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White Collar BluesW.B. Introduction This paper is being written for discussion in the Newsletter. It is an attempt to begin what I hope will be an ongoing discussion of white collar workers in Canada. Some of what I say may be particular to my office or, more probably, to the government sector (I work for Unemployment Insurance Commission). However, I am beginning to see general patterns which I believe are widely applicable and hopefully others will add to what I have said, both from their own experience and from seeing in my discussion patterns and contradictions that I have missed. I intend this paper to be the first of a series. For that reason, I have devoted considerable space here to description — of the workplace, the workforce etc. I have also attempted to develop some analysis of the contradictions which arise from the nature of our work. I hope people will not find this method overly descriptive or too simplistic. My own feeling is that this is a necessary beginning. When we talk about blue-collar industrial work situations, we tend to take much of this for granted, but my own experience was that I could not even begin to come to grips with the concrete nature of workplace contradictions in a factory until I had at least toured a number of industrial plants. This was still an outsider’s view and I think that in this area as well, description is necessary for the experience to be generalized so that everyone can discuss it concretely. Physical Surroundings, Routine, Workforce The office is basically one large room (110’ x 120’) with long rows of desks broken only occasionally by semi-circular, coloured baffle boards which surround those desks where interviews take place. Until about three weeks ago, the office was divided by department — typing in one area, records in another etc. However, UIC is attempting to “humanize” its operation and has totally reorganized the office into a “modular system”. This means dividing the office into 1, 2, 3 or more autonomous units, each containing all the necessary staff to process a claim. Where before calculations, say, would have been one big department, now there are two or three calculators in each unit. This change is going to have far-reaching effects on the nature of our work, but I was laid off just as these were beginning to become apparent. When I go back, I hope to gain a clearer idea of what these effects are. The office is well lighted and air conditioned. The walls are freshly painted, though bare and few desks have anything on them but the necessary equipment for working. A few plants are scattered around the office; most of them are plastic. The noise level is moderate to low. People can talk freely, but the work demands concentration so that long conversations are unusual. There is a great deal of movement — file clerks running around, people coming in and out etc. The background noises are typewriters, phones and the voices of the women who deal with the incoming calls from the public. Work begins at 8:15 and ends at 4:15 with two 15 minute breaks and ½ hour for lunch. Punctuality is emphasized and most people are very conscientious about this. The break system is flexible; you can supposedly go when you want. In practice people tend to go at the same time with the same group every day, mainly because not everyone in any one function can be out of the office at the same time. Everyone signs in and out. The work pace is moderate but steady. There are production quotas and people are expected to meet them. At the end of every day, each worker fills out a daily production sheet listing the various activities performed, time taken, units completed (units completed is the catch; if you spend 20 minutes on phone calls to get the necessary information to calculate a claim and still cannot complete it, you must count the time in “calculation” but you cannot count the claim as a completed unit). Examples of production quotas: women on the phones: supposed to handle 32 calls per hour. Typists: supposed to type 20 regular form letters per hour. In public service, such a production system has wide ranging ramifications which I will discuss later. The workforce numbers around 110. About 65% are women and the split between under 35 and over is around 50/50. In the under 35 group (mostly women in their early 30s) the married/single split is around 50/50. Most of the women have husbands, fathers, or boyfriends who are factory workers. University education, anywhere below very upper management, is an exception. The hierarchy in the workforce is subtle, but rigid. I can only describe it here, but hope to discuss the many contradictions that arise from it later and in subsequent papers. I am not clear on all the classifications as I do not have access to a union contract and the number of classifications is bewildering. There are two types:
Some Contradictions and Patterns I. The Public Servant Syndrome: Several contradictions arise from the particular nature of our work. We do not make cars or sell shoes: we process claims for other workers who are unemployed and this fact adds a new dimension to usual contradictions of production. In commodity production, the contradiction between the pressure to “make production” and the desire to “produce quality” (two activities which the assembly line makes almost mutually exclusive) has at least one slightly mitigating factor: by refusing to “make production” the factory worker can at least feel, that as long as he is not fired for it, it’s the company that suffers. In the public service, failing to make production means that someone’s cheque is going to be even later than usual. On the other hand, if you sacrifice quality to make your quota it means that you don’t re-type the letter, or check all the facts or answer the question properly — and that can mean that someone’s claim will get all fouled up. Either way you lose — and so does the claimant. Since everything everyone does has to be signed, errors are almost always traceable and given that UIC is one of the most critically observed sectors of the Government, you can be sure it will be traced and that you’ll hear about it. Of course if your production is down, you’ll hear too. Like I said, either way….. One of the ways that the incredible tension created by this situation is resolved is by taking out one’s hostility, not on the UIC alone, but on the claimant. When I first began working for UI I was struck by the fact that attitudes toward claimants