This is shaping up as a major political battle in California where it has been submitted as a referendum, Proposition 226. The l947 Taft-Hartley Act, the McCarran Act, and the national transportation act are major measures designed to club militancy into submission. While the frantic pace of megamergers in telecommunications, banking, and industry trumpet the triumph of the so-called free market, behind the scenes stands the silent partner, the state. Furthermore in the 1990s, reorganization follows global lines. In the case of DaimlerChrysler, the relatively higher standard of living of German workers will fall to that of their North American counterparts, and both will approach that of cheap, Third World assemblers.
Globalization exacerbates already existing pressures to lower the cost of labor in the aggregate.
Already the average minimum wage worker is not a teenager, but someone who provides more than half a family' s weekly earnings. Today' s minimum wage, when adjusted for inflation, is actually much less than a minimum wage worker made 30 years ago. That' s not to say growing dissatisfaction among workers in other industries isn' t erupting. Northwest Airlines machinists have staged a slowdown. Budweiser workers have authorized a strike.