QWhat is left of the working class in the United States? Judging by the electoral campaign which is coming to an end, it is still a leading political force, capable, through the institutional game of an indirect ballot, of influencing the election by swinging certain key States. . We thus saw [la candidate démocrate] Kamala Harris, on Labor Day – the first Monday in September – travels to Pittsburgh [Pennsylvanie]cradle of American trade unionism, to express all its attachment to the victories won by workers through social struggles.
The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, for his part, proudly announced on October 19, near Pittsburgh, again, that he had received the support of three local leaders of the steel workers' union, symbolic but striking support, a few weeks after the refusal of the truckers to support one or the other of the two candidates.
Beyond Pennsylvania, which Hillary Clinton lost by 40,000 votes and where the vote promises to be very close again this year, the question of the votes of the working class, particularly the white working class, is being scrutinized because of the leading role that many commentators and analysts attribute to him in Trump's victory in 2016.
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However, despite the strikes that have punctuated recent news, this attention does not necessarily go without saying. Workers, in the current economy, represent only 12% of the workforce and, in the private sector, union organizations, decimated by deindustrialization and fifty years of anti-union struggles, represent only 6% of employees. . If Pittsburgh was certainly, from the beginning of the 20th centurye century, the industrial city par excellence, it is today a post-industrial metropolis, where one in five employees is employed in the health and social assistance sector. And if there is a city where work and union action translate into political force, it is Las Vegas, Nevada, where Democratic hopes rest on the mobilization and influence of the 50,000 members of the workers' unions. the hotel industry, mainly immigrant women.
Paradox
The inclusion of the “working class” in the 2024 election reflects a double confusion well-rooted in the social and political history of the United States since the 1970s. Indeed, public uses of the term « working class »particularly in the national press, increased sharply as factories faded from the economic landscape and trade union organizations lost their influence, until these uses reached a very high level in 2016.
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