Union Made

The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.

Sarah Cleghorn 1915

 

Not so long ago child labor was wide spread in America and widely accepted. There were no protections for kids and adult workers were little better than slaves. To a large degree it was union men and women who put an end to that. 

Now, by design, we again find ourselves headed in the wrong direction. Workers' rights are increasingly non existent; taken away by corporations and the politicians who do their bidding. So called Right to Work Laws, unfair trade agreements, and outsourcing have destroyed unions and consequently much of our middle class. 

None of this is an accident. The corporate take over of America is a choreographed, generational effort that has largely achieved its aims ... average real wages have not grown since 1973 while investor returns on an hour of American labor have more than doubled ...

Why? Consider this graph. Without unions workers have little say and the loss of union political influence has created a vast wealth disparity in America. Now, this 0.1% of our population, with the help of the best government money can buy, speaks of the wealth of Midas in dismissive terms. 

Oddly, these very Conservatives often scream about *wealth redistribution* policies when they are liberal efforts to feed the hungry or house the homeless but say nothing about tax laws that redistribute wealth upward.

Every work related benefit each of us enjoys was hard won by union men and women and we need to point that out to everyone we meet. We will not rebuild a vibrant middle class without first rebuilding unions that speak for workers.