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During the 1890's we saw the rise of a period of time known as the Progressive Era. There was a social consciousness surrounding everything from environmental concerns to worker's rights, from women's suffrage, to the rise of communism and socialism. People were concerned about the well-being of society as a whole, with the understanding that if we protect and help the least among us, the rest will benefit as well. This wasn't without horrifying racism and sexism which were still very much alive and well, which I could write an entirely different article on that hypocrisy, but not right now. Muckrakers, who were writers and journalists working undercover, typically, wrote scathing treatises exposing the rank corruption and depravity many workers faced to the world at large.
With the horrifying abuses laid out before the public, many began saying that there needed to be changes. During this push for worker's rights, people began more earnestly embarking in practices of collectivism. Trade unions gained significant traction with organized strikes and open discussion of salary negotiations. Collective bargaining completely and utterly relied on honest discussion of wages with peers, and to a large degree, with the public at large. Any time a strike occurred, entire communities would come together to support each other because it was commonly understood that a win for one trade would yield a ripple for the other trades and business nearby as well.
This collectivism remained alive and well through the Great Depression. Roosevelt's New Deal policies saw the further rise of unions, particularly with the implementation of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. This set into law a worker's right to openly discuss wages with their peers for the purposes of labor organization. It became illegal to discipline a worker for attempting to form a union where they worked as well. These protections were perhaps the biggest boon to unions, and consequently workers as a whole, in the history of the United States.
Collectivism and worker's rights remained a strong and potent force in the coming decades. World War II saw communities coming together to do their part as never before, pushing to make collective sacrifice for the war effort. However, this sense of community began to erode shortly thereafter. The McCarthy Era saw people within communities at each others' throats over the smallest infractions. Collectivism became synonymous with Communism. In response to continued collective action on the part of unions, the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947 was rammed through Congress over President Truman's veto. This act removed many of the actions unions utilized to have bargaining power, while placing further restrictions on the few actions that were deemed permissible. The bill even went so far as to push union leaders to file affidavits with the US Department of Labor stating they were not, in any way, affiliated with the Communist Party, and were not seeking to overthrow or undermine the US government. One key component of the bill was that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was given discretionary power in seeking injunctions against employers and unions who were thought to have violated the act.
The death blow for unions came in the 1970's. Factories began shipping work overseas, which vastly reduced the costs of production for manufacturers. It was no longer completely infeasible to relocate manufacturing processes. The main leverage point for unions was pulled out from under them. As unions began to wane, the prevalance of open salary negotiations also faded. The community had effectively been replaced with the atomic family, and it became a very competitive world even within communities. This was spurred on by an economic boom in the 1980's brought on by Reaganomic-type policies. The finance industry exploded, and suddenly everyone felt like they could become a millionaire. This attitude firmly obfuscated the understanding that had held unions together, that worker's rights and corporate interests were diametrically opposed.
With the explosion of publicly traded companies and the increasingly predatory practices of the financial industry, we started to see a strong push for corporate performance. Corporations are legally bound to provide their shareholders with as much return on investment as possible. If a shareholder board feels that a company is not upholding this obligation, they can be brought to court to prove their actions were in the best interests of the shareholders. Investors started pushing more and more for reductions in the bottom line. This pressure is what led to overseas outsourcing of manufacturing. It is what led to union busting practices, including people trained in industrial psychology, management, and labor law who worked for consultancies that helped companies implement regulations that skirted the restrictions put in place by the NLRA of 1935. These consultants also commonly notified the NLRB of perceived infractions on the part of unions. This led to unions becoming the targets of corruption investigations, which increasingly led to decertifications (the number of decertifications tripled in the 1970s versus previous decades).
The climate for worker's rights became actively hostile due to media campaigns actively reporting on these investigations, as well as the political rhetoric put forward by Reagan. Further attacks on public spending and infrastructure cuts, as well as shedding support for public welfare policies, medicaid/medicare, and social security in more recent years, and a continued slashing of taxes, the tenor of society has become clear. Fuck you, got mine. No wonder then, that there is reticence about discussing salaries in the past few decades. We are no longer a country that works to better the community. We are a country that believes if you are not successful, it is your fault for not working hard enough. There is no mention or analysis of the numerous forces at work that actively push to suppress wages and general public welfare.
In recent years, there has been an increasingly powerful push for increased minimum wages and unionization of service sector jobs. The pain of 40 years of stagnant wages has been felt, and it will continue to hurt. Many companies, however, continue to directly advocate against collectivist practices by showing their new hires anti-union propaganda. Furthermore, even in many skilled occupations, companies will put statutes in their employee handbooks stating that sharing salary information is a fireable offense. More egregiously, twenty four states in the US are considered "Right to Work" states, wherein a person may be fired for any reason whatsoever, with no justification needed. To highlight just how heavily this impacts workers and their wages, it is no coincidence that the majority of these 24 states are routinely on lists of the states that take the most government funding for welfare policies and payments.
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