varied distinctly, not only with one’s position in the hierarchy, but with the particular function performed. By and large, those involved in the purely logistical functions of typing and filing sided with the claimant and were highly critical of several aspects of the U.I. Act. Cheating was accepted as a necessary matter of course and no one talked about the “bums who don’t want to work”. This attitude becomes less general among the women on the phones, on the counter and in those sections where the claim is calculated for benefit rate and examined for eligibility. In all of these categories, people have direct contact with the public or at least get to read the contents of a file. Reading letters out loud, joking about spelling errors etc. is common practice and the prevailing attitude appears to be an almost arrogant belief that the general public is incredibly stupid. (Among Insurance and Benefit Control Officers the prevailing attitude is that these people do not really want to work and cannot be expected to tell the truth on any occasion. Criticism of the Act is limited to the belief that it is “too easy”. Much of what I say below may apply to some extent to these categories as well, but I also intend a wider discussion of this area in another paper). Clearly one of the factors at work here is job security and position and the effect of these on “consciousness”. The further down the scale, the closer you are to being unemployed; the higher up, the more “false consciousness” you can become. There is another, I think more noteworthy, factor operating as well. In reality everyone’s job (to the level of Insurance Officer anyway) is dull, repetitive and tiring. The pay is not that great, and the category competition system hardly makes for job security; in short, there is little space for a really solid false consciousness with regard to other (unemployed) workers to develop. In fact, for file clerks and typists, the claimants do not exist anyway; they are just so many numbers and names to be counted, filed and mailed. And for the rest of the clerical staff, every error on a form, every person who does not understand or does not speak English simply represents more work, less production. People are very aware of, and discuss the fact that their jobs are built on the misery of others; people think the Act is unfair and get upset when someone “loses out” but on a day to day level, the assumption that the claimant is stupid becomes an easy and available defence mechanism against tension, alienation and a sense of futility. As one of the women on the phone put it: Thirty-two calls an hour means one every two minutes and you can’t hang up on someone unless they swear or talk dirty. So you get some old lady who tells you all her troubles or a guy who stutters or some foreigner and you know you might as well forget it because it will be 10 minutes before you even get their SIN (Social Insurance Number). And all the time you know she’s (supervisor) watching you. Some days I get every pervert in Windsor. I wish they’d all drop dead. My first reaction in these situations was to confront the attitude directly, but after making a couple of enemies when I tried to explain why they shouldn’t think like that, I shut up and listened. A lot of things came out: hatred of their job, of UIC, of the union, confusion about being in the position of having to defend UIC to people which sometimes came across as hating the claimants and sometimes as hating UI for “not telling people more”, and over and over again resentment at being thought stupid or bitchy when “we can’t do anything about it”. But the total force of this contradiction did not hit home until I was in the position of doing this work myself. For three weeks I worked in Assessment, correcting Separation Certificates, which are the record of insured weeks, earnings etc. issued by the employer. Usually this means calling the bookkeeper or secretary, explaining the error and getting a correction. Usually I met hostility; naturally, correcting the error made more work for them; they were being made to feel stupid; and they were fed up with government paper-work. Intellectually I understood all that, but within one day on the job, I found myself changing. I became more hostile, increasingly arrogant in my request for information; I made jokes about “stupid bookkeepers” and (if I didn’t catch myself) found myself defending UI when people repeatedly criticized it. Gradually I managed to control the hostility, but the tension of the situation was almost unbearable. In the last month before I was laid off, my desk was moved up to the front so that I could both see and talk to the women who worked on the counter. I saw in them the changes I had experienced in myself, from (relative) calm in the morning to a perfect figure of a harpy by 4:00 p.m. I have seen them cut some guy to shreds with a few rude remarks and then break down in tears when he left. It was their self-control rather than their lack of it, that amazed me, especially since they were without the protective mediation of the phone and had to keep smiling and trying to be polite (as the manual demands) while people swore, threatened and (occasionally) threw letters or cards in their faces. Both my own experience and my observations have made me re-think my former opinion that the public attitude of smugness and arrogance was a form of “false consciousness”. I have also begun to look more carefully for other expressions of a sense of superiority over blue-collar workers and have found few, perhaps because so many women have men who work in the plants. Although its cause does not, I think, lie in any sort of “false consciousness” there is still the essential problem: how is the resentment, and sense of oppression felt individually among white collar workers generalized and developed into a sense of solidarity and a willingness to struggle against it. What prevents this from happening: It is certainly not the lack of a sense of being exploited or a widespread feeling of being “above” those sections of the workforce that take such action (recent strikes in the city are widely discussed and supported). One of the dominant factors, and one which I am not entirely clear about, is “repressive decorum” which I can only begin to discuss here. II. Repressive Decorum: Working for the government, in an office, is very “civilized”. Your supervisor, who is often in the union, doesn’t yell at you and you are on a first name basis. Management makes all kinds of attempts