1.
Finding
Middle Ground
Task on class divide

2.
Social Class divide
Lower Class
8% put themselves at
the bottom
Middle Class
The remaining 90%—plumbers, HR managers,
biologists, tax attorneys, software engineers, farmers,
nurses, HBR editors—put themselves in between
White-collar
Blue-collar
Upper Class
2% put themselves
in the upper echelon

3.
• This vast middle often gets divided into two segments:
• Blue-collar workers, who, according to the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, make up roughly three-fifths
of the whole;
• White-collar workers, the professional and managerial
types who compose the rest.
• white-collar jobs today are often referred to as the
middle class,
• Those doing blue-collar labor are called the working
class.
• Yawning gaps in income, wealth, education, and social
status, of course, separate the two groups today.
White Collers
2/5
Blue Collers
3/5
Statistics
White Collers 2/5 Blue Collers 3/5

4.
Bridging the Divide:
• They argues that, the ethos of the professional middle class is now
so dominant in the United States.
• This dominity sometimes seems to be the country’s only
mainstream culture—and one that everyone should aspire to be a
part of.
• From that perspective it’s clear what the working class needs
today:
Working-Class Culture in a Middle-Class Society

5.
Bridging the Divide:
Professional development
Better social services
Educational opportunities
Working class needs

6.
• Metzgar suggests, that way of thinking
denies the existence of a well-defined
working-class culture—one that, if
properly acknowledged and supported,
would not only thrive on its own but also
strengthen society as a whole?

7.
Differences between the two class
• Blue-collar workers, prioritize being and
belonging and dwell in the present;
• white-collar workers prioritize
achieving and becoming and dream of the future.
• Blue-collar workers focus on having a job that will
satisfy the needs of the moment;
• white-collar workers focus on having a career that
will give them a better life later.
• Blue-collar workers cede control over their lives
during the workday to gain control outside it;
• white-collar workers are in perpetual thrall to
what the psychologist William James called “the
bitch-goddess Success (Material Success).”

8.
• Surprisingly, given the cultural dominance of the middle class, Americans seem to have more
respect for the working class.
• Metzgar reports that, when they were asked in one national survey to rank 31 social groups—
including the poor, the middle class, the rich, the elderly, women, and the military—they put
working-class people at the very top of the list.
• Metzgar writes, “and when you do it well nobody notices. Or, rather, there is no public notice of
it, but your workmates and family sometimes acknowledge it, usually in subtle and often
backhanded ways, not making too much of a fuss but in ways that encourage and nurture the value
of simply doing your bit, holding up your end.”
• There’s a special kind of solidarity among working-class people, one that’s often absent in the
middle class, where the norm is individualistic striving.

9.
Fight Like Hell:
Due out in April, which brings to life many of the forgotten
people and movements that in the past two centuries have
fought battles and won victories for the working class.
The Untold History of American Labor

10.
Working Class History and Working People
Cover similar Terrain

11.
Working Class History and Working People
• Working People focuses on the lives and struggles of contemporary working-class Americans, often
with real-time reports on strikes, elections, and the evolving labor landscape
Both podcasts deliver a message similar to the one that Metzgar delivers in Bridging the Divide:
• The professional middle class needs to acknowledge and support the working class much more than
it does now;
• and only when that happens can we ensure that as many people as possible occupy a happy middle
ground between rich and poor.