gardener, janitor, musician. Full time musician for 10 years or so. I've carried union cards from the musicians' union, SEIU, and CAW, I've walked pickets, demonstrated and protested, and won and lost against employers and the courts.

Even the white collar desk job working for SEIU was blue collar in reality.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 04:53 AM

It seems that there is a mound of inverted snobbery attached to so called "blue collar"!!

They even hold their eating knives like a pencil - known as holding a knife "that way"!!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 10:23 AM

Bonzo doesn't actually have three legs.

He's just trying to be a Clever Dick.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 02:33 PM

Ahhhh... nevermind.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Allan C.
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 06:17 AM

Maybe the term, "blue collar" was invented by members of the working class in order to differentiate themselves from, and perhaps, to look down upon "red necks", a label once imposed upon agrarians but now used to label a broad variety of working class folks.

I'm not really serious; I'm just thinking out loud.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 11:50 AM

Americans work at a lot of jobs, sometimes both blue and white collar jobs. I have worked at both and never made much money.

Anyone who wears "Blue Collar" on their sleeve to define themselves may have to prove it by exhibiting the amount of tattoos they have on their body and the content of the symbols might have knives and "Mom" on them. :)

Also, blisters on the hands. :)

I think that anyone can represent trade unionism regardless of whatever economic background you have. It's an American idea that we all can be proud of.

Jack, I'm not sure where this thread is going. Is it a critique of those who claim to be blue collar and you would label them "phonies"? Is it an honest interest in those who have diversified work backgrounds in an attempt to find out how they view themselves? This is a confusing thread.

Subject: RE: BS: How blue collar are you?
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 01:09 PM

80% blue collar. the cello and classical music thing as wel as being a therapeutic hypnotist is just a happy aberration