The Workers, Divided

As early as the 1950s sociologists were beginning to recognize that feelings of alienation and anomie at the work place were not restricted to assembly-line and factory workers but were also being experienced by the burgeoning white-collar workforce. C Wright Mills in his seminal work White Collar argues that office workers in American have undergone a form of proletarianisation. In essence, white collar workers sell "pieces of their personality" by adopting certain personality characteristics that do not reflect their true personalities. Consequently, society is filled with these workers and the attendant hypocrisy, deceit and insincerity that comes with their alienation. Since white collar workers manipulate others to earn a living, they experience alienation. Although I haven’t seen any date to suggest it, I believe that this sense of alienation exists irrespective of the type of white collar work being performed.

The current climate of layoffs and uncertain job security has exacerbated these feelings of alienation and almost turned them into overt paranoia. The corporate culture of the 21st century is very different from that of the mid to latter half of the last century (and vastly different from the century before). Robert Goldman from Louis & Clark University has an excellent web-site where he does a content analysis of the way advertising has portrayed work over the last several decades. Especially interesting is his commentary on the way work communities are portrayed in beer advertisements. In the not too distant past, friendship relationships formed at the work-place often carried over to the bowling alley and the golf course. In the present era of corporate downsizing and deindustrialization, one wonders how much occupational community has survived. While not discussed by Goldman, one can theorize that this lack of occupational community goes a long way toward explaining why the white collar proletariat is seemingly disinterested in organizing itself into labor unions when they would clearly benefit from doing so. The current trends of deindustrialization, rapid job shifting, “relentless corporate downsizing” and polarization of wealth have led to a climate of fear at the workplace and the realization that the guy in the next cubicle might be in competition for your job so perhaps its best to keep your distance. Goldman opines that large corporations exacerbated this lack of worker cohesion through so-called “slice of death” advertising which first appeared in the late 1980’s. This type of ad depicted the corporate world as cold and unforgiving and gave the impression that the fastest way to the corner office was to accurately pick the speediest over-night package carrier and the fastest way to the unemployment line was to make a wrong decision. Curiously, these ads have almost disappeared because, Goldman theorizes, in this era of hyper-competitiveness and global movement of labor, being good at your job is no longer correlated with job retention.

What does all this mean for the modern corporate employee? A climate of fear and paranoia is guaranteed to benefit the employer when it comes to lowering salaries and slashing benefits. Employees are deluded into thinking that their co-worker is more of a threat to their job than is the CEO and Board of Directors. The result: a weakened and compliant labor force that is very difficult to organize. Your thoughts?