{"id":37023,"date":"2020-07-30T03:09:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T00:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/manhattan-just-lost-its-stranglehold-on-white-collar-workers\/"},"modified":"2020-07-30T03:09:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T00:09:00","slug":"manhattan-just-lost-its-stranglehold-on-white-collar-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/manhattan-just-lost-its-stranglehold-on-white-collar-workers\/","title":{"rendered":"#Manhattan just lost its stranglehold on white-collar workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Manhattan just lost its stranglehold on white-collar workers<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n For half a century, New York City was home to an archetypical white-collar worker: he (and later she) who would perform feats of creativity, daring and endurance \u2014 to get to work.<\/p>\n

Consider three subway strikes.<\/p>\n

In 1966, the Transport Workers Union greeted freshly sworn-in Mayor John Lindsay by stopping all subway and bus service. Earlier strikes had hit separate parts of transit, but it was the first time the entire urban system was shuttered.<\/p>\n

One of Lindsay\u2019s responses was also a first: Implore people not to come to work. Lindsay knew that he was saying \u201cliterally three-quarters of the people who normally would come into Manhattan should stay home,\u201d as he put it. And he knew that, too, \u201cit\u2019s very difficult for a man, when he is shaving in the morning, to look at himself and say, \u2018I\u2019m not really essential.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

White-collar New Yorkers proved his point \u2014 as they ignored his efforts. Grand Central and Penn Station had to close their doors to record crowds who lined up for hours to take (non-striking) commuter rail. People drove, creating what the traffic commissioner called \u201cthe longest rush hour in the city\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was lower-wage workers who suffered, with 75 percent of people in the garment industry, employing 175,000 New Yorkers, unable to make it in.<\/p>\n

The strike was hardly seen as a fortuitous sign for Gotham. Rather, it was a signal that the city was ungovernable \u2014 people wouldn\u2019t listen to the new mayor \u2014 and inhospitable to blue-collar industry.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, though, it pointed up something hopeful. Even when Manhattan wanted them to stay home, the bankers, lawyers, advertising men, typists, secretaries and fashion designers needed Manhattan, for intense face-to-face contact with suppliers, customers, employees, employers and competitors.<\/p>\n

Fourteen years later, this glimpse of the future had arrived. In April 1980, the TWU struck again \u2014 and Mayor Ed Koch adopted an entirely different tack. Unlike Lindsay, he cheered people as they donned sneakers with suits and skirts or biked across the Brooklyn Bridge. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to let these bastards bring us to our knees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Transit commuting as an aspect of white-collar identity was part of late-\u201980s pop-culture New York, which popularized the city for more people who wanted to achieve their dream here. In \u201cWall Street,\u201d Charlie Sheen takes a subway to work. In \u201cWorking Girl,\u201d Melanie Griffith takes the Staten Island Ferry.<\/p>\n

The movies<\/a> brought home the reality: Whatever you want, you aren\u2019t going to get it unless you come to Manhattan \u2014 and skipping even one day could be missing your big break.<\/p>\n

By December 2005, the third and last (so far) transit strike, things had changed. \u201cPlenty of people clearly just stayed home,\u201d The New York Times estimated. \u201cIn large swaths of Manhattan, it seemed as if Christmas had already arrived, with icy streets silent.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was almost Christmas, and the strike lasted only three days, so it couldn\u2019t mean much.<\/p>\n

In the first days of the current crisis, in mid-March, the MTA, like Lindsay, asked people to stay home. This time, they did. Only \u201cessential workers\u201d kept coming in.<\/p>\n

Now, the city \u2014 or, at least, sentient public and private-economy officials who can see implications, a group that notably doesn\u2019t include the mayor \u2014 wants people to come back. Office-building managers have replanted flowers for summer and installed cheery greeters.<\/p>\n

But people aren\u2019t coming. Midtown is a little busier than in mid-March. It\u2019s still empty. Yes, employers may find that it\u2019s harder to integrate new workers into a virtual workforce or that workers become less productive over time.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it\u2019s something the city has never seen before, not on the cusp of \u201970s turmoil, in 1966; not emerging from \u201970s near-bankruptcy, in 1980; not even in 2005, which was too short to matter.<\/p>\n

The white-collar workforce has proved it can skip the office not just one day, not just a week, not just two weeks, but for nearly five months now.<\/p>\n

Five months isn\u2019t forever, no. But it is a long time. Just as emerging city and state officials want to extract more, in higher taxes, from business and its workers, the balance of power has indefinitely changed.<\/p>\n

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor of City Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Twitter<\/a>: @NicoleGelinas<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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“#Manhattan just lost its stranglehold on white-collar workers” For half a century, New York City was home to an archetypical white-collar worker: he (and later she) who would perform feats of creativity, daring and endurance \u2014 to get to work. Consider three subway strikes. In 1966, the Transport Workers Union greeted freshly sworn-in Mayor John…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46102],"class_list":["post-37023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-manhattan-just-lost-its-stranglehold-on-white-collar-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}