No one does nostalgic masochism quite like the left. And since Trump, Brexit and Morrison sailed to shock victories on the tailwinds of parochial rage, progressives have been wistfully lashing themselves for alienating their once-solid supporters: blue-collar blokes.
Last week’s Melbourne tradie protests provided a visceral distillation of this problem, as burly construction workers stood shoulder-to-shoulder with far-right internet trolls to bash down the door of the very union they were once proud members of. As Jeff Sparrow wrote in Overland: “The racist right… were backed by at least some blue-collar workers who in happier times would be associated with the union vanguard.”
Some on the left have argued these were relatively small, unrepresentative groups. One cannot reason with horse medicine-ingesting zealots in a pandemic, so they should simply be condemned. Others insist that, while some may be radicalised beyond reach, the broader currents of discontent in the construction industry are related to material conditions and must be sympathised with, or else scolding progressives could invite more rightward defections.
This division maps onto a broader post-Trump debate between those who snobbishly blame ignorant bogans for embracing uncouth populists, and those who tragicomically revel in the comeuppance of left leaders who “abandoned” their once-core constituency.
Beneath the rhetoric, what is the real political character of the modern Aussie tradie?
From building the labour movement to building another investment property
A fact both sides frequently overlook is that the structure of the blue-collar workforce itself has changed, with tradies at the vanguard. Over the past 30 years, many tradies have grown increasingly wealthy, likely to operate small businesses, and likely to own investment properties. Their interests no longer neatly align with collective labour, as their economic power rivals and sometimes exceeds that of white-collar workers.
Writer Lech Blaine captures this transformation in the latest Quarterly Essay, Top Blokes. “A generation of men who looked and sounded working-class had ditched unionised jobs for small businesses,” he writes. “Tradies voted with their hip pockets”, which now sees many allied with the soft-palmed silvertails they once maligned.
It’s thus difficult to believe the mask-less tradies pissing on Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance last week were misguidedly expressing underlying economic anxieties. Maybe some were from the less affluent end of the industry ladder, but most would be better off and less affected by lockdowns than other workers who have taken harsh restrictions on the chin.
Conversely, it’s little surprise that some in a demographic whose interests increasingly align with the political right are receptive to News Corp’s “Dictator Dan” messaging and attend protests cheered on by LNP politicians.
It was a similar scene in the US when Trump-inspired fanatics stormed the Capitol. The participants were hardly driven by desperation, as many were successful business owners. “The notion that political violence simply emerges out of economic desperation, rather than ideology, is comforting. But it’s false,” wrote The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer.
Today’s working class is more likely to administer jabs than protest them
So, should the left give up on blue-collar blokes? Of course not. Most of them aren’t buying COVID conspiracy theories. And many remain poorly paid, vulnerable to injury, dependent on dodgy bosses and potentially receptive to economic egalitarianism.
Winning over some in this cohort is also an electoral necessity. Labor’s best path to victory requires winning a handful of seats in regional Queensland and NSW where coal is the biggest employer, and nearly half of the residents work in blue-collar industries. Morrison’s aspirational, macho faux-larrikinism — what Blaine calls his “big swinging schtick” — proved popular there in 2019, and beating him might require some compromise of progressive ideals.
But in 2021, the average union member is a tertiary-educated female teacher or nurse, and the most economically disadvantaged group in Australian society is single mums on welfare. Clinging nostalgically to the hard-hat-and-steel-capped-boots-wearing “working man” of the 20th century warps one’s sense of who is now most deserving of political favour.
Take Labor-aligned think tank the John Curtin Research Centre, which last week renewed its call for Young Labor to have a “working-class quota” of non-university students. Breaking up the insular culture of sandstone campus politics might have independent merit, but it isn’t a straightforwardly egalitarian policy when many uni grads earn less than former apprentices. Perhaps it isn’t meant to be — some of the centre’s supporters argue Labor should abandon “left-wing populism” to appease “working-class people” who are “often on high salaries”.
