Ludlow Massacre site work reveals symbols lost for a century

[DENVERPOPS]

10. Fifteen or Twenty years ago

I witnessed an interesting thing..... As was normal, many Union contracts were expiring and being re-negotiated during those years.

I was witnessing something that completely shocked me................

Several Union's membership caved into their corporations and organizations wet dream.
The membership agreed, that as long as the corporation or organization gave them, the current workers, a small raise in pay, the membership would vote to authorizing the employers to cut the wages for any new workers to ONE HALF of the current rate was for new workers.
I was seeing the current membership, throw any new employees to the dogs, so they would get what THEY wanted......
It shocked me. Needless to say, I and many others were appalled.

I had been observing the strike lines at my local Safeway. I talked with a Union member on the strike line about this impending settlement and confirmed that that would be voted on and approved in the next few days. I questioned the worker about what the union membership before him had sacrificed by remaining on strike until management gave in to something reasonable, including his current rate of pay. He said, hey, I have to look out for myself......And instead of walking away, for the first time, I crossed the picket line in front of Safeway and went in to shop. (an acquaintance of mine at the time was earning 22 bucks an hour as a checker at Safeway. I recently asked a checker at Safeway what Journeyman Checker's were currently making. He said after ten years he was up to 14.40 an hour. He added that he was soon quitting and going to work at some menial mindless job for a starting pay of 15.30 an hour......
This wasn't an isolated incident of the Union Memberships selling out all behind them. At the same time, United Airlines flight attendants agreed to the same thing. Regional Transportation in Denver did the exact same thing with all their bus drivers..........
And, of course, you can't forget what Lorenzo did to Continental Airlines flight employees at this time...............

The Effects of the Union member's actions/decision were un-fathomable to me..........

Unions had already been getting trashed for twenty years, since Reagan and his PATCO union firings took place. After Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers, it sent a message to all Corporations and government union organizations that the Government's National Labor Relation Board would NO LONGER be on the worker's side and it was open season on any and all Union workers........I remember talking to a Journeyman Electrician here in Denver, and him telling me that on the day of the PATCO firings, he had been earning 22 bucks an hour and 26% fringe. Three days after the PATCO firings, he was told by his employer that the Denver Electrical Union workers would be earning 12 bucks an hour, and no fringe effectively immediately. Even the current union employee's contract was thrown out overnight.
The true working class, the entire middle class, had suffered a blow by Reagan and The Republican Party that they still have not recovered from..........

The Reagan administration, was actually the HWBush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/etc Administration. And with Reagan as their front man, they did an incredible amount of damage to the massive middle and lower classes during their reign..........The Republicans did the same exact thing during the WBush eight years, and capped their trashing of the middle and lower classes during the Trump administration.....
The Republican's WBush administration and Trump Administration were no different, using those two as front men, while the Republican's continued their nefarious crap in the shadows, and continuing their rape of America's middle class.

By the time Trump showed up on the scene, much of the middle class was extinct. A few people moved upwards to become lower upper class members, but the majority of what had been the middle class assumed a new place in the upper lower class without even realizing it....

Some of us Democrats became very outraged and outspoken starting in 1980 when we saw Reagan's group of Republicans, basically commit treason for years, starting with the treasonous pre election crap with Iran to guarantee the election to Reagan. Some of us Dems have been screaming from the roof tops for FORTY YEARS about what should have been blatantly obvious to all Americans. We were told we were being fanatical and crazy, especially by the so called REAGAN DEMOCRATS of that time period.........

THE perfect Title for a book covering the past forty years would be: WHILE THE NATION SLEPT........