The top 1% now have more wealth than the entire middle class.
https://www.businessinsider.com/top-1-have-more-money-than-the-middle-class-2021-10?op=1
Business Insider · The top 1% officially have more money than the middle class combined
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#wages
3 posts3 participants1 post today
i owe the #ALP an apology — i thought they were completely useless, but <same job same pay> is in principle an important leap forward.
since forever women and other marginalised people have been underpaid, based on the assumption they are less productive. now, employers can no longer use bias about productivity to discriminate in wages. (of course, they can continue to do what they have always done which is to simply not give jobs to women and marginalised people, but same job same pay does remove an excuse for ripping people off if they do have a job)
so… what does #LNP plan to do about it? if the party says they will repeal it but Dutton says he won’t, whom should we trust? If dutton doesn’t back down to party demands, how hard would it be to depose him as leader after the election?
ABC News · Coalition says it won't repeal Same Job Same Pay industrial relations laws, unions sceptical
Today in Labor History March 31, 1883: Cowboys in the Texas panhandle began a 2-and-a-half-month strike for higher wages. Investment firms from the East Coast and Europe were taking over the land and cutting benefits that cowboys had accustomed to, like keeping some horses for themselves and holding some of the land for their own small farming. New ranch owners were more interested in expanding holdings and increasing profits, forcing their hands to work entirely for wages, and maintaining all livestock entirely for the profit of the owners.
Media from as far away as Colorado accused the cowboys of being incendiaries, threatening to burn down the ranches, attacking ranchers, and indiscriminately killing cattle.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #cowboy #strike #texas #wages #books #nonfiction #author #writer @bookstadon
Today in Labor History March 28, 1977: AFSCME Local 1644 struck in Atlanta, Georgia, for a pay raise. This local of mostly African American sanitation workers saw labor and civil rights as part of the same struggle. They saw their fight as a continuation of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike. For several years, they organized to get black civil rights leaders elected to public office. They succeeded in getting their man, Maynard Jackson, elected mayor of Atlanta. After all, as vice mayor, Jackson had supported their 1970 strike. Yet, in his first three years as mayor, he refused to give them a single raise. Consequently, their wages dropped below the poverty line for a family of four. Jackson accused AFSCME of attacking Black Power by challenging his authority. He fired over 900 workers by April 1 and crushed the strike by the end of April. Many believe this set the precedent for Reagan’s mass firing of 11,000 air traffic controllers during the PATCO strike, in 1981.
Today in Labor History: March 28, 1968: Martin Luther King led a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Police attacked the workers with mace and sticks. A 16-year old boy was shot. 280 workers were arrested. He was assassinated a few days later after speaking to the striking workers. The sanitation workers were mostly black. They worked for starvation wages under plantation like conditions, generally under racist white bosses. Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for talking back, and they got no breaks. Organizing escalated in the early 1960s and reached its peak in February, 1968, when two workers were crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck.
HB 1208—introduced by state Democrats and widely supported by Colorado’s most powerful lobbying groups and politicians—would have slashed wages for some of the lowest paid workers in the state. Thanks to the overwhelming opposition of workers and labor organizations, the bill has now been severely amended. In a massive win for workers, the wage cut was scrapped. 
https://pslweb.org
#usa #us #colorado #psl #partyforsocialismandliberation #labor #workers #wages
Today in Labor History March 18, 1970: The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the U.S. Postal Service began on this date in New York City. The walkout was illegal, giving President Richard Nixon the excuse to send in federal troops to sort the mail. But the strike succeeded in forcing Congress to raise wages and reorganize the postal system and marked a new militancy among postal employees.
Today in Labor History March 11, 1811: Luddites attacked looms near Nottingham, England, because automation was threatening their jobs. At the time, workers were suffering from high unemployment, declining wages, an “endless” war with France and food scarcity. On March 11, they smashed machines in Nottingham and demonstrated for job security and higher wages. The protests and property destruction spread across a 70-mile area of England, reaching Manchester. The government sent troops to protect the factories and made machine-breaking punishable by death.
