Last edited Wed Jan 30, 2013, 02:13 PM - Edit history (1)
I have seen that particular discussion play out several times. Folks acknoweleging the many benefits won by unions in history, then following this up by saying that those days are over, those benefits won, and unions today are no longer as necessary. Note, you don't have to convince me that this is wrong, you have to convince them.
In any case I suspect that the historical role of unions is somewhat irrelevant -- as the unions which won those concessions are gone, as are the jobs. Prior to NAFTA and the other FTAs, America's largest employer was GM. Rounding out the top ten were mostly other manufacturing companies, all paying solid middle class wages and godly benefits. Unions, and those jobs, built the middle class that is wiped out today.
Today the largest employer is Walmart. The rest of the top ten employers is made up of companies like McDonalds and Target and what not, all paying as close to minimum wage / part time as they can get away with, none offering any benefits.
Our Party did this, our voters thought this was a fine idea. It's not like they didn't know, I was just a kid and even I remember the debate, they just didn't care.
So here we are. The American people are polarized, and the gap between the worker and the boss is as vast as the ocean. Those on the bottom, regardless of qualifications, are doing gladiatorial combat with hundreds of others for the chance to earn a part-time, poverty-wage job with no benefits, while those above them earn hundreds of times their salary. President Obama, and many posters here, consider 399K a year to be middle class -- barely making it -- and very much in need of a permanent tax cut. This is obscene when you consider that such a salary pays as much every month as TWO average Walmart workers earn per year.
But that's where we're at. A nation in which the top twenty-percent are rich, and everyone else is poor. A nation in which one-in-five US kids goes to bed every day without food. A nation in which tens of millions of children go to school after sleeping in their parent's car, or on a friend's floor, or at the shelter. A nation in which healthcare for most consists of internet self-help and prayer to gods they no longer believe in.
When a hundred people are fighting over a covetted McDonald's "Fry Guy" position, and crushed when they don't get the job, it's hard to see how unions can even possibly be the answer. And it's equally hard for many to feel anything other than bitterness when they hear about some lucky union workers cashing in.
It is this anger which the anti-labor forces capitalize on.
Unions were powerful when companies had to fight for workers, and when workers were represented in Washington. Today neither is the case.
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