Blue-collar blokes are deserting the left. The future is female

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 20^th 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”.