Why we need unions.

I was just reading a magazine named “UNTE”. It is a collection of articles from other publications. The theme this month is ‘putting America back to “work”. Very interesting. What piqued my interest was how much better other countries are doing with strong unions. The average worker in Germany, an example given, is far better off financially than American workers are now.

The peak time for the middle class in America was the 1950’s when our unions were the strongest. There was a true middle class worker then. A class of people who could work a 40 hour week and buy a house, support a family and save money for retirement.

I know for a fact that in 1968 my hubby and I bought a house. His hourly wage was $6.25 an hour. The house was a mid priced house at $20,000. Nowadays people are expected to work for $10 an hour and the houses cost $200,000 or more for a regular house. In fact the last time I checked, about 30 years ago, the price on the same house we had bought at $20,000 it was $125,000.

Taking car production away from the Detroit union production workers has not helped the car companies. There are fewer people who can afford a new car now. And the government has to bail out the car companies. The money the government uses to do that comes partially from US tax payers and partially from the increasing government debt.

When people earn less money they have less to spend on goods that could be manufactured in this country. Goods made cheaply and poorly in other countries are sold here at high prices and the retail companies, like Wal-Mart, are making a bigger profit. And to put the finishing touch on the lopsided cake, retail clerks are some of the worst treated workers in this country. They are expected to work short hours so they don’t get any kind of health insurance and do it for poor pay.

What can we do to fix this? Right now I don’t have any idea. If anyone has an idea leave a comment. In the mean time I will use any resources I can think of to try and find something that we of the former middle class can do to fix things.