White Collar by C. Wright Mills — Read

One might suppose that pro-unionism would involve greater feelings of solidarity among co-workers, and greater antagonism toward the higher-ups or the company. But this is not necessarily the case: those white-collar workers who are in unions or who are pro-union in outlook do not always display more co-worker solidarity than those not in unions or who are anti-union in feeling. Equal proportions on either side are competitively oriented toward co-workers, see co-workers off the job, are friendly with them, have a feeling of belonging to the work-group rather than just happening to be there, and feel estranged from the company or the higher-ups.

In the union or out of it, for it, against it, or on the fence, the white-collar employee usually remains psychologically the little individual scrambling to get to the top, instead of a dependent employee experiencing unions and accepting union affiliation as collective means of collective ascent. This lack of effect of unions is of course linked with the reasons white-collar people join them: to most members, the union is an impersonal economic instrument rather than a springboard to new personal, social, or political ways of life.