The strike also shines a light on the shifting fortunes of the American workforce. Like the “Fight for 15” movement to raise the minimum wage, and other recent grass-roots progressive movements, the West Virginia strike should expand mainstream notions of what it means to be “working class” and economically vulnerable.
When pundits and political observers (and the president) talk about “working-class” Americans, they have an archetype in mind: the white, blue-collar male worker. Journalists who travel to Rust Belt communities in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio often take as a given that those workers—and laborers like them—are representative of working-class Americans. But since the 1970s, working-class labor has shifted from “making stuff” to “serving people,” a product of globalization, technological change, and a policy regime that prioritized the flow of capital above all else. Increasingly, the typical working-class American looks more like a fast food worker or paid caregiver—jobs held predominantly by white women and people of color—than someone who wears a hard hat to the job site. And while most definitions of “working class” center on workers without college degrees, there are many laborers with college diplomas whose prospects are now similar to those without them.
