Thank you for the insight! It’s helpful thinking through my own logic and seeing some responses to it.

Btw you’re assumptions are correct. I used to be an iron worker but I’ve gotten my degree and work as an engineer now.

Wages are very much based off industry standards. The company is non-profit and the “owners” are elected, so its not as clear cut as that.

I provided a little more context in my other comment.

Umm. Sorry, didn’t mean to provide flase definitions or anything like that. I was unsure how much information I wanted to share for the sake of anonymity. But let me provide additional context.

The “company” is an Irrigation District. Its a non-profit, community owned, public utility company.

By blue collar, I meant field workers. Linemen, operators, etc.

By white collar, I meant office workers. Engineers, technicians, and clerks.

All of those people are in the union. The managers (non-union) are pushing for removal of WFH. The managers are mostly chosen by the board of directors, who are elected every 5 years by the customers.

I guess by the “correct” definitions, everyone I’ve been talking about is blue collar?

Why do the field workers care?

The bosses claimed “field workers have been calling people who WFH and have not been getting responses”. I believe this is blown out of proportion but its the biggest wedge we are dealing with.

I think part of the misunderstanding here is what kind of person a rural labor union attracts. The field workers fit the stereotype of a truck driving, Trump voting, thin blue flag bumper sticker, bootstraps believing kind of guy. They don’t join a union because they believe in workers solidarity, mostly. They join a union because they are hard workers who want to earn more. They believe the should earn more because of their hard work. So when someone can WFH, it goes against what they believe, at a core level.

What are the wage differences like?

Sporadic. Office is made up of people who make less and more. Field is more standard pay in the middle but with more OT opportunities. The compromise here is a mix of wage negotiations being percentage based and flat increase based.

Do the blue collar workers think the white collar workers are getting in they way of what they want?

I think the blue collar guys are hard workers who want to work with other hard workers. They respect the office workers who you can see putting the effort in, but not when you cannot see it. They do NOT want to support someone lazy getting something they don’t deserve. The assumption is WFH = lazy.

Or you could also campaign for travel subsidies or free food/drink for those who have to go in—this will be more affordable if it’s only for half the workforce.

HOLY SHIT this actually brings up a very good compromise. The office has a cafeteria that served lunches for everyone but stopped when covid started. When WFH was removed, they never reintroduced the lunches. I think we can request the lunches get brought back. Its actually fucking dumb this wasn’t offered immediately as an incentive from management.

The more I try to explain the situation the less likely I think I can convince others that WFH is a good thing. So let’s reintroduce some of the benefits of being in the office.

I think everyone understands why people want to work from home. And stressing all the benefits of WFH to field workers only seemed to further the resentment.

Office and field workers did sit down last month to discuss this. Tensions were high very quickly.

I’ve been thinking a better strategy is to explain we will lose workers because of this change. And if office staff is lost, the field will have less support. This makes everyone’s job harder. Solidarity is easier if we have a common interest.