Word: collar
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...crisis lies in the fact that automation and technological breakthroughs have sharply reduced the ranks of blue-collar (i.e., usually hourly paid) workers, who make up 85% of the U.S. union membership. But in the total U.S. working force, the blue-collars were outnumbered by white-collar workers (25 million to 25.5 million) by 1957, and the trend was accelerated by the recession. Unions have had comparatively little success in recruiting the new army of technical and service workers. If it does not recruit them, says Kassalow, "organized labor would be lucky to maintain its present membership...
...surprising changes in unions. John L. Lewis, who once could stir up a national crisis with a strike threat from his mighty, 600,000-strong Mine Workers union, is now the boss of a union shrunk to 200,000, and seldom gives cause for alarm. In steel the white-collar percentage in the working force has doubled since 1942 to 18% or 20%, will go up to 33% by 1970. In chemicals it rose from 24% in 1947 to 36% in 1957, will hit 50% by 1968. In all U.S. manufacturing, it has climbed from 16% to 25% within...
...force of technical and service workers appears to feel little need for unions. Organizers for the United Auto Workers have landed only 8,000 of Chrysler's 30,000 white-collar workers, have been unable to crack Ford or General Motors. The United Steelworkers union has enlisted less than 30% of the estimated 160,000 white collars in the nation's basic industry. One reason is that management has learned to combat union organizers by granting white-collar workers the increases given to unions; e.g., General Motors, Ford and Chrysler handed about the same increase to office workers...
...workman who once put aside a few dollars a week towards his retirement, now buys into the market through a mutual fund or the Stock Exchange's Monthly Investment Plan. So does the middle-income white-collar worker who hopes to send his son through college, the matron who saves to give her daughter a bang-up wedding. In Atlanta Mrs. Sara Pfeiffer, a trim, energetic grandmother and freelance writer, has organized three investment clubs, is busy with a fourth. Says a Cleveland commercial artist: "This year I became a capitalist. I went into the market for the first...
Discontent remains among white-collar workers squeezed by inflation, among peasants oppressed by landlords, among army officers frustrated by inefficient commanders who distribute promotions by bribery and special influence, among young intellectuals who resent police state controls. There is little evident organized opposition to the regime. Yet an esti mated 60% of Iranian students educated abroad never come home because they are grimly aware how few opportunities there are in Iran for young men without connections in high places...