Workers in Japan have seen their base pay rise at the fastest clip in 32 years, a result that sends a positive signal to the Bank of Japan as it weighs the prospects for demand-driven economic growth. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/03/10/economy/base-pay-gains-fast/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #business #economy #boj #japaneseeconomy #wages #unions #mhlw
The Japan Times · Japan records fastest gains in base pay since 1992, supporting BOJ moves
**1 out of 7 EU employees is a low-wage earner**
_“In 2022, 14.7% of employees in the EU were low-wage earners, against 16.2% in 2018. Low-wage earners are employees earning two-thirds or less of the median gross hourly earnings in the country of work.”_
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/en/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20250227-1
#Europe #EU #Data #DataViz #Statistics #Wages #Economy #Economics @economics
Today in Labor History February 26, 1941: 14,000 workers struck at Bethlehem Steel’s Lackawanna mill in Buffalo, New York. As a defense contractor, the company had $1.5 billion worth of armament orders, but refused to pay the minimum wage mandated for government contracts. Furthermore, they had recently fired 1,000 workers, blaming their last work stoppage for damaging some coke ovens. The pickets effectively stopped scabs from getting in. After less than 2 days, the company agreed to rehire the fired men and began talks on a raise and union recognition. However, a month later, they reneged.
**Rising Wages Drive Innovation in Automation Technology**
_“A new UZH study shows for the first time that higher minimum wages for low-skill jobs drive firms to develop automation technologies. Rising wages for high-skill labor, in contrast, can hamper this effect.”_
https://www.news.uzh.ch/en/articles/media/2025/rising-wages-and-automation.html.
#Research #Study #Economics #Wages #Tech #Technology #Automation @economics
www.news.uzh.chRising Wages Drive Innovation in Automation Technology
The Great Prosperity: 1947-1979 after the new deal but before Reaganomics took hold
The Great Regression: From 1980 until the present, as neoliberalism successfully stole the value of improved productivity, paying themselves overvalued compensation but paying workers little.
The 80% difference between what you're worth based on productivity and what actual average wages are is the work you're giving away for free.
Continued thread
And, if the answer is, ‘yes, it has value’, then – logically – the task should be respected, seen, and supported within society.
I’d go so far as to say it should be recompensed, too – in fact, I’d propose that should be in direct proportion to how much value it has.
Only, how would we ever be able to assign anything approaching true value to things?
Today in Labor History February 15, 1910: The ILGWU declared the Uprising of Twenty Thousand shirtwaist strike officially over. The garment workers strike began September 27, 1909, in response to abysmal wages and safety conditions. The majority of striking workers were immigrant women, mostly Yiddish-speaking Jews (75%) and Italians (10%), and mostly under the age of 20. Five women died in the strike, which the union won, signing contracts with 339 manufacturing firms. However, 13 firms, including Triangle Shirtwaist Company, never settled. One of the demands had been for adequate fire escapes and for open doors to the streets for emergencies. In 1911, 146 girls and women were killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.
Then they warp our #politics, our #society, our #psychology
Something is going to break in this new #GildedAge
"#Corporate #profits are close to a record share of #GDP, #fiscal and #trade #deficits are at non-crisis highs. Meanwhile #wages are around their lowest share while asset #prices are at the highs. Are the five sustainable together?"
Today in Labor History February 3, 1910: Mary Harris "Mother" Jones addressed Milwaukee brewery workers during a two-month stint working alongside women bottle-washers while on leave from the United Mine Workers:
"Condemned to slave daily in the wash-room in wet shoes and wet clothes, surrounded with foul-mouthed, brutal foremen . . . the poor girls work in the vile smell of sour beer, lifting cases of empty and full bottles weighing from 100 to 150 pounds, in their wet shoes and rags, for they cannot buy clothes on the pittance doled out to them. . . . Rheumatism is one of the chronic ailments and is closely followed by consumption . . . An illustration of what these girls must submit to, one about to become a mother told me with tears in her eyes that every other day a depraved specimen of mankind took delight in measuring her girth & passing comments."
Today in Labor History February 2, 1938: Emma Tenayuca led a strike at the Southern Pecan-Shelling Company in San Antonio, Texas. The workers were fighting against low wages and inhumane working conditions. Tenayuca first became interested in activism before graduating from High School and was first arrested at age 16, in 1933, when she joined a picket line against the Finck Cigar Company. She later founded two international ladies' garment workers unions, and was involved in the Woman's League for Peace and Freedom. She also organized a protest in response to the beating of Mexican migrants by US Border Patrol. She was arrested several times for her participation in strikes and other activism. 12,000 women, mostly Mexicana and Chicana, participated in the Pecan-Shelling strike. Police clubbed, gassed, arrested and jailed the women. The strike ended in October, with an arbitrated raise to 25 cents per hour.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #chicano #union #strike # EmmaTenayuca #mexico #wages #women #feminist #prison #police #policebrutality
