The “middle class” myth: Here’s why wages are really so low today
Let me tell you the story of an unskilled worker in America who lived better than most of todays college graduates. In the winter of 1965, Rob Stanley graduated from Chicago Vocational High School, on the citys Far South Side. Pay rent, his father told him, or get out of the house. So Stanley walked over to Interlake Steel, where he was immediately hired to shovel taconite into the blast furnace on the midnight shift. It was the crummiest job in the mill, mindless grunt work, but it paid $2.32 an hour enough for an apartment and a car. That was enough for Stanley, whose main ambition was playing football with the local sandlot all-stars, the Bonivirs.
Stanleys wages would be the equivalent of $17.17 today more than the Fight For 15 movement is demanding for fast-food workers. Stanleys job was more difficult, more dangerous and more unpleasant than working the fryer at KFC (the blast furnace could heat up to 2,000 degrees). According to the laws of the free market, though, none of that is supposed to matter. All that is supposed to matter is how many people are capable of doing your job. And anyone with two arms could shovel taconite. It required even less skill than preparing dozens of finger lickin good menu items, or keeping straight the orders of 10 customers waiting at the counter. Shovelers didnt need to speak English. In the early days of the steel industry, the job was often assigned to immigrants off the boat from Poland or Bohemia.
Youd just sort of go on automatic pilot, shoveling ore balls all night, is how Stanley remembers the work.
Stanleys ore-shoveling gig was also considered an entry-level position. After a year in Vietnam, he came home to Chicago and enrolled in a pipefitters apprenticeship program at Wisconsin Steel.
So why did Rob Stanley, an unskilled high school graduate, live so much better than someone with similar qualifications could even dream of today? Because the workers at Interlake Steel were represented by the United Steelworkers of America, who demanded a decent salary for all jobs. The workers at KFC are represented by nobody but themselves, so they have to accept a wage a few cents above what Congress has decided is criminal.
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/30/the_middle_class_myth_heres_why_wages_are_really_so_low_today/
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)brewens
(13,620 posts)organized, got out the axe handles and MADE THEM WANT TO! That's what they understood and that's what worked. They better just hope they are smart enough to not make the younger people have to do that again. I'm too old for that but I'll back them up anyway I can.