Word: blue-collar
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...twelve more House seats that year, riding a wave of discontent symbolized by the Proposition 13 tax revolt in California. The G.O.P. hoped that the 1980 Reagan victory, which brought them twelve more Senators and 33 Congressmen, signified a new conservative electoral coalition made up of traditional Republicans, blue-collar workers and those concerned with social issues such as abortion and school prayer...
...failure of Reagan's program to avoid the shoals of a treacherous recession caused people to vote their pocketbooks and restored, at least temporarily, the traditional Democratic coalition. Blue-collar workers in particular returned to the fold with a vengeance. Says Tony Pinello, a local union president in New Jersey: "A lot of our members, maybe as many as 50%, were swingers in 1980 and voted Reagan. They came back because of unemployment, unemployment and unemployment...
...particular threat to 40,000 former white-collar employees of the now outlawed Solidarity organization, such as printers, journalists and clerical staff, many of whom are still without jobs. It also threatens blue-collar workers like those at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, about 50 of whom were fired after an attempted strike last month. Many of these workers have also received "wolf tickets," or bad-conduct reports, making it hard for them to get new jobs...
...from the recession are too disillusioned or apathetic to vote, as has often been the case, or if they stay home because they believe the Democrats are offering no alternatives, the Republicans will do well. But many strategists were saying last week that they sense a Republican Waterloo, with blue-collar workers joining the jobless and the worried in returning to the Democratic fold. "The fear factor is still there," says Representative Tony Coelho of California, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "It's there with those who fear their job is next." Says Nancy Sinnott...
Each Mills is delineated in chapters and episodes; all converge in the last Mills as collective blue-collar folklore: "A witness, in a dynasty of witnesses, one more chump who crewed history, whose destiny it was to hang out with the field hands, just there, you see, in range and hard by, but a little out of focus in the group photographs, rounded up when the marauders came, feeding the flames, one more wisp of smoke at the Inquisitions, doing all the obligatory forced marches, boat folks from the word...