Cartoon 910: History Lesson

Government was a bulwark against the disadvantaging of labor. The labor movement was a powerful voting block after World War II. The power later evaporated. First it was through a concerted Republican effort to attack this largely Democrat base of power. Second, especially with the advent of the Reagan Administration, giving business far greater latitude on how labor would be treated. It was the start of the big outsourcing waves and reduced wages and benefits. Most importantly it was the period that heralded the merger and acquisitions. They always had as their expressed purpose to reduce labor.

If you go back to the economic demographics of the period from the late 1940s to 1970, the middle class was substantially composed of blue collar labor. They achieved that status through a dynamic labor market and working overtime. Businesses had to entice labor through wages and benefits such as free healthcare. Manufacturing also gave way to what Reagan celebrated as “the service economy”. But a service economy lacked the stability in employment and wages and benefits of manufacturing. It often required much less skill.

Things conspired for a marked change in the status of the blue collar worker. I remember they used the Archie Bunker analogy from the television series “All in the Family”. Likely Archie was a high school graduate. He had worked a factory job for a couple of decades. It allowed him to buy a house in New York and live a middle class life style. He had progressed on the job to driving a folk lift. By the 1970s he was being financially pinched. The overtime hours were gone and workers were being laid off. Women were taking jobs reserved by tradition for males. Prices of everything in his world seemed to be increasing. Any chance of making supervisor and a higher salary was gone. Those jobs went to young college graduates. Finally businesses that went under disavowed pension obligations.

The labor movement also shot itself in the foot with discrimination. The blue collar workers did not want the young class of knowledge workers (ones that did not use their hands beyond writing) to join their unions. They were actively discouraged. The Republicans used this as an opportunity to force a class wedge. They encouraged knowledge workers to view themselves as better than those workers with dirty finger nails. They also created a legal class difference of “exempt” and “non-exempt” labor. It allowed business to lump these knowledge workers in a class governed like management. They lost the ability to be paid for every hour worked, collective bargain and to be governed by strict defined management and labor protocol.

As the blue collar economic ability sunk, so did their participation in the middle class. Now on the horizon is another assault on labor. Too bad they were too racist, stupid, and culturally conservative to realize what was coming.

The only way to improve the blue collar and gray collar [knowledge workers] position is the create and join strong unions. It is absolutely the last thing businesses, politicians and the wealthy want them to do.