Yeah, what an uprising!
What I observe is this: On professional lists I belong to, people chastise one another for taking positions that are lower than the rate they think they deserve. They expect a paycut because of the market, many of them, but they think that, somehow, they can magically-without organizing!--keep the rate steady by individually refusing to take positions. So, they jump all over any who has the audacity to suggest that they are taking what they can get at the rate they can get.
"You are dragging everyone down," they cry! "Shame on you!"
The defensive job holder who'd taken the position at $30/hr skulks off with his or her tail between her legs.
someone mentions unions and you might as well say, "I'm a feminist." I mean, at least women who reject the label feminist often embrace the benefits feminism wrought. You don't even get _that_ out of people who think unions are the pure evil.
I will say, however, that any hint of nativism is often quickly denounced as downright disgusting, no matter how bad the labor market is. People who start that kind of talk are run off the list far faster than the poor slob who dared to take a job at lower rate than others thought they should.
About the most headway I've ever gotten with union talk is to talk about trade union modeled after the old waitress unions that Dorothy Sue Cobble has written about. Which, now that I think about it, would work nicely with the socialized job market that Jenny's talked about on the list.
I'm not at all optimistic that there is any potential for revolt amongst these folks. They might disavow overtly racist attitudes, but it doesn't mean that their racism won't simply manifest itself in ways we never imagined.
Kelley