"The erosion of collective bargaining is a key factor to explain why low-wage workers and middle income workers have seen their wages not stay up with inflation," (former Labor Department Economist Bill) Rodgers said.
Without collective bargaining pushing up wages, especially for blue-collar work -- average incomes have stagnated.
International competition is another factor. While globalization has lifted millions out of poverty in developing nations, it hasn't exactly been a win for middle class workers in the U.S.
Factory workers have seen many of their jobs shipped to other countries where labor is cheaper, putting more downward pressure on American wages.
"As we became more connected to China, that poses the question of whether our wages are being set in Beijing," Rodgers said.
Follow the money.
Representation in Washington is not through elected officials and never really has been: groups and causes are represented by lobbyists. If your cause or group (or corporation) funnels enough money through the system via lobbying, it will be heard, and thus represented.
Unions were the lobbyists of the working class - the money, power, and conglomeration of the labor force to get worker-forward agendas that became the New Deal and the Great Society (and, to an extent, civil rights) on the radar in Washington.
Starting with Reagan, the corporate interests' first Our Guy president since the 1920s, the Republicans and later Democrats began a full 30- year quest to destroy the union lobbying base and institute their more controllable military and banking agendas that could be used toward their interests.
Americans complain about jobs going overseas, but that is exactly what the rich wanted in the first place - jobs are not important to the rich. And as we see now, when unemployment is at half-century highs, they aren't concerned with creating jobs, they're concerned that people spend so that they can stay rich. Job creation doesn't even get mentioned - its about consumer confidence and spending levels. There is no one at the back room meeting fighting for jobs. The only benefits workers can get from Washington today are those that already fit within the plan of making -their- existences richer.
The military contractors have paid for war, and they're going to get it. Its not a rise to the occasion like in the 40s - its an industry that must be sustained, and good jobs for young people coming out of college makes it much harder to keep a volunteer army staffed without a draft. And if it becomes any harder than it is now, be sure they'll create some other situation that merits more troops.
Its a business.
Not so ironically, representatives of the Tea Party movement are now in Wisconsin for the weekend backing the Government against the middle class because they've been taught that the Unions that fought for them to have the weekend off in the first place are the problem with America.
