Working at a Definition of Working Class

“There’s a phrase that bothers me,” writes Phillis I. Lewis, “because of all it implies, and all it leaves out: working class.

“What the hell does it mean? Is it meant to separate so-called professionals from nons? Does it refer to blue-collar types? Does it mean people who only work with their hands? Is it people who work their buns off for next-to-no money? Is it degreed versus undegreed? Some of the hardest-working people I know are physicians. Are they working class? You have worked very hard all your life. Are you working class? What about housewives not employed outside their homes? What’s your answer?”

The working class is not usually thought of as embracing everyone who works. The working class are those who build and repair. They lay concrete, sweep chimneys, make steel, pump gas, fix drains, repair roofs, assemble cars, clean sewers, collect trash and butcher steers.

But though they do not dirty their hands, those who work in the lower echelons of business, industry and the professional world are also of the working class. Clerks, bellhops, secretaries, messengers, tellers, pantrymen, typists, security guards, switchboard operators. They do not practice professions--they work.

Those in the quasi-professions may not think of themselves as being in the working class, but they are: teachers, nurses, journalists, legal assistants, advertising writers, movie extras, professional athletes. They work for pay, at other people’s bidding.

We might not think of Orel Hershiser as being of the working class, but he is. He works for the Dodgers. When they tell him to pitch, he pitches. When they tell him to sit on the bench, he sits. In a tough spot, like so many other working stiffs, he calls on God for help.

On the other hand, true professionals are thought above the working class. Physicians, lawyers, doctors of philosophy, psychiatrists. So are top-level business executives or elected politicians: chairmen of the board, congressmen, city councilmen, mayors.

What confounds the question is that everyone, however he makes his living, likes to think of himself as working . If you ask a doctor to play golf on Saturday, he says, “Can’t make it. I have to work.” He doesn’t say, “Sorry. I have to administer to the sick,” unless he’s being facetious.

The Nobel Laureate describes his output, whether it is poetry, the discovery of a new germ or a mathematical equation, as work. Novelists work. Even a clergyman complains of his workload, not the spiritual demands of his congregation. We speak of creation as God’s work. It is as if the elite of our society recognized the worth of work, and wanted to be seen as doing it.

There is no doubt that women who work in the home are of the working class, even though they may be college graduates. As Lewis says, I have worked hard all my life, and I am also a member of the working class.

Income is not necessarily a mark of one’s class. The plumber is better paid than the secretary, and probably better paid than most journalists. Orel Hershiser is certainly better paid than the President of the United States and most corporation executives.

As for the difference between blue-collar workers and white-collar workers--that’s easy. The blue-collar worker repairs your water heater. The white-collar worker processes your income tax return.

When women first entered the business world as typewriters (that was the word then in use), they were called “working girls,” and it was a matter of faith, as expressed in Edgar Smith’s immortal verse, that:

You may tempt the upper classes With your villainous demi-tasses,But Heaven will protect the working girl. Surely the “working girl” was a member of the working class. But now that she is no longer a girl, one wonders not only whether she is still a member of that class, but also whether she is still eligible for heaven’s protection.

It is sometimes said that we are a classless society. That’s rubbish, of course, as anyone who has ever driven through Bel-Air knows. But even the millionaire executive fancies that he works, and maybe he does.

It is only those who have enough money to live off the interest who do no work. Everyone else is in the working class.