Today, The New York Times gives us another article about how working-class people, in this case in Columbus, have little sympathy for union workers struggling to retain their ability to bargain collectively. One man trying to make ends meet on $10 an hour is described this way: "I think they should stop crying,' he said of the protesting union members. Everyone was working hard and tightening their belts,' he said, 'so why should unions be different?"Nothing warms the heart of a plutocrat more than hearing that sentiment. The trick is to get working-class people to look at the union members whose collective bargaining has gotten them exactly what it's supposed to -- fair wages and reasonable benefits -- and ask not "How can I get what they've got?", but rather, "Why should they get something I don't?" So corporations and conservative billionaires pour money on Republican politicians like Scott Walker and well-heeled think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, who then convince working-class people that the ones they should resent are their neighbors. If wages have stagnated and benefits have been shorn, get angry at those who have managed to negotiate a reasonable deal for themselves, not the ones who are bringing home seven-figure bonuses or the Wall Street bankers who destroyed the economy. It's a heck of a lot easier for the upper class to wage war on the middle class if they can get the working class to join in. A key component of that effort is to convince people that unions create no value for those who aren't in them, when history tells us exactly the opposite. Unions are the reason we have a minimum wage, the 40-hour week, child labor laws, and laws mandating safe workplaces. Unions work for things like national health care, even if at the moment they're able to negotiate health benefits. Despite their decline and their weaknesses, unions remain the only significant national force in American politics devoted to advocating for the interests of workers. But if you can make the non-unionized working class forget that and see their unionized neighbors as not their allies but their enemies, then you've almost won the game. These charts from Mother Jones tell the story of the American economy in the last 30 years:
It's no coincidence that that was also the period of organized labor's decline.
It's no coincidence that that was also the period of organized labor's decline. 
