Word: white-collar
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...disagree among themselves on some issues. The lower middle class, including blue-collar workers, service employees and farm workers, numbers some 40 million. Many of the nation's 20 million elderly citizens, frequently living on fixed incomes, are Middle American. So is a substantial portion of the 36 million white-collar workers. Although a hard figure is not possible, the total of Middle Americans probably approaches 100 million, or half of the U.S. population...
Richard W. Paul, 43, is a white-collar worker at a General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Mass. One of six children of a Lithuanian immigrant, he grew up in Worcester. He fought as a Marine in World War II in the Pacific and can still do 400 sit-itps. He lives with his father-in-law, his wife, who also works at G.E., and his eleven-year-old daughter. His concern with such issues as welfare and dissent impelled him to seek, and win, a seat on the Pittsfield city council...
Around the Portage Country Club in Akron, Ohio, conversation these days is anxious, subdued, and addressed to one topic: dismissals of executives and white-collar workers at B. F. Goodrich Co. Since September, the fourth largest U.S. tiremaker has quietly retired or fired several hundred employees, including one vice president and many middle-aged people who have spent the bulk of their working lives with the company. The dismissals have often been abrupt, impersonal and accompanied by a minimum in severance...
That Uncertain Feeling. One way that Goodrich management found to improve performance was to thin out the 18,000 executive, professional and other white-collar personnel by attrition, early retirement and outright firings in Akron. Robert Sausaman, 48, an equipment buyer, recalls that, after 17 years with the company, he was given two weeks' notice and "my bare entitlement" by way of a pension. Robert L. Coon, 56, a staff photographer for 25 years, was given the option of $10,000 in severance pay or a $100-a-month pension. He picked the pension. One executive was offered...
...realize they could do better," says J. Wade Miller, vice president for personnel and organization. But there could be less favorable results for Goodrich, and not only in the loss of local good will in a community that backed the company in its struggle with Northwest. One group of white-collar workers, seeking job security, has asked to join the United Rubber Workers, which already represents 12,500 Goodrich factory hands. The union is now considering a full-scale organizing drive among Goodrich's office employees...