The Working Class: Paper or Plastic?

The working class was “recycled” in the transition from an industrial to service-based economy because a large number of working-class individuals who had previously relied on industrial jobs—such as within the steel industry—had to settle for underpaid service positions, early retirement, or unemployment. Workers were in a sense “recycled” because they were thrown away by one industry and repurposed for another. As Gabriel Winant writes, there was a relationship between the “displacement of industrial workers and the growth of the new service economy” (185). 

This deindustrialization affected Pennsylvania economically by increasing unemployment significantly above national levels. This put great economic pressure on local governments who were already suffering greatly from a loss of their industrial property, as they “drew as much as half their tax revenue from industrial property” (189). The surge of unemployment also caused the increase of mental health events, deteriorating physical health, and rising incarceration rates. There were political effects of deindustrialization as well. Political actors—for example, the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee—supported those out of work, engaged in protests, and lobbied support for the unemployed. Some of the protests grew radical, as with the Denominational Ministry Strategy, who “staged aggressive confrontation with Pittsburgh’s elites—stuffing dead fish in deposit boxes at banks and interrupting services at elite churches” (190). Socially, the effects of deindustrialization affected the genders and ethnicities differently. Racial minorities were disproportionately affected economically, being the first to be laid off and thus suffering higher unemployment rates as compared to whites. Unemployed Black men were also incarcerated at higher rates than unemployed white men. Women also faced stronger pressures in the workforce than did men, often having to put up with “super-tests and super-harassment” to prove their worth (183). 

As the need was growing, the availability of social support was diminishing. While some welfare programs persisted and provided for many individuals during this time, qualifying for and accessing them remained difficult. I believe that the meagerness of many of these social programs came from reductions of funding and support from the Regan administration, of which championed a “self-help” attitude and believed that training programs were the “permanent solution to economic displacement” (192). Accompanying this was anti-welfare attitudes that likened welfare programs to “hand-outs,” as rhetoric portraying those who needed the support as “lazy” became more common. This rhetoric was also racialized with racist terminology such as “welfare-queen.” Additionally, the article notes that these programs weren’t designed to accommodate an entire sector of the labor market, and were instead configured to adapt to consistent, “cyclical downturns” (193).