The Future of Work in America, Part 2: How the Weakening of American Labor Led to the Shrinking of America’s Middle Class

Mar 26, 2014, Richard Kirsch

When General Motors President Charles Wilson told a U.S. Senate Committee in 1953 that what was good for General Motors was good for the country, he captured an era in which the good wages and benefits earned by the workers at U.S. manufacturing companies powered the nation’s economy and built the middle class.

But sixty years later, what is good for the GM of our day – Walmart – is clearly not good for America, as a comparison between the biggest private employers of both eras underscores. While the American auto industry operated on the premise of one of its founders, Henry Ford, that workers should get paid enough to buy its costly products, Walmart operates on the premise that its workers should get paid so little that the only place they can afford to shop is at their low-priced employer.