Like crabs in a barrel, we compare salaries instead. As if the common cry as if others making less will improve our own lot. During the maintenance workers strike, I got into a fairly passionate debate over the importance of unions. Like titans, we battled until my friend demanded I explain the difference between collective bargaining and blackmail. All I had said about fair wages and protection for workers, because she had already bought the media's treatment of unions and blue collar workers.
Unions seem to have gone the way of affirmative action and dinosaurs.
The common attitude is sure we needed a labor movement once, but things have improved so wonderfully since then. Sadly, strikes conjure up images of the mob, shiftless teamsters, and whether Jimmy Hoffa is really buried in Giants Stadium. It's much harder to see workers, individual workers, in need of a voice. And it's nearly impossible to see, regardless of our job title, our connection to the poorest workers. They came to a society in which color was important in determining social position.