The electoral marriage of progressives and blue-collar workers was once based on shared economic interests and beliefs. As some tradies ditch their union cards for ABNs and property portfolios, and others go full Sky after dark, pandering to their worst instincts means abandoning “the fair go” (ergo, Albanese’s capitulation on negative gearing).
Such triangulation detracts from the real task: offering life-changing policies to genuinely lower and middle-income voters, who are slowly defecting to minor parties whose preference deals often prop up the LNP.
As Blaine concludes, “The female kindergarten assistant earning $50,000 a year to raise other people’s kids doesn’t fit our idea of a working-class battler, whereas a hi-vis Liberal-voting miner earning a six-figure income for 20 years and with the property and share portfolios to show for it can play the class card at the slightest hint of redistribution…
“Australia needs to develop a modernised and more gender-neutral understanding of class”.
Thank you for this, Benjamin. I’m one of those union member women in the caring professions and the constant political courtship and cosseting of tradies drives me up the wall. So much so I swear at tradies in traffic and dislike them as a class. If I feel this way, other working women will, too.
I have tradies in my extended family, of course. They think climate change and COVID are a hoax. They thought Trump had the right ideas. They have investment properties and superannuation balances I can only dream about and they vote for the Coalition to protect their income and assets. They are so far to the right of me I’m constantly shocked and appalled I’m related to them.
I’m in a female dominated industry and I understand the rage. I don’t understand how morons in hi-vis manage to get so much pandering whilst nurses, teachers, social workers, retail workers etc. (you know, the actual essential workers) get nothing.
There’s an absurd irony that an industry of mostly men who spend their time railing against snowflakes seem to be one of the softest whilst women have just gotten on with the job.
noting well that a fair number of those tradies in my area are driving new HiLux/Ranger trucks, purchase with instant write-off “business capital investments” provided by………. the LNP.
’So much so I swear at tradies in traffic and dislike them as a class’
Perhaps you could seek professional help with the ‘swearing in traffic’ issue? I fear this could easily escalate into an ugly road rage incident and could result in harming someone who has the misfortune of driving a ute…. I’m assuming that’s how you identify them ‘as a class’?
It’s not the ute that identifies them, it’s the high-vis vest. You should get out more.
Kathy,
Exactly my experience as well. My young Physio, who has mates as tradies, says they ALL believe climate change is a hoax, or at least not an issue, and they are all doing well thanks. They make up that group of previous Labor supporters who have jumped ship, or are at least marginal, and Scomo is wooing them like crazy . . .
Pretty sure the ALP cossets them more.
Cashed up bogan is a demographic sought by both parties.
The constant political courtship and cosseting of tradies drives me up the wall too, Kathy.
My dad and a few brothers are tradies, but wouldn’t know this lot.
My sister teaches at a TAFE in Melbourne and agrees the apprentice tradies are insufferable. She said they are so cocksure of their futures, strut around the campus with Coke in hand, arrogant in their manner and don’t give a second thought to anything outside themselves. We had renovations done on our place two years ago and I didn’t even ask for a quote for the first five builders who turned up – they might as well have been waving red flags with flashing amber lights.
Lol. I don’t resent tradies, except when they vote or hold dodgy views. Good on them for making a buck.
I find the ‘arrogant tradie’ thing comes from resentment. I went to private school with some of the most obnoxious young men in the country. Give me a tradie over the private school boy any day.
Absolutely! It is constantly underestimated the meteoritic rise in wealth in the “tradie” sector. So many who grew up in poor areas have moved into wealthy, blue-ribbon areas. I teach at a private school and a significant portion of our students parents are the small-business owning tradie you cite. They’re not aware of class consciousness.
So definitely, the future is female and the ALP needs to get on board. Get more nurses and teachers like Ged Kearney into the Parliament.
You’re right. The better-paid end of the working class trying to put their past behind them has been remarked on for generations. The phrase “I’m all right, Jack, pull up the ladder” goes back to the early 1930s and probably earlier. And also from decades back there’s the classic Red Flag parody
The working class can kiss my asre
I’ve got the foreman’s job at last
The system I’ll no more resist
I’m going to be a capitalist
Now you can raise the standard high
Beneath its shade to fight and die
But brother, please don’t count on me
I’ve up and joined the bourgeoisie
It’s just the scale of it now, and at the same time the decline and weakness of the union movement.
