I saw this starting to happen right after I graduated high school, but never thought it would get this bad. My father—who had a union job that included a livable wage with health insurance and a pension—was offered an early retirement in late 1984. He was replaced with two part time workers at minimum wage with zero benefits. The company saved so much money that all of the local stores in that grocery chain eventually had to shut down. Those eligible for retirement at that time were told their pension was not there for them. My father was deceased by then, so he didnt see his old friends get ripped off. In my early twenties I worked for Wonder Bread – Hostess Cake. That was a union job, but youd barely have known it. Every new contract negotiated cut pay and increased responsibilities and hours. Although you can once again buy Hostess Cake products, it is in name only—the brand was sold when the company folded completely about a year or two ago. Oh, and the pension fund was raided to pay executives during those end days—and that was after a negotiated pay cut of about $10,000 a year for route sales employees. For a spell in my mid thirties I worked as a deck hand on tugboats. It was a merchant mariner job with no union. Each tugboat had a crew of four—two deck hands, a captain, and a mate. Those boats used to carry a crew of seven—the additional jobs were for an engineer, assistant engineer, and a chef. Not only did pay stagnate for the remaining jobs, but the deck hands took on the responsibilities of the engineers and the cook. We used to call ourselves deck-a-chef-a-neers as a joke. For more details on what has really happened to the American middle class over the last thirty years, I urge you to watch Inequality for All by Robert Reich. At the very least, watch this short video he produced as a start.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 01:44:56 +0000
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