The Labor Question is back, big-time. The term came into use around the turn of the 20th century; it was a shorthand way of asking: What should be done about the working class’ smoldering discontent in the wake of industrialization? The anger was palpable, made manifest in waves of worker revolts that stretched from the nationwide rail strike of 1877 through the general strikes of 1919.
Not all the battles were fought in the plants and in the streets. Progressive state legislatures in the early 20th century enacted laws setting minimum wages and limiting the hours women and children could be compelled to work; the courts routinely struck them down, and just as routinely short-circuited strikes by imposing jail sentences on strikers.
It was the New Deal, and the rise of unions that the New Deal facilitated, that rendered the Labor Question seemingly moot. In the three decades following World War II, when unions were strong and prosperity broadly shared, the term receded into the history books alongside other phrases – like, say, “slaveholder” – that evoked a dark and presumably buried side of America’s past.
For the last several decades, however, it’s the largely egalitarian spirit of the New Deal that has receded into the shadows. The economic inequality that preceded the New Deal is back with us; the Labor Question has returned.
At the core of the problem is the imbalance of economic power, which takes the form of booming profits and stagnating wages. The Financial Times recently reported that the share of company revenues going to profits is the highest in many years, which necessarily means that the share going to the main alternative destination for company revenues – employees’ pockets – has shrunk.