I’ve used that so often here to no response – I really thought that the concept had evaporated.
The person the serfs & villiens most feared & despised was one of their own who had gained promotion – poachers turned gamekeepers know all the tricks.
It’s why most women prefer to have male bosses – so much easier to manipulate.
And it’s amazing how easily manipulated the male bosses are. Tends to be called ‘managing up’ to give it a veneer of respectability. Also why often the worst types of women do well in the business class.
The solution is to define the working class purely economically, not culturally. Tradies, nurses, teachers etc are NOT working class. Soz you earn 70 – 250k!
I may have a private school education and a uni degree but I earn very little and I’m working class. Real working class. Tired of being spoken for by people earning six figures. On the sub 50k incomes very little is said about our material conditions.
It’s easy to fight the culture wars when you’re rich. You may have noticed in the culture war fights you don’t hear much from cleaners, factory workers, waiters, dishwashers and grocery workers. Too busy paying the bills.
Do you know that by heart Ratty? 🙂
I disagree tradies are not class conscious. Tradies are very aware they lack the cultural capital that urban elites prize. They are very aware that some lower earning educated white collar people resent their higher incomes.
Tradies have adopted cultural positions to annoy urban professionals who have a superiority complex. It’s like a-grade trolling, if a cultural positions annoys a snobby person then it’s worth it. Lots of people adopt political positions out of glee at the reaction from people they don’t like.
Meanwhile as all the well off tradies and lawyers argue about the culture wars us truly low income people say – hello! we’re still poor over here! Helllloooooo
So many chips, too few shoulders.
The corollary of course is that the Libs are losing ground among educated professionals, but that never gets to the top of the agenda at Murdoch editorial meetings.
Is it really the case that the best path to a Labor victory lies in winning coal seats in Queensland and NSW? Especially in the former, previous Labor mining seats are mostly now held by very solid Coalition margins. What self-interested reason would tradies in those seats have for switching back to Labor?
There is a broad generalisation that around the world, centre-left parties are increasingly parties of the cities. In that context, I often wonder why federal Labor doesn’t attract more criticism for its failure to win suburban seats in Brisbane and Perth. Aided by McGowan’s coattails, surely Swan, Pearce and Hasluck should be easier pick-ups than safer seats in regional Queensland.
I am a very well educated former urban person. Now I am very low income living regionally. What an eye opener than transition is.
So many people scratch their heads and say dunno why Labor loses votes? I still vote Labor, few other choices, but they don’t really have policies directly for me. They have big stuff like environment and gender but nothing specific.
By specific I mean things like policies on rosters for example. When you work to a roster the roster is gold. I’ve never heard a major Labor leader come out with a policy around rostering like rosters have to be done in advance. Some unions have roster agreements but a lot of us are still left getting Monday’s roster on Sunday night.
What about renting? Dan Andrews made some good rental reforms but it is still legal to accept money upfront. That is, if you want a house you pay 3, 6, 12 months in advance to secure it over other people. I know one person recently who had to pay 6 months before being allowed to view the property. I know another who paid $30,000 in rent upfront for the year. Poor people can afford the weekly rent but they can’t afford 30k upfront. Yet when did you hear anyone talk about this?
There are plenty of social policies for the non working poor. Social housing builds, raise the dole, extend health care, crack down on schooling costs and so on. I’ve found that if you work a bit and earn between 25k and 45k forget it, no one cares. You might even be better off not working and accepting the full ride of social programs.
Be careful what you wish for? How are these issues of a few Labor states vs. an alleged national government which is responsible for macro policy development and implementation; seems about deflecting from the LNP government, Morrison, Joyce et al., think tanks and industry bodies?
The LNP nationally is responsible for most policies and legislation while state governments do delivery, even when national LNP government does one of its disappearing acts….. from legacy media platforms protectors to be replaced by an ‘oppositional’ focus upon state Labor Premiers…..
