but anyone should admit that building a
>broader unified conception of the "working class" in America is an important
>gain, especially given the incessant stratification and oppositions between
>workers promoted in the media.
Since I won't admit this as any one should, am I now a non person?
While this engineers' strike does not harken back to exclusionary craft unionism, I don't see how a unified conception of the working class was forged either. From a NYT account, the strikers did not come to understand themselves as part of the working class whose collective interest they were advancing but rather highly skilled engineers who felt squeezed in between Seattle dot.com software engineer millionaires and newly dignified machinists. One worker was quoted as saying that management liked the jocks (the machinists) better than the nerds (the engineers and technicians). This is not to speak against the action or the gains but to underline the distance between this kind of action and the industrial unionism that the Wobblies developed. These engineers seem to have thought that their relative price and thus worth had fallen in the scheme of things. In this sense, I don't see how this strike is a blow against that incessant opposition and stratification that you mention...And the AFL CIO did not call this strike, so no credit is necessarily due to the Sweeney leadership. Yours, Rakesh