Companies like Caterpillar are locked in major labor disputes where they are attempting to strip the benefits from so-called second tier union employees. These are people hired since Reagan broke the unions. They typically receive in the neighborhood of $11/hr plus benefits. In Romney land, these benefits have to go.
The hourly wages these workers receive are the same, or less than the minimum wage of 25 cents/hour (adjusted for inflation) that workers got under the New Deal in 1938. Union wages were several times that then, but not in our brave new world of unregulated capitalism.
Another 200,000 people are losing unemployment benefits under the deal the Republicans forced through Congress in December as more states come under this austerity plan. The long term unemployed are now currently out of work even longer than those similarly affected during the Great Depression of the 30s. Of course they had the New Deal, we don’t. Even Hoover tried to put people back to work, the right today calls Hoover misguided.
The people who try to make sense of the retirement swindle plans estimate that the typical couple retiring now after paying into a 401(k) since Reagan invented them, has paid $155,000 in hidden fees. Some have been swindled out of several times that. New regulations to be put in place by Obama in July will force companies to reveal to you how badly they are ripping you off. It won’t stop the practices, but the Republicans are spitting mad just the same.
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