Further, LNP allies in US Koch linked think tanks have as part of their agenda an objective to nobble and better, disappear, unions too, that support all manner of workers’ rights and support relevant policy development for Labor.
And the rest…. cutting health and education budgets in real terms, taking a ‘welfare’ approach to any state support i.e. JobSeeker while ring fencing pensions and subsidising corporate and above median income rent seekers.
What do I wish for? I don’t wish for an LNP government. I am just pointing out why so many working class people started voting LNP. They have the question right – does a party care about us? They just don’t have the answer right. LNP would make things even worse. I am just pointing out I don’t get too excited for a Labor government.
If you follow the current style of left it honestly feels like they care more about people who don’t work than people who do and earn low incomes. So many of their policies, or at least what gets media attention, are aimed at people out of the workforce. Do you think the new social houses are going to people who work full time for low incomes? They’re going to people who are totally out of the workforce.
The pandemic in Melbourne revealed the housing flats were mostly full of people from abroad, despite always being gaslit and told that this group doesn’t get priority over long suffering locals. Curious that a big deal was made about how diverse the towers were by the very left who also say we’re lying when it seems like people from abroad get houses and flats. Which one is it locals get flats or the flats are all foreigners being marginalised?
No one has addressed the fact that when you are very low income working in some cases you’d be better off to quit because then you’d qualify for all the social programs which are based on not working. This is indeed a calculation that some people make when they reject low income work in favour of not working or waiting a long time for a higher income. I’ve seen people do the math on taking an extra shift versus losing their health care card.
Did you know a person on 36k net gets basically nada? And 36k net won’t get you far in Australia. You might get some kind of tax rebate and you might qualify for some rent controlled housing but otherwise you get no special healthcare rights, you pay some tax, full rego, full rent in most cases, full cost of rates if you own a home and so on. No one is talking about the cost burden on people on the full time minimum wage, they are sure talking about raising the dole. And then people wonder why the left doesn’t get votes from this group.
Very interesting and disappointing to read, Camille. One of the problems is the lack of policy coordination between Feds and States. States were never asked how many more migrant workers they could accommodate – the Feds just waved them through and good luck. And there’s your housing crisis.
The Feds have no respect or empathy for people earning under the average wage. If you have a go you still don’t necessarily get a go. Meanwhile Labor seems to have become caught up in so-called identity politics and issues that receive the most coverage because their educated sponsors know how to organise and play the game. And sadly, people like you are neither organised, nor have a voice or power.
The fault lines have changed – the old boss/worker divide has long gone. So many tradies are now self-employed contractors and subbies charging upwards of $80 an hour, thus gutting the unions.
The labour scams are also rife. My brother-in-law works on construction sites in WA. His employer is a Chinese company and the unskilled labour (ie anybody who doesn’t require a certificate to have his/her work certified ie plumbers and electricians) is Chinese on temporary visas who are exploited with low wages and no protections. They do stuff like formwork, plastering, tiling, stuff that doesn’t require legal qualifications. Sadly, he said the unions know about it but so long as the company pays their union dues for them, it turns a blind eye. So much corruption in Australia.
I support immigration and breaking down white bread Australia. I just would like to see it go into needed jobs like aged care.
You’re so right about the labour scams. When working class people say ‘something doesn’t seem right’ about immigration we are told that we are racist. Even tho some of this immigration into my industry in particular is European.
No one has addressed that we are told migration is skilled based on the visa someone has been granted. HOWEVER when that person then works an unskilled job they still get counted as skilled because that is their visa class. It’s a rort that hasn’t been addressed.
I’m all for needed immigration and skill gaps. I just question why on earth we allow people to work in industries where there is a shortage of full time hours for existing staff or where some of these businesses aren’t viable without underpaid labor and should really just close to be honest.
In Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook (1962) the failure of British socialism to grok working class concerns was well put in the scene when a nerd & an apparatchik explained why, post Revolution, one would no longer have bunions.
Probably an affliction of which no-one under 40yrs has even heard.
Urb & suburb – forget the peasantry.
They may be revolting but they never revolt or truly change – a slightly less vicious charge hand usually suffices.
The great fallacy of classical Marx/Leninism is that the masses rise up.