to let you know what’s going on, through staff meetings, and when you leave or have a baby or get married, you get a present. But the decorous surface masks a method of repression which compares quite favourably with what R.D. Laing describes as the control mechanisms of the family. For example, one week before a major policy change in UIC, CAP (Claimants’ Assistance Program, employing mostly good liberal social workers, PM 2’s, Regulars) was told that it was being entirely phased out, “but no one will lose their jobs” (many are now doing clerical work, however, or are pushing other people out). Then, a totally incomprehensible, but bilingual, memo was circulated to the entire staff from Cousineau the Chairman of the Commission. This was followed by a 15 minute staff meeting in which our manager told us, and I quote “I don’t really know more than is in the memo. All offices are moving to a five-digital modular system with peripheral functions. We have promised the union that no one will be laid off. Because of the fine staff here, this office is the pilot project for the new modular system and I know everyone will co-operate.” The next week, two men from head office arrived with diagrams which were shown and “”explained” to everyone. The next day they began moving desks. The entire physical set up, work flow and individual functions were re-organized. People were laid off (“but not because of the change”) and it became clear that the union had not asked one question about how the changes were going to affect the nature or our work or even foreseen (how could they) how great the effects were going to be. No one was happy; no one knew what was going on; everyone complained, but the atmosphere of politeness and “involvement” made it impossible to channel the frustration, because after all, there had been the memo and the pretty diagrams. Generally, people jotted it up to more stupidity on the government’s part and took extra long coffee breaks (the only time I saw this happen). But the tension was clearly there. Or, when I was laid off, I was told that the choice had been between another woman and myself. They picked me, because I was “more stable and wouldn’t be as upset”. This may be objectively true; I happen to know, however, that my work record was far superior to the other woman’s. But the government doesn’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings. On the surface that looks very nice: your employer really cares about you and won’t lay you off if your husband, say, is unemployed. Instead, they’ll lay off the woman beside you with two years’ seniority. The competition system adds another twist. I know one woman who has worked at UI for about five years. She is a CR 2 Regular, but has been working for a year or two as an acting CR 4. However, when the layoffs began earlier in the year, she was demoted to her proper position of CR 2, taking the 50% salary cut that went along with it. Generally entering a competition means running the risk of moving down to a lower paid, more shitty job. But if you don’t compete, you’re “not ambitious” and you’re still a term casual: two marks against you and the chances of keeping your job. And your union president may be a PM 2 and half the stewards may be supervisors. Some of these things one can put down to the particular absurdities of the Government as Employer. They are not however the decisive factor, but merely contribute to an over-riding sense of hopelessness which has its roots in the more general nature of repressive decorum. The polite atmosphere allows management to operate on a set of rules which bear little or no relation to logic or to usual labour relations (i.e. layoffs not by seniority). This makes it harder to combat or even define the injustices that such a haphazard and seemingly innocuous system perpetrates. Like the family, there are rules, but you never know what they are, except for the rule that there are no unfair rules because everyone is so nice, so how can you possibly complain? The effect is isolation and fear. This expresses itself in that appearance of “discretion” so valued in a civil servant. Everyone is careful not to complain to others (how can you really know just who you’re complaining to?) and even more afraid to complain openly or act on those complaints. You never know what the consequences may be (will they lay you off or promote you or fire you?). Clearly, the atmosphere of “good fellowship” makes it difficult to decide whose interests are being served by what, although this blurring of class interests is not as pronounced as I had expected and even the discretion is a very thin veneer. Once someone begins to vocalize their feelings, others open up and reveal not only the desire, but often a concrete strategy for fairly militant action. The damper on these plans is generally a lack of trust in the union, and a fear, not only of losing one’s job, but of turning the public (the unemployed) against us. Which, I believe, takes us back to the Public Servant Syndrome. Upon re-reading, I am aware that this is hardly an optimistic beginning to our discussion. Suffice it to say that I do believe that there are ways to slice this rather tight circle of knots and I hope to begin to discuss them later. I want to add, in closing a few words on my own practice. Before being laid off (and I expect to go back) I had worked at UI for six months. I was hired as an Insurance Officer, a situation which created some complications, but also allowed for some positive situations which I shall discuss next time. In general, I saw my first six months as a time for listening, observing and getting to know people on a personal basis. I avoided thrusting my political position on people, but gave an honest opinion on subjects that arose on conversation. About the only subject I did introduce, and always, I found with positive results, were issues about ourselves as women. I found I had a lot to learn, not only about white collar workers in general, but about the attitudes, hopes and feelings of other women. I made six or seven close friends and continue to see them during my lay-off. Most of my opinions about white collar workers, and about women, have been challenged and I have found the first six months a very valuable political experience. Writing this paper, discussing it, and writing others will be, I hope, a means of objectifying and generalizing this experience. W.B. Published in The Newsletter [New Tendency], Issue #2, 1973 Related Reading: New Tendency Newsletter #1 |