BS: How blue collar are you?

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

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: 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: gnu
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 02:33 PM

Ahhhh... nevermind.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 02:27 PM

Wrong thread....

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.