Not that they don’t but, like sourdough, never sufficiently high to breathe clean(er) airs.
I’d wager that not one commenter in ten here could say, without checking, what is the plain symbolism of the hammer & sickle.
In fact the revolutions that have occurred gained momentum when the middle class professionals joined the downtrodden. Or so I read somewhere.
The middle class was always had more in common with the ruling class than those beneath the(m) salt – that’s why they are regarded as petite bourgeoisie – just wannabe toffs-in-waiting.
I agree with Dog’s Breakfast but you are both right. The lower middle and middle classes are most likely to kick off the revolution for two reasons – they can afford to, and they are frustrated and want to keep social climbing. The impoverished masses (which barely exist any more in Australia) are too busy eking out an existence, earning enough money to feed their families from day to day and worrying about the same tomorrow.
Yes may tradies, Tony’s Tradies have become wealthy, I remember handing out how to vote cards years ago and the tradies would scoff at the Labor HTV ones. And when in America in the late 80’s I was disgusted by the wage theft and migrant exploitation committed by builders, who would select their day’s labourers from those hanging around on street corners.
We have now joined the American dream, where Howard’s multiple and since rebadged visas have enabled the gross exploitation of migrants, which facilitated the death of unions, wage rises, living standards and conditions for many Australians of all races.
The anti Labor lockdown ferment and anti union angle has been used by those who’ve hijacked the labourers who don’t want to be vaccinated, the anti voluntary vaccination mob with no genuine exemption claim other than they don’t want to be vaccinated perhaps due to the Real Ruskan et al disinformation on various platforms and from Murdoch’s Sky/Fox fantasies.
Labor were in govt from 2007-13 and could have done something about exploited migrant voters and visas but they didn’t do much. They welcomed a Big Australia, gave us ‘Workchoices’ lite and were pretty piss-weak. They could have ended 457s but chose not to to the extent that Julia Gillard’s chief advisor and strategist was a 457 from the UK. As it turned out a bad call.
The impact of 457s was negligible or unproven on a sectoral basis as most underestimate the size of occupations in Australia and overestimate others e.g. mining, as employers.
Regarding ‘Big Australia’ that has been hammered home by media as a dog whistle based on misunderstood and misrepresented headline population data (due to the NOM from 2006) but masking the real issue, the make up or population pyramid reflecting dependency ratios which are following elsewhere; Labor were well sucked in appointing a Minister of Sustainable Population (straight from the fossil fuel supported eugenics movement masquerading as ‘environmental’).
A nation needs to have sufficient working age population to support budgets for increasing numbers of citizens in and/or transitioning to retirement and requisite services. Without temporary resident churn over, Australia would struggle to support budgets and sustain retirement income i.e pensions, as observed elsewhere (with both demographic then budgetary death spirals).
However, within a generation the demographics should balance out more with the ‘departure’ of the baby boomer bubble….
The impact of 457s are huge. 457s are dispensed with in so many occupations and industries that it is obvious they are administered to lower labour costs. I work in the immigration field and process for example, a Serbian scaffolder and a Vietnamese boiler maker en route to Gympie. You tell me they are here because no Aussie wants these jobs?? They are given these visas because the employer doesn’t want to pay award or going rates of pay and the government – Federal – allows them – the employer – to take advantage of this process. The number of 457s occupations was reduced by Malcolm Turnbull from around 600 to around 400 in number. What a joke!! Occupations like hairdressing, beauticians, chefs, cooks, kitchenhands, stablehands. Those who don’t work in their chosen field, low base by any standard, will just end up in another even lower grade job. I’m sorry but if you work in one of these occupations you are not skilled. Skilled immigration is used as a an underhand ploy by employers for over a generation (25 years) to downgrade wages and conditions of Australian citizens/residents. I have worked in businesses and occupations which do this. Do you or have you ever? I have named these occupations. Mining may be an exception because of the regional and remote nature of its undertaking and possibly the medical industry but what are 457s and immigrant workers on a legal or semi-legal if not downright illegal basis doing here working in the hospitality, manufacturing or construction industries? Big Australia is not a dog whistle but a clarion call issued by KRudd in one of rare moments of honesty that wasn’t scripted. I have overlooked this ‘eugenics’ movement you refer to. Details please? KRudd’s ‘Big Australia’ speech was where he jumped a shark and his slip-ups came thick and fast after that. This “sufficient working age population to balance budgets” and the position you adopt here in relation to retirement indicates to me you have been sucked into this “Ponzi scheme” way of thinking where the death spiral is ever-increasing population growth comprised of younger working age immigrants who will perpetually struggle given their disadvantaged circumstances, perpetual renter class, perpetual low wage earners – all of whom will be eligible for unemployed benefits, child support and long term Age Pension and all in ever increasing numbers. As I said in earlier posts there are some jobs that just shouldn’t exist and there needs to be a limit on immigration and a strict one to enable local citizens/residents to have a job and this will exert upward pressure on wages so long as govt doesn’t intervene to “increase” supply like a dodgy slave labour fruit picker visa. As long as immigration continues on its upward trajectory long term, wages and conditions will not improve and the only class that benefits is the employer class and the lowest of the low at that.
