Blue Collar Worker and Union Worker Literature & Language Essay (Essay Sample)

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Blue Collar Worker and Union Worker
Most blue collar work is paid on an hourly basis and monthly income ranges widely according to availability and amount of work done within a given period. An interview carried out on a blue collar worker highlighted some work- related issues faced by such workers. The interviewee, a 54 year old Chinese woman, works at San Francisco for Hilton Hotel as a dishwasher. Going by her age she is supposed to be retired but she has to still work very hard in order to take care of her son because she has been a widow for the past seven years.
All jobs have socio-economic associations and blue collar jobs are usually associated with heavy, physical and dirty work. As such, most blue collar workers do not feel self confident about their work (Lubrano 10). Working schedules are long and very unstable. The interviewee for instance, is not a full time employee and does not have a regular work shift. Her work depends on available work and can stay without working for weeks or work more days when the hotel business is blooming and there is a lot of work to be done. It is especially harder for her to get regular work because she is a recent immigrant and the work is allocated according to the time one has served in the hotel. The irregular nature of her work makes her illegible for insurance because the insurance requires one to have a regular job of 8 hours, 3 days a week.
Work insecurity and irregularity for blue collar workers is often solved by work unions.