Why Is There So Much Hate for Working People?

Photo Credit: flickr: Steve Lambert

When workers in California’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) went on strike for five days in early July (they hadn’t gotten a raise in four years), it set off a wave of antilabor vitriol on the Internet.

Among the more than 600 comments on the San Francisco Chronicle’s lead story on the strike, the 10 most popular included “greedy unions holding the entire Bay Area hostage,” “fire them all and hire new people,” and “they should have happen to them what happened to the air-traffic controllers in 1981—gone, fired.” Similar comments were “they're already overpaid for jobs you could train a monkey to do,” “make them reapply for their non-union jobs at lower pay and benefits,” and “do they even have a CLUE how many people haven't had a raise in 10 years?”

Internet comments are often cybertoilet-wall graffiti, the rantings of trolls who thrive on vituperation, but they also present uncensored versions of common prejudices. These attitudes have been translated into policy quite frequently over the last few years, from North Carolina drastically slashing unemployment benefits to billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg denouncing school-bus matrons who make $11 an hour as a “special interest” after breaking their strike and forcing pay cuts.

Tea Party supporters are by far the most antiunion demographic group, with more than 80 percent expressing negative opinions in a Pew poll released in June. (What is the Tea Party but a well-organized bloc of trolls?) However, polls indicate that overall public support for unions dropped significantly after the recession began, though it’s recovered somewhat. The Pew survey found that 51 percent of respondents had a positive view of unions, up from an all-time low of 41 percent two years ago, but still below pre-recession levels. Gallup polls have found similar patterns, with 52 percent approving of unions in 2012—up from the all-time low of 48 percent in 2009, but down from 58 percent before the recession and well below the 65 percent of 1999.

So why, with economic inequality in the U.S. at its worst in more than 80 years, is there so much hate for working people—and relatively limp support for them?

Pete Castelli, executive director of Northern California’s Service Employees International Union Local 1021—which represents both some BART workers and the Oakland city employees who staged a one-day strike July 1—is baffled. “Why is it wrong that a worker makes sixty, seventy, eighty thousand a year? Why is it a bad thing if they have a pension and healthcare?” he asks. “What’s our country turning into? We’re almost in a race to the bottom with ourselves.”

Some possible reasons include the divide between public and private-sector workers, the weakening of labor unions and their connections to broader social movements, declining social solidarity and the rise of selfishness as ideology, and that few people with political power are standing up for workers. “All of the above,” says Michael Zweig, an economics professor at Stony Brook University and author of The Working-Class Majority.

Public vs. Private

Most U.S. union members now work for the federal, state and local governments. They are the biggest exception to the overall decline of American unions. In the 1950s, more than one-third of U.S. workers were union members. Today, less than one-eighth are, and less than 7 percent are in the private sector—the lowest since World War I. In contrast, 36 percent of public workers are union members, up from 11 percent in 1960.

The result, coupled with recession, globalization and greed, is that many private-sector workers haven’t seen raises in years or have suffered paycuts, and very few have real monthly-check pensions any more, as they’ve been replaced by 401(k) plans.