Ingrid Vilorio, 42, knows what it means to fight to make a job into a good job.
She’s gone on strike for better staffing, quarantine pay, and paid sick days.
She said it’s the “best thing” she could have done.
“It’s not just my boss who has rights but I have rights.”
Vilorio is one of the workers forcing a transformation of work through striking, unionizing, and demanding better.
Beginning in the 1970s, jobs began deteriorating, Bruno said, citing research.
Wage growthhas stalled since then, what’s been termed “quiet fleecing.”
Workers were disaffected and unsatisfied and the decline continued from there.
It wasn’t just about morale: Material benefitswere sliding, too.
Pay didn’t keeppace with productivity,and pensions and time off slowly began disappearing.
The push to make jobs back into careers, and good jobs, is just beginning.
“A quality job isn’t just 40 hours with overtime, with healthcare benefits, with decent pay.
Unionization is strongly correlated with people feeling their jobs are better,” Bruno said.
Too bad the middle classhas been shrinkingfor decades.
“And we’ve also seen just the massive gap between CEO salaries and frontline worker pay.”
But that’s where Su, and theBiden administration,is trying to step in.
Thatsame reportfound one thing that could reverse that inequality: unions.
That newfound willingness to push back has also touched workers across the economic spectrum.
For those in traditionally high-earning, white-collar roles, friction came when firms ordered them back into the office.
Of course, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for every worker pushing for more.
Bosses are stillseizing back powerwithlayoffsor strict return-to-office mandates, and union membership is at arecord low.
And just hiking pay isn’t going to cut it for workers anymore.
They wanted to be treated well and feel like they had job security, Wardrip added.
And thinking toward a future full of quality jobs is a message workers are taking to heart.
