Conversation with an NYC Labor Activist

Gregory Butler is a blogger construction worker, labor activist, and author of Disunited Brotherhoods...race, racketeering and the fall of the New York construction unions.

Here is the text of an (incomplete) conversation we had on Facebook.

Sam Calvin via UnemployedWorkers.org
A disturbing chart...btw I don't know why they don't use the actual percentages...chart should read 67.5% on the left down to 57.5% on the right...

Daily Kos: Workers' share of national income fails to recover after 21st Century recessions
www.dailykos.com
But after the 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions officially ended, workers' share of national income did not recover but continued a downward spiral. It is now at the lowest level it has been since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records 64 years ago.
June 19 at 1:58am · LikeUnlike · · Share

Sam Calvin one note- part of the decline is attributable to the fact that this measures "wages and salaries" as opposed to "total compensation"...ie healthcare costs squeeze take-home pay...
June 19 at 2:00am · LikeUnlike
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Sam Calvin The really interesting question is why there is no ability on the part of progressive elites to provide real support to unions, the only institutions which have proven capable of reversing this trend...
June 19 at 2:02am · LikeUnlike
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Gregory A. Butler
The Democratic Party represents the liberal wing of the capitalist class - they want to keep workers as impoverished and unorganized as much as the right wingers in the Republican Party do. The only difference is, they see America's weak, timid, incompetent, cowardly, racist, sexist and pro corporate union leaders as useful sources of funding and volunteers for the Democratic Party and they understand that those guys act as a barrier against the rise of an effective and militant working class movement. So, they tolerate unions as long as they are small, weak and divided (and solidly in the Democratic Party camp).
June 19 at 2:17am · LikeUnlike