The rise

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WHITE-collar workers: new middle class or new working class? In the wake of the TUC congress, Martin Thomas looks at the evidence and arguments provided by a new book: "The New Working Class' ", a collection of articles and excerpts edited by Richard Hyman and Robert Price (Macmillan £7.95).

ANTI-socialist writers 'oiten try to have it both ways on the issue of class and socialism.

One day they say that socialism is something foisted on the working class by middle-class semi-intellectuals. The workers themselves are loyal souls, if only they could escape the agitators and activists.

Next day, the story is that socialism was- admittedly deep-rooted in the traditional manual working class, but these are declining battalions. During the big battles in the Labour Party we heard the first story. TUC week was the time for the second story to come out. The TUC, we were told, will be 'saved from socialism by the rise of the white-collar unions.

The rise of white-collar work and white-collar trade unionism is certainly a fact (see box). i The theoretical issue it poses is whether we have a new working class, or a new middle class. Is it the unionisation of the white collar workers, -or the white-collar-isation of the trade unions?

Most (though by no means all) Marxists see most white-collar workers. as working class. That was Marx's own view of the question (box), though in his day the numbers involved were far, far smaller.

And there's a lot of evidence for this. The advantages enjoyed by white collar workers in pay and conditions over manual workers have been reduced (though Richard Hyman does point out that the equalisation is not as drastic as often made out). With new technology, capitalist control over office labour processes is increased to a level comparable with the shop floor.

Whereas unions like NALGO and the NUT used to refuse even to affiliate to the TUC, now they are often just as militant at rank and file level 'One (works) as a manager the other as overseer, the thir drudge. An ever increasing n included in the immediate ca And here it Is quite Immaterial worker, who is merely a limb of greater or smaller distance from 1 (Marx, Capital 1

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"STOP the missiles in '83... Strike less resolution on nuclear disarmaaction by the TUC!' That was the ment, which concentrated on chant to be heard from members Cruise and Trident, and limited itof YCND outside the TUC. Un- self to 'opposition' rather than a fortunately these sentiments were serious campaign of action.

Union leaders dry and warm in- missiles have not yet been inside. stalled and there are still rank and The centre/right of the TUC file trade unionists willing to take managed to push through a tooth-. action against them.

THE BAYING hysteria against NUM President Arthur Scargill whipped up by the press and TUC right wing at Blackpool was aimed not at Scargil's plainly Stalinist political views on international questions, but at his consistent advocacy of class action against the Tory government, In vilifying Scargill, nonentities like Alastair Graham of the CPSA could combine their own personal image-building efforts with a political fight for a perspective of long-term collaboration with the Tory government and slackening the links between the unions and the Labour Party. Yet the enthusiastic response of rank and file delegates to scargil on pit closures indicates that however unpopular his line on Eastern Europe, Scargill has a reservoir of support for his fight for Top. not much to inspire women workers at the TUC! Above, left:

Jimmy Knapp of the railworkers' union, one of the established 'Left' leaders who crumpled beneath the right-wing offensive.

of the white collar unions 'The commercial worker produces no surplus value directly.

But... what he costs the capitalist and what he brings in for him, are two different things. He... adds to the capitalist's Income by helping him to reduce the cost of realising surplus-value...

'(His) wage tends to fall, even in relation to average labour, with the advance of the capitalist mode of production. This is due partly to the division of labour in the office... Secondly... the progress of sclence and public education...

* The white-collar share of the workforce rose from 19% in 1911 to 43% in 1971. Today there are probably more white-collar workers in Britain than manual workers. * The white-collar share is especially high among women workers. 40% of waged women are in clerical work alone. * Together with the rise of the white-collar share has gone a rise of services as against the industrial sector (mining, manufacturing, construction, energy). In 1980 56% of the UK labour force was in services, as against 48% in 1960. 70% of women * Another parallel increase has been in higher education.

By the late '70s, 20% of the 20-24 age group in the UK was in higher education, as against 9% in 1960. The UK is way behind most advanced capitalist countries in this respect: in the US, some 56% of the age-group are in higher education. * White-collar union numbers doubled between the years 1911-21 and the 1930s; then doubled again between the 1930s and 1961; and once again between 1961 and 1978. By 1978, 39% of all trade unionists in Britain were w hite-collar workers. * 43% of white-collar workers were unionised by 1978. (For manual workers the unionisation rate is about 60%). * Between June 1973 and June 1983 the workforce in metal manufacture fell 50%; in textiles and clothing, 44%; in mechaniThe workforce in insurance, banking and finance and in 'professional and scientific services', 17%. be unions, and particularly he militants and the left must atensify the fight against ae leadership whose sellouts roke the ASLIF strike and he Health Service Unions though Murray could not rack the NGA). , In a real sense the TUC has ow returned to the sort of trategy that the 1927 TUC mbarked on with the Mondarner talks after the defeat Ithe General Strike: collaboraon and more collaboration. nd along with that went *creasing witch-hunts, attacks • democracy and bureauratisation. i manual unions. Shop stew-. d representation among hite collar workers is growing. The white-collar unions e not bastions of the right ng.

