Fast- food workers protests: Union images of the labor force don’t match reality. - Slate Magazine
▻http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/09/fast_food_workers_protests_union_images_of_the_labor_force_don_t_match_realit
“If you work for a living, you’re labor, too!” So read the text of a full-page newspaper advertisement sponsored by the American Federation of Labor in the spring of 1947. As the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act was wending its way through Congress, the AFL tried to convince the general public that it represented everyone, not just unionized workers.
This was a tough sell—and it still is. The chosen face of organized labor has long been the noble manufacturing worker, often one who produced machinery for American war efforts. This worker was white and male, he was his family’s sole breadwinner, and he probably wore overalls and muscles. Long after the AFL’s 1947 appeal, he remained the quintessential American laborer of the postwar period.