Category Archives: Week 9: Deindustrialization

In the article, the working class was transitioned by the decline of industrialized jobs and manufacturing jobs. These jobs were the backbone for the working class and once these jobs started declining many of the working class people were pushed to lower-paying jobs. Often time those jobs were retail and food service and there weren’tContinue reading “Deindustrialization”

As global competition increased in the manufacturing industry and reduction in employees was required to keep up, around 150,000 manufacturing jobs were lost between the late 1970s and early 1980s (Winant 180-181). Since the number of jobs in the manufacturing industry was greatly reduced and many people had been laid off, the people who previouslyContinue reading “Results of Deindustrialization in America”

In “Enduring Disaster: The Recycling of the Working Class,” Gabriel Winant illustrates how the working-class, specifically steelworkers, were “recycled” following the wave of plant closures and mass layoffs caused by deindustrialization. With the rapidly increasing unemployment rates in states like Pennsylvania, a new service-based economy was activated. The gradual transition from a male-dominated, labor-based economyContinue reading “Deindustrialization & Its Baggage”

Winant’s writing about the struggles of Pittsburgh steel workers in the 70s and 80s strikes a chord, especially in the modern age, considering the potential changes to the labor structure AI may cause in the coming years to decades. From the article, one of the largest consequences of deindustrialization was, of course, the spike inContinue reading “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: The Working Class’s Struggle in 1970’s and 1980’s America”

Gabriel Winant’s “The Enduring Disaster: The Recycling of the Working Class” presents a compelling analysis of the persistent nature of racial inequalities in a post-racial world. He does this by presenting economic transformations, particularly deindustrialization, at the center of his claim, and argues that the devastating impact of the decline of manufacturing, and the riseContinue reading “Beyond the Breaking Point”

Beginning in the late 1960s, Black workers—who often served as general laborers and second and third helpers in the Pittsburgh steel industry—began to feel the first wave of impact from deindustrialization. While only a handful of these first layoffs affected White workers, “a rising sense of instability was creeping into steel work, intensifying its dailyContinue reading “The Pittsburgh Working Class: Unraveled in the Midst of Deindustrialization”

ABB  During the 1970s and 1980s, Pennsylvania witnessed firsthand deindustrialization. A lot of steel industry factories closed and laid off their workers. On the other hand, we notice “creative destruction,” meaning that there was a replacement for the gap the manufacturing industries made with service-based industries like health care and education. As a result, theContinue reading “The Consequences of Deindustrialization”

During the 1970s and the 1980s,  the phenomenon of “recycling”  was prevalent throughout the country; this “recycling” was a causation of the shift from predominantly industrial jobs to service-based jobs. In  the chapter “ Enduring Disaster: The Recycling of the Working Class”  from the book “ The Next Shift,” Gabriel Winant states that “….The declineContinue reading “The Economic, Social and Political Dimensions of Deindustrialization during the 1970s and 1980s”

  I think that the working class gets recycled in a way that it affects how they do their daily life and there routine of getting ready for the day. It also has a more meaningful impact on the African American community, and how some people or family members would get laid off from their jobContinue reading ” How was the working class “recycled” in the wrenching transition from an industrial to a service-based economy?”

The economic strain experienced by Americans as a result of the collapsing steel industry, created the situation needed for the recycling of the American working class. Several mills were mothballed, Leading to layoffs for large quantities of workers.  In some areas such as Pittsburgh the unemployment levels reached 17.1 percent in the area and 10.8Continue reading “How the recycling of the working class led to poverty”