Interesting opinions that reflect similar thinking of the past century or two claiming ‘immigration’ takes ‘locals’ jobs that have reemerged as a neo white Oz policy (also promoted by Labor e.g. Gillard govt.); not true never has been local or global.
Further, there is no data or sources to support your claims except mainstream media to split the centre and left….?
Whenever I tell people my story people tell me they want data. I mean, I’m talking about crimes do you think crims answer surveys?
In many industries you can be ‘sponsored’ on paper but in reality you’re not. You pay the sponsorship fees and the employer agrees to sign the forms. In some cases you even do the paperwork.
Then once approved you’re not actually paid the 60k or whatever the legal visa money is. You earn whatever the boss is giving.
I’ve literally seen the false paperwork but people shut me down over it. I’ve sat in on conversations about how to scam immigration. I moved in migrant circles for years. Everyone savvy for example knows someone who owns a farm and can sign your farm paperwork. Only idiots pick fruit.
IDK what to tell people. Why do I know so many Uber drivers and pizza delivery boys who have gotten PR or citizenship?
I’m open to hearing why we need more pizza delivery citizens. I have an open mind to hearing the case. I am just curious as to what the plan is for the fact that when I lived in Northern Suburbs of Melbourne it seemed like half the population was PR or citizen doing super crap work while the media blasted everyone with ‘skilled taxpayers are here to save us!’ Man if we’re relying on the Uber Eats guys to save us we’re in trouble.
I don’t buy the whole ‘we need more taxpayers’ thing.
I am minimum wage. I know tonnes of migrants who also work minimum wage and have somehow wrangled their way to citizenship (there are various scammy ways and means).
I’m just asking for the business case on an imported waiter. I work in the sector. We have more restaurants and cafes than we need. Most can’t fill their seats every night of the week except for the super cool ones. So it’s not exactly a shortage.
You can scam your way in as a sponsored ‘restaurant manager’ who really is an underpaid waiter. It’s a common dodge.
What do these people add? Their not working in a really needed sector, it’s an over serviced sector. In terms of tax they earn maybe 40-50k how much tax do they even pay? As a citizen they become eligible for health care, welfare, university, education for their kids and pensions when they retire.
Maybe I’m wrong but a back of the envelope calculation seems to show they wind up take out more than they put in. I understand the case for needed unskilled workers for abattoirs and aged care but Uber Eats?
So many migrant communities are extremely poor, as the pandemic showed where the virus spread first, and I just wonder how much these vaunted ‘taxpayers’ put back in. It really reads like a scam where the taxpayer picks up the costs of a new citizen in order to give business a cheap worker and the uni’s some international student fees.
No doubt there is a good business case for a highly paid IT worker but what is the business case for all the menu log drivers I know who have managed to become citizens and whose 4 kids we’re paying through the nose for.
“Australia needs to develop a modernised and more gender-neutral understanding of class”.
And how will that be achieved given we have a Murdoch/Stokes/Costello media machine that dominates all media genres?