Hi Catherine - I think some of the anarchists and (I've been told by MP) the Frankfurt School of Marxism have a position not too far from yours.
It is generally referred to as "New Class" analysis; though I prefer the term "Coordinator Class". Yoshie, and most of the hard-core Marxist on this list hate this type of analysis - because they see class as primarily a relation to means of production; Class defined as a relation to the means of work is seen as deformed populism at best, more likely capitalist liberalism , or actual reaction. Don't expect much other than filibustering and taunting on this subject from them.
OK here is a simplified version of this. Capitalist in the U.S. constitute at most 2% of the population - perhaps a great deal rest. Capitalists for the most part do not buy worker's labor power. They buy workers time. That not many U.S. workers are paid by the piece - some salespeople who are on straight commission, some farm workers, a few other case; but for the most part U.S. workers are paid by the hour or a straight salary.
This presents a dilemma for the capitalist class. Buy your time does not necessarily buy your work. Reading books, watching television, discussing sports, gossiping, hell - having sex would all be things that are a lot more fun to do in the workplace than actual work. But 2% of the population is not really enough to control 98% or eve %80 of the population.
So you need a class in between labor capital, a middle class, a bureaucratic/technical/managerial/academic class. This class performs a great many functions. There is directly policing workers to extract work from them. There is shaping the work environment, both to increase productivity per hour, but also to deskill labor and make it more measurable, easier to police. There is the shaping of the workers, suppressing some types of creativity while encouraging others - with the aim of making obedient little agents, but something more than drones, something that does not require micro management.
And of course there are signifiers that go with being part of the coordinator class; they are not fundamental; we can thing of coordinator jobs not accompanied by these; but they do apply to the majority.
One signifier of a coordinator job is that it tends to monopolize the more pleasant end empowering work. Not that there is not plenty of shit work included in even the most pleasant co-ordinator job. But most jobs consist of multiple tasks; and generally a coordinator job will have more pleasant and empowering tasks, and fewer rote and unpleasant ones than a job help by a worker. There are exceptions; some skilled work can be very pleasant and creative, possibly even empowering; some coordinators that fulfill the coordinator role probably are unpleasant and unempowering. But as rule of thumb the division of labor between coordinator and worker jobs will be as I've described. So you are talking about moving from working class to coordinator class.
A good example that this is a real class division is Venezuela right now. The majority of the middle class and all (maybe with a trivial exception or two) of the capitalist class is out to overthrow the democratically elected Chavez government. By the oppositions own figures, a plurality of the working class supports Chavez; and it seems by looking at who actually is taking part in the "general strike" that an overwhelming majority opposes the "general strike". The reason I prefer 'coordinator class' to 'middle class' is that middle class is often used as a colloquial expression for anyone who is not rich but not poor. And of course the vast majority of the U.S. working class is not poor.
There are other classes - but they are tiny, and in a political sense tend to align with one of the three main classes, capitalist, coordinator, or working class.
Lastly, people sometimes waste time trying to identify the class of a particular individual. This , to me, misunderstands the purpose of class analysis. Mainly class analysis helps define the limits of the possible. Capitalism overwhelming shapes consciousness in a capitalist society. People can very easily be persuaded to act against their own class interests in supporting capitalism. But what is very unlikely is that people (as a whole, not as individuals) will ever *oppose* capitalism against there own self interests. For example individual capitalists such as Engels may oppose capitalism and side with the working class. You will never persuade the majority of capitalists to oppose capitalism and become socialists while in a capitalist society. Similarly, you will never persuade a majority of coordinators within a capitalist society to support any form of socialism that does not give coordinators special privileges That is why most people of coordinator background on this list become downright hysterical when a non market, non centrally planned form of socialism is advocated.