re: #92 Fairly Sure I’m Still Obdicut

It’s not true that this will happen in any organization, but it is sadly true that it’ll happen in many businesses because of the way that ‘success’ is judged.

I feel like even when I was growing up, there was a lot more of a sense that how you earned your money was more important than the mere fact you earned it, that people working a simple, honest job got more respect than someone ruining shit for money. I feel like this has changed in my lifetime, but maybe it was just me becoming more aware of it.

No, you’re right. The attitude from those who went through the Great Depression and the War Years was entirely different. The country had suffered great want, some more than others, of course, but “labor” was still a real concept and respected, resulting in more than a third of all jobs unionized in the 1950s.

When I came along, factory work was seen as dclass, you wanted to keep your hands clean and be a “white collar” worker which was seen to be a step up and more respectable, so that’s what many women trained for at the time, taking typing, bookkeeping, office machines, etc, the same as I did. Your family didn’t want you working in the mills or factories because it was grueling and aging. Over time, I recognized that it really wasn’t that much different from toiling away in a factory except you had to dress better. But the perception remains, which is why there were never any inroads in organizing office workers. We had been taught we were better than “common” laborers who earned their money by the sweat of their brows.