Today’s income inequality and the decline of the middle class can be traced to the demise of the unions that started in the late 1800s.
In 1892, during the Homestead Strike the workers and their union was destroyed as it happened again in 1894 during the Pullman walkout the American Railway Union was crushed and the Colorado Labor wars of 1903, the Western Federation of Miners, was annihilated.
Over the years many other union busting occurred but those setbacks didn’t deter them and in many cases, unions grew, their members prospered and the middle class got a big foothold in the country.
But those happy days ended in 1929 when the Great Depression that would last more than a decade hit the country. Organized labor, which had been the primary the force behind the creation of the middle class in the U.S., suffered a tremendous setback and with it, the American Dream was on the verge of dying.
Historically, neither politicians nor Wall Street, the other two forces that move the economic life of the country, did anything to advance the notion of a strong middle class. On the contrary, for more than a 100 years the powers that be, politicians and magnates, have been opposing organized labor with varying degrees of intensity and violence.
There are only two notable exceptions, Franklin D. Roosevelt during the depression in the 30s with his New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson in the 60s with his war on poverty and the Great Society.
The biggest and fastest growth of the middle class began after the end of the Second World War in 1945 thanks to tremendous increase in union membership that gave workers the financial means to seek and attain the American Dream.
This phenomenal union membership increase after the war was the result of the hiring of millions of workers at tens of thousands of manufacturing plants producing goods for an ever growing and affluent population.
With its collective bargaining power, unions secured for its members good living wages as well as health and pension packages.
But those prosperous years didn’t last long. Manufacturing magnates found a way to do away with union labor without resorting to violence. They moved their plants to the South of the U.S. where local governments were anti union. Low wages and meager benefits to employees was a powerful incentive for manufacturing plants to move south and they did. The erosion and decline of the middle class had begun.
Southern governors didn’t realize that they were opening a Pandora’s box with their anti union stance. Outsourcing was next.
Moving jobs to other countries where manufacturing costs were even lower than in the South was the next step for corporations. Mexico, China, Vietnam, Philippines and others was the new South. Jobs left the U.S. by the millions.
Data from the U.S. Department of Commerce shows that “U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers… cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million.”
According to a report on outsourcing by Working America, “Manufacturing employment collapsed from a high of 19.5 million workers in June 1979 to 11.5 workers in December 2009, a drop of 8 million workers over 30 years. Between August 2000 and February 2004, manufacturing jobs were lost for a stunning 43 consecutive months—the longest such stretch since the Great Depression.” Manufacturing plants have also declined sharply in the last decade, shrinking by more than 51,000 plants, or 12.5 percent, between 1998 and 2008. These stable, middle class jobs have been the driving force of the U.S. economy for decades and these losses have done considerable damage to communities across the country.”
Then came the recession of 2008 and the middle class received another blow from which it hasn’t fully recovered. Still, there is hope for its survival in this year’s midterm elections. If the Republicans win the Senate and retain the House, the middle class and the American Dream are doomed. A Democrat controlled House and Senate is the only hope left.
By Carlos Vélez Veljia47@yahoo.com