Sallow
The Big Bad Wolf.
A few years ago I was invited to speak to a group of employees at a power plant who were considering whether to form a union. One young man who intended to vote against it told me he was worth no more than the fourteen dollars an hour he was then paid. “I say for these people making their millions, that’s fantastic. I could have done the same thing if I went to school and had the brains for it. I do not, so I’m a laborer.”
The man apparently had no knowledge of the 1950s, when more than 30 percent of the nation’s private-sector workforce was unionized. That gave the nation’s blue-collar laborers enough bargaining power to summon the equivalent (on average, and in today’s dollars) of thirty dollars an hour—even though many hadn’t finished high school. It wasn’t their brains that accomplished this. It was their bargaining clout. But the power of trade unions to negotiate good wages for hourly workers has declined markedly since then. That’s why the young man I met was “worth” no more than fourteen dollars an hour.
The meritocracy is a lie: The wild myths that allow CEOs, hedge funders and the 1 percent to outearn us all - Salon.com
The man apparently had no knowledge of the 1950s, when more than 30 percent of the nation’s private-sector workforce was unionized. That gave the nation’s blue-collar laborers enough bargaining power to summon the equivalent (on average, and in today’s dollars) of thirty dollars an hour—even though many hadn’t finished high school. It wasn’t their brains that accomplished this. It was their bargaining clout. But the power of trade unions to negotiate good wages for hourly workers has declined markedly since then. That’s why the young man I met was “worth” no more than fourteen dollars an hour.
The meritocracy is a lie: The wild myths that allow CEOs, hedge funders and the 1 percent to outearn us all - Salon.com