The Kind Of Insecure Job Market We Have Today Is The Sign Of Success Of Reagan Revolution.

[TheMastersNemesis]

Just about every aspect of what is bad about the job market began with Reagan. The firing of the air traffic controllers was the fatal shot delivered to the labor and employment system as we knew it. And it was the end of the social contract between workers and corporations.

It is amazing to me that the American people allowed themselves to be duped. After 30 years of the assault on workers the future of the younger generation looks bleak. They will never have the kind of job market their parents had and essentially gave up by supporting Reagan and the GOP.

[elehhhhna]

1. the wierd thing is

I don't think Raygun intended to decimate the middleclass.

His BUDDIES did, though...

[Boomerproud]

2. I think you mean "The Reagan Regression".

Revolutions are progressive-Reaganism was three steps backward.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. UAW backed reagan. Never let them forget it.

So many of our union's injuries are self-inflicted, from blatant discrimination against minorities and women, electing "college boys" that never worked in their field to represent them, to abandoning their own members time after time, decade after decade until there was nobody left to represent.

[TheMastersNemesis]

4. I Remember Clear As Day When The Traditional Unions Did Not Support The Air Traffic Controllers

Because the air traffic controllers were public employee unions the traditional ones did not support them as union brothers.
That decision was a fatal error that I recognized at the time. I remember the unions dissing the controllers. And of course the Teamsters had endorsed Reagan and the GOP at the time. And they did so in Reagan's re election.

Any fool could see what Reagan and his cronies were up to. And I could see the war on workers coming. And Lane Kirkland who I believe had replaced Meaney entered a sort of detente with the Reagan administration.

What the unions did was just hugely stupid and allowed Reagan to set the stage.

So you are right about self inflicted wounds. You are also right about discrimination. It was an inherent weakness in their attitude that was just as bad in the longer run.

[Igel]

5. "Began with Reagan"?

Sorry. I watched a strongly union-based job force destroyed in the '70s.

As it happened, the then-sitting president crowed about the glories of a post-industrial economy and how wonderful it would be--high paid, non-polluting, requiring a lot of education.

But the seeds of the job force's destruction occurred before Carter and before Nixon.

The airport-controller strike-breaking was a late symptom. A last stand, hardly the first stand.

[tilsammans]

7. Same here . . .

. . . watched it happen to two dear family members during the Nixon/Ford years. Sent them both to early graves

The Reaganites put the final nails in the coffin.

[reformist2]

6. We ought to remain focused and blame global free trade.