dajo9 said:
Blue collar workers are better off than before covid
It's true that many blue collar workers have seen an increase in their wages.
However, I'll have to assert that
Biden deserves zero credit for this.
In his 1st SOTU address in 2021, Biden promised to raise the Federal Minimum Wage to $15. However, when the wage increase was added to the 2021 Covid Relief Bill, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that it couldn't be added to the bill because it would affect the budget -- so it wasn't able to pass via reconciliation, like the rest of the Covid bill. It would be subjected to the Senate filibuster, where it would surely be shot down by both Republicans and corporate Dems.
Did Biden fight for the Minimum Wage bill? No. Not at all. IF he wanted to, he could've told Chuck Schumer to fire the parliamentarian, & jam it in. But then, if the Minimum Wage increase was in the Covid relief bill, it wouldn't even get 50% in the Senate, because 'Shadow President' Manchin & Kyrsten Sinema would've voted 'No' on Covid relief IF the Minimum Wage increase was in it. Neither Manchin nor Sinema paid any political price for gutting Biden's so-called Agenda.
So Biden said "Oh well..." and dropped his "fight" for the $15 Federal Minimum Wage.
It was only after nearly every piece of the 2021 "Biden Agenda" got shot down by President Manchin that U.S. Workers decided to get serious about getting organized. They saw that Biden & the Democrats in Congress were not going to help them, or make their lives better -- so they took matters into their own hands.
'They are fed up': US labor on the march in 2021 after years of declineSo improving blue-collar wages have very little to do with "Bidenomics" -- unless you're going to make the case that the dramatic increases in consumer prices forced employers to increase compensation in order to retain their most valuable & productive employees. I'm not sure that's a good look for Joe.
The sad reality is that 60% of all U.S. households are living paycheck-to-paycheck, increasingly sensitive to increases in rent, food, and energy. This is while corporate profits exploded through, and after, Covid.
The best -- if not only -- way for U.S. Workers to increase their pay is to
organize. Because the "Democratic" Party is committed to NOT helping Workers.