ABSTRACT
The apparent absence of a self-conscious American working class has been exacerbated in the twentieth century. American culture has frequently downplayed the idea of class as a meaningful aspect of identity or a source of social movement organising. The American labour movement has witnessed a significant demographic shift. Economic restructuring not only creates uncertainty for individual workers, it also creates a fracture within the working class. The alterations in employment are intimately related to economic globalisation and corporate restructuring. Theories that depict class as a universalist structure or in static terms of social stratification or that cast labour politics only in terms of industrial relations are clearly insufficient. Clearly, class theory must account for all of the elements if we are to develop viable organising strategies. Several examples of scholarship on class and work demonstrate how important such theoretical shifts can be.
