Back in the thirties, the growth of the labor movement gave rise to the middle class. In unity the worker got the strength needed to demand what they wanted. Industry eventually was forced into a 40 hour week, had to pay workers a decent wage and provide benefits or they would face strikes. Companies didn’t give in easily. They tried to break strikes at first with muscle and succeeded. This worked for a while until labor answered with corresponding muscle which, by the way, is how the mob got into labor – as the muscle. Industry complained bitterly to their legislators.
From that point on, republicans have spent the last seventy or so years trying to weaken or even break the unions in the interests of their corporate contributors and lobbyists. I have to say that the democrats don’t have completely clean hands regarding labor. The Kennedy’s were well known to be anti-Hoffa, president of the teamster union. Other democrats were also complicit. Slowly but inexorably mostly republican legislators were very successful. It began with the Taft-Hartley act in the 1940’s, which made labor divulge its finances giving industry the intelligence needed to evaluate the strike threat. A rich union could afford a strike. A poor one, no. So unions kept their financial condition hidden until the republican Taft-Hartley act forced them to reveal it. Then right-to-work laws passed by state legislatures when they got the opportunity, weakened unions ability to collect dues, reducing their financial strength. President Reagan, that icon of the right, may he have no peace, broke the back of the flight controllers union. State governors like Scott Walker and John Kasich signed laws limiting the power of government employee unions. The phony excuse was cost savings and reducing government. This insidious step by step destruction of labor resulted significantly in the fading of the middle class. Labor created a standard for wages and benefits that forced industry to be competitive even for non-union workers. There was always the threat that if they didn’t compete with wages, their labor pool would be small or their own workers would form a union and force them to do it.
The argument was made that automation is forcing labor downsizing is a bad one. One of labor’s primary goals from the beginning was to make management share productivity increases with their employees. If companies did this there would be no problem, but without unions or weakened unions, they don’t. All productivity gains go to the owners. If productivity increases are shared, working hours can be reduced, paid vacations increased, benefits increased etc. – no reason to downsize. If automation causes changes in skills required, education can get workers prepared for changes. Now businesses fire their employees and in many cases eliminate local manufacturing entirely. They ship their manufacturing overseas where costs are slave-level wages. Ask yourself the question, how do republicans get working people to vote for them when all they want to do is stab them in the back? It has always puzzled me.