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Comment by shevek_ | Hacker News Reader

From 2018-2019, we saw teachers protests and strikes lead to massive concessions being gained in 7/9 states they occurred in, most of which were red states. The working class has a considerable amount of power when wielded correctly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_education_work...

Eric Blanc's Red State Revolt is another great source on this

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2955-red-state-revolt

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This is a good point, but it's notable that the only major strike victory since 2008 was by government employees.

There have only been a few other notable strikes in that time, outside of special cases like pro sports. And aside from one narrow strike (UAW vs Kohler), most of them have ended with token concessions (Verizon, which yielded to strikers much further in 2000) or complete collapse (USW Oil Workers, in their first strike since the 80s). It's not a coincidence that the last strike by GM workers was in 2007, right before the company became obviously precarious.

Government employees in general have been insulated from the decline in private-sector union strength. And beyond that, there's real reason that teachers are not a standard example of the "working class", even compared to other government work like the USPS. They are working class by salary, and that's important to remember. But it's also true that schools aren't subject to market downturns and offshoring the way manufacturing has been, and that teachers - who have multiple degrees and responsibility for people's children - are unusually hard to hire and replace.

I think you're right that the working class has more power than it's currently bringing to bear, but it has lost quite a lot of actual and even potential influence over the last few decades.

As it stands any broad based working class revolt in the US can be effectively nullified by bringing up a culture war issue like abortion, homosexuality, etc. and using it to split the electorate. This has been true for a long time. These issues evoke emotional responses that easily override any rational concern for one's economic well being.

Whether intentional or not, the culture war continues to be the most effective tool in history for sidelining and fragmenting any struggle for economic equality. This is because culture war issues do not slice the electorate along the same lines as economic issues.

This is certainly intentional, and is well documented in the book and documentary What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansa...

Additionally, Kevin Kruse of Princeton has written a great book called One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. An intro article on this book can be found here:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-am...

Red State Revolt (referenced in parent) has material in it showing how in practice class battles have the potential to cut across other social questions like party loyalty for example. There was a new-found unity in the teachers strikes. Economics is the sturdiest division in society because it is most rooted in the day to day life of everybody. Some people are bosses, and some people have to work for them 8+ hours every day.

AKA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusionism

HN 2019: downvoted for noting plainly observable phenomenon.

Please don't break the site guidelines by posting like this.

Vote totals fluctuate. When users see an unfairly downvoted comment, they often give corrective upvotes. Then the comment goes back to positive, but a post like yours here lingers on, orphaned and inaccurate.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Exactly right. The working class has power because we are the ones who make society run. In the case of teachers, a strike creates a complete crisis in the city. For private sector workers, they can completely halt profit-making by their employer. Unfortunately we are largely unorganized and taking this kind of action requires a lot of organization. We also do not have a political party made up of workers and representing workers genuine interests. So I see how journalists with no real understanding of the labor movement can get confused.

> Unfortunately we are largely unorganized and taking this kind of action requires a lot of organization. We also do not have a political party made up of workers and representing workers genuine interests.

I think this is what the author meant when saying that the working class has lost a lot of effective power over the last few decades.

I'm not saying this argument is incorrect, but I think it is complicated by the fact that teachers are public employees.

The article mostly touches on private industry and the economics reaped within that sphere. Your argument is salient, but there is probably room for both the argument in TFA and this one.

> The working class has a considerable amount of power when wielded correctly.

This is why "organized labor" is such a perfect term. Yes, the power is there. But without organization, it's not motion, it's just heat.

The working class has a considerable amount of power when wielded correctly

I'm not normally a conspiracist, but increasingly it looks like neoliberalism's sharp departure from collectivism is very much on purpose.

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