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2935 Matthew Desmondof the American working poor, most of whom are 35 or older. . . . The world has changed, but it has changed for other economies as well. Yet Belgium and Canada and many other countries haven%u2019t experienced the kind of wage stagnation and surge in income inequality that the United States has.Those countries managed to keep their unions. We didn%u2019t. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, nearly a third of all U.S. workers carried union cards. These were the days of the United Automobile Workers, led by Walter Reuther, once savagely beaten by Ford%u2019s brass-knuckle boys, and of the mighty American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations that together represented around 15 million workers, more than the population of California at the time.In their heyday, unions put up a fight. In 1970 alone, 2.4 million union members participated in work stoppages, wildcat strikes and tense standoffs with company heads. The labor movement fought for better pay and safer working conditions and supported antipoverty policies. Their efforts paid off for both unionized and nonunionized workers, as companies like Eastman Kodak were compelled to provide generous compensation and benefits to their workers to prevent them from organizing. By one estimate, the wages of nonunionized men without a college degree would be 8 percent higher today if union strength remained what it was in the late 1970s, a time when worker pay climbed, chiefexecutive compensation was reined in and the country experienced the most economically equitable period in modern history.It is important to note that Old Labor was often a white man%u2019s refuge. In the 1930s, many unions outwardly discriminated against Black workers or segregated them into Jim Crow local chapters. In the 1960s, unions like the Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America enforced segregation within their ranks. Unions harmed themselves through their self-defeating racism and were further weakened by a changing economy. But organized labor was also attacked by political adversaries. As unions flagged, business interests sensed an opportunity. Corporate lobbyists made deep inroads in both political parties, beginning a public-relations campaign that pressured policymakers to roll back worker protections.A national litmus test arrived in 1981, when 13,000 unionized air traffic controllers left their posts after contract negotiations with the Federal Aviation Administration broke down. When the workers refused to return, Reagan fired all of them. The public%u2019s response was muted, and corporate America learned that it could crush unions with minimal blowback. And so it went, in one industry after another. . . .As workers lost power, their jobs got worse. For several decades after World War II, ordinary workers%u2019 inflation-adjusted wages (known as %u201creal wages%u201d) increased by 2 percent each year. But since 1979, real wages have grown by only 0.3 percent a year. Astonishingly, workers with a high school diploma made 2.7 percent less in 2017 than they would have in 1979, adjusting for inflation. Workers without a diploma made nearly 10 percent less. . . .As the sociologist Gerald Davis has put it: Our grandparents had careers. Our parents had jobs. We complete tasks. Or at least that has been the story of the American working class and working poor.%u2022 %u2022 %u202210What is a %u201clitmus test%u201d (par. 9) in this context? Why does Desmond view Reagan breaking the air traffic controllers%u2019 strike as such a significant moment?22Paraphrase the saying in paragraph 11 about the difference between present-day Americans and our older family members, and explain how it relates to Desmond%u2019s point.33Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.