But they do differ systematiIly from the manual unions ¡ one respect: relations with • Labour Party. NALGO, CPSA, and the NUT are t affiliated, and not likely affiliate soon. White-collar pions that are affiliated genery have very high rates of ting out from the political ry: in ASTMS, for example, 1975,00% opted out.

Such facts have led some riters, both Marxist and nonarxist, to question the politiI significance of the unionisamn of white-collar workers. • George Strauss puts it, Vhite collar workers join ions, not because they ject their middle class asrations, but because they e unionism as a better way obtaining them' pineer, technologist, otc., manual labourer or even or of types of labour are • of productive labour... ther the job of a particular aggregate worker, is at a ctual manual labour. , p. 1040, Penguin edition): anti-Tory action.

This argument is countered most devastatingly by some non-Marxist sociologists, who asked white collar workers and manual workers about their attitudes to unions. 11% of white-collar unionists questioned said they had joined the union for ideoMarx's comments in Capital Volume I give the impression that he regarded even managers as working class, so long as they were salaried employees rather than owners.

But elsewhere (Capital vol. II, p. 388) Marx argues that in joint-stock companies the manager is 'the functioning capitalist'. . And even lower supervisors, foremen, etc., can usually be regarded ag part of the 'aggregate worker' only with severe qualifications: they are also tentacles of the 'collective capitalist' So not all white-collar worker can be lumped together.

Many professional workers, (Marx, Capital Vol. III, p. 300)

logical reasons, and 54% for bread-and-butter reasons. Among manual unions, 8% had joined for ideological reasons, 38% for bread-andbutter reasons, and 49%... because of a closed shop.

Manual workers can have 'middle class aspirations', too! enjoying high living standards and considerable autonomy in their work, are closer in their situation to the old petty bourgeoisie [small shopkeeper self-employed craftsmen, etc.) than to the working class.

And even among the main bulk of white-collar workers, a good chunk are considerably better-off than the average of the working class.

A real socialist party has to rouse and mobilise the most oppressed sections of the working class. So there is no room at all for complacency about the low percentage of manual workers in the ranks of the Left.

STRIKE not shared by most of the Trade Collective trade union action generates the seeds of socialism - but that's not the same thing as unions in themselves being inherently socialist.

Universal

The drive to form unions is so universal in the working class as to be practically automatic; but the political coloration of trade unionism depends on • more specific political and , ideological factors. In roughly similar economic situations, trade unions can be explicitly pro-capitalist (US 'business unionism'), religious (Italy, France, Belgium, etc., etc.), syndicalist, Labourist or revolutionary.

It depends on the 'vanguard' the active minority who shape the semi-automatic drive. of the working class into specific channels. Economic militancy creates better chances for a socialist active minority, but it does not guarantee it success. The Labour affiliation of the manual unions in Britain was not an automatic product of economic evolution. was a product of huge struggles. It will take-equally huge struggles to plot a conscious political road for the rising white-collar unions. • The business-as-usual Labourism of Roy Hattersley or Neil Kinnock will never win them away from the SDP.

However, all is not lost. Cruise Its hold even on manual workers is decaying fast under the pressure of the slump.

A better guide is the history of the Railway Clerks' Association, as recounted by David Lockwood.

It was the first militant white-collar union. At each step -when it registered as a trade union in 1899, when it affiliated to the Labour Party in 1909, and workers were in services. cal engineering, 30%.

That rank and file needs to organise. One way to do that is to build for the YCND young trade unionists conference, at which we hope to discuss the work YCND can do within the trade unions, and the possibility of industrial action against Cruise, Trident and Civil Defence. when it called a national strike in 1919 - more cautious members warned that such actions would alienate the Conservative majority of clerks.

"Bolder counsel prevailed" The result? The union grew, won victories; and after 1927, when the Tories made the political levy a matter of opting in, 83 % of RCA members continued to pay.

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Socialist Organiser September 15 Page 1983

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OUT THE MISSILES

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