Hospital Workers: A Case Study in the "New Working Class"

The kind of work most people do has been changing rapidly in the United States and other capitalist countries. Only a few decades ago, most working people performed unskilled or semi-skilled industrial labor, and "the working class" was predominantly the traditional blue-collar proletariat. Today, service workers, white-collar workers, highly educated technical and professional workers—the so-called "new working class"—together make up a majority of the American work force. At the same time, the organization and content of white-collar and service work have also been changing, taking on patterns reminiscent of traditional industrial work.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.