A Service Class Hero

I just picked up the Green Day version of John Lennon’s tune “Working Class Hero,” and it got me thinking about the working class. Class composition in the U.S. has always been a tricky and underspecified matter. But without getting into the nitty-gritty of it, to me the working class has always been associated with those who in manufacturing – or at the very least engage in the production of goods. However, the total percentage of nonagricultural workers employed in manufacturing jobs within the U.S. has declined from roughly 30% to only 10% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This really seems to point that the traditional notion of the working class (at least as I conceive of it) is referring to an increasingly narrow segment of the U.S. population.

It seems as though the working class has been replaced by the service class, the large group of low-wage non-good producing workers. Now while most of the lyrics to Lennon’s tune seem applicable to this group of people, maybe they need their own heroes and their own songs. Maybe the oppression they face as a class is different than that which the manufacturing class has historically face; in fact I would venture to say that it certainly is. Typically, this group has had to bear the lower pay, fewer and more unstable hours, and fewer and lower benefits associated with jobs.

So while I wouldn’t dare say that the small remaining manufacturing class is in a position of privilege – the sense of the eminent and impeding doom of job evaporation is certainly an overwhelming form of oppression in its own right – what I am suggesting is that the service class needs it champions. They need a united flag around which to rally and a union under which to organize; they need a mouthpiece for a movement. This is an oft ignored segment of the population, in part because it has historically been so gendered and raced that the issues these workers face were rendered synonymous with the problems facing minorities and women. This group really needs to be at the center of any class based movement and a Service Class Hero is Something of Need.