OBAMA 2.O / MIDDLE CLASS CHALLENGE
have represented just 22 percent
of growth. Jobs earning less than
$13.84 per hour made up 58 percent of recovery growth, according
to the NELP.
The president pledged during
his 2008 campaign that by 2011
he would have the minimum wage
raised to $9.50 and pegged to inflation, a move that worker advocates have clamored for for years,
claiming it would help raise the
wage floor for the working poor
and the middle class. But the federal minimum wage remains $7.25
per hour, well below a living wage
in most areas.
Many of those same worker advocates tie the stagnation of real
wages to the decline of collective
bargaining in the workplace. The
rate of unionization in the U.S. has
fallen to a historic low, with just 7
percent of private-sector workers
now belonging to a union. Labor
leaders believe that labor law needs
to be amended to make it easier
for workers to join unions. Their
best shot came and went under the
president’s watch, when Democrats
failed to pass the Employee Free
Choice Act when they controlled
both chambers of Congress.
“I do feel disappointment,” said
Schmitt, the Center for Economic
HUFFINGTON
01.27.13
and Policy Research economist.
“That said, we’re also in a [political] context where it’s extremely
difficult to make any progress on
the concerns of low- and middlewage workers.”
Despite those shortcomings,
and despite the acrimony on
Capitol Hill, liberals like Richard
Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO
federation of unions, are bullish
on Obama’s second term, given the
focus on the middle class and jobs
during the election.
“It all starts with the political
will, or the national appetite, to
“It all starts with the political will, or the )