Tom Suhrbur
Illinois Education
Association (retired)
Special to the Fox
Valley Labor News
Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015

In this first of a 4-part series, retired IEA member Tom Suhrbur examines the labor movement and how its successes improved individual and family prosperity.

“The victim of mind manipulation does not know that they are a victim. To them, the walls of their prison are invisible, and they believe they are free. When it comes to the current mental conditioning process, it’s hard to break free when you are repetitively told you are free.”
—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

Politics is all about how wealth and income are distributed throughout the economy. Put simply, politics decides who gets what. This fact is often obscured by the shallowness of the political discourse. Fear, nationalistic fervor and prejudice guide many voters. As a result, people do not necessarily vote their pocketbooks. Instead, such issues as race, abortion, gun control, Ebola, and terrorism overshadow class interests. How much media attention was given to the absurdity of the “birthers.” A friend of mine even told me she voted for George W. Bush in 2000 because he seemed “nice” and “was cute.” In the 2014 election, 65 percent of the white, working class voted Republican. This is amazing since the party has supported policies that would hurt their families.

I was raised in a working-class family. My mother stayed home caring for seven children. My father was the sole income. He was a pipefitter at Campbell Soup in Chicago and a union member. He worked hard, but our family enjoyed a decent standard of living. We had a modest home and car. We had good food, family health insurance and an annual vacation. In 1973, our dad retired at 65 with a defined benefit pension and social security that guaranteed my parents a comfortable retirement. Can you imagine a working-class family with seven children surviving today on a single income?

The labor movement was the key to the prosperity that my family enjoyed. Strong unions raised the standard of living for members and non-members alike. In 1968, about 28 percent of U.S. workers were covered by union contracts. Union agreements typically raised the level of compensation for others. Non-union employers would often pay wages competitive to the union scale and provide benefit packages that including pensions and health insurance. They did so not only to dissuade their employees from organizing unions, but also to hire and to keep workers from leaving to higher paid union jobs.