Rising Tides

Excellent post over here too:

...generally, it takes a strong, knowledgeable organized workforce to ensure safe working conditions, just as it has always taken a strong, knowledgeable organized workforce to ensure decent wages and benefits (not to mention an 8-hour day, pensions and weekends.) In other words, every gain that workers have achieved throughout history is a reflection of the relative power workers have in relation to management, not how much "extra" management can afford to bestow upon its subjects through the goodness of their hearts.

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/08/29/rising-tide-sinking-boats/

Lots more.

(Via Ezra Klein: http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/)