37:575:100 Chap.1 Work, Inequality and Social Class Today
Work, Inequality and Social Class Today
Starting from your own family
The course opens by asking you to interview a parent or grandparent about their working life, then to set that history against the present. The comparison is the point of Unit I. Many students find that an older relative stayed with one employer for decades, had a union or a pension, and could predict their future, while their own generation moves between jobs with less security.
This chapter gives you the tools to explain that difference rather than just describe it.
The evidence on bargaining power
The Week 2 readings track a swing in who holds the upper hand. A 2022 Bloomberg explainer describes 2021 as a year of unusual resolve: union members authorized strikes at a rare rate and non-union workers quit in record numbers, 4.54 million in a single month.
It also sets that moment against a long decline.
Wage growth has lagged profits since the 1980s, about 250,000 workers earn the federal minimum of $7.25, unchanged since 2009, and union membership fell from 20.1% of workers in 1983 to 10.3% in 2021. By 2025 a Wall Street Journal report found employers openly advertising long hours and rolling back remote work, with a recruiter saying employers were back in the driver's seat.
Culture, structure and agency
The lecture slides explain work through three interacting forces.
Culture is what a society values: in the United States work is central to identity, and losing it costs status and self-esteem, not only income. Structure is the set of positions that exist before anyone applies, shaped by how corporations organize jobs, how class affects schooling and hiring, and how gender roles divide family work.
Agency is what people do about it, either individually through education and job choice or collectively through unions and politics.
The slides use Richard Florida's observation that bad jobs remain however hard individuals work, and that factory jobs became good jobs only after unionization in the 1930s.
Class, inequality and mobility
Weeks 4 and 5 widen the lens to inequality by class, race and gender, the health effects of income inequality, social mobility, and the link between wealth and political power.
The question the week poses is whether class has faded in American culture even though it still shapes opportunity. Use the three forces to answer it: culture may downplay class, while structure keeps sorting people by it.
A second threat in a slowdown
The Washington Post reading assigned in Week 2 adds technology to the picture.
Economists it quotes warn that a slowing economy could push firms to adopt AI faster to cut costs, since automation has historically been a response to downturns.
Recent college graduates' unemployment had already risen 1.6 percentage points after mid-2023. The same article notes the opposite pressure, that uncertainty can make firms cut technology spending, so treat the threat as a question for the evidence rather than a certainty.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Family work histories as evidence
- 02
Quits, strikes and the 2021 to 2022 upsurge
- 03
Union membership since 1983
- 04
Culture, structure and agency
- 05
Good jobs and bad jobs
- 06
Class, mobility and inequality
Worked example · free
Why record quits did not rebuild union strength
- 1Identify quitting as individual leverage that depends on a shortage of workers.
- 1Identify union membership as a durable collective institution that needs organizing and legal support.
- 2Explain that a tight market raised the first without automatically building the second.
- 1Conclude with what would make power last, such as contracts or law.
Key terms
- Collective Agency
- Action taken by workers together, through unions, politics or other group efforts, to change the conditions of work.
- Great Resignation
- The name given to the record wave of voluntary quitting by US workers during and after the pandemic.
- Labor Share
- The portion of the value of economic output paid to workers, which the readings say fell as wages lagged profits.
Work, Inequality and Social Class Today FAQ
Why does the course begin with a family work-history interview?
It gives you a concrete comparison between an older generation's working life and today's, which the Unit I readings then explain through changes in corporations, unions, inequality and the balance of bargaining power.
Do record quit rates mean workers are winning?
Only while labor is scarce. Quitting is individual leverage that fades when hiring slows; the 2025 readings describe employers regaining control, and union membership kept falling even during the 2021 surge.
What is the difference between individual and collective agency?
Individual agency is a person's own choices about schooling or jobs; collective agency is action taken together, such as forming a union or changing law. The slides credit collective agency with turning factory jobs into good jobs.
What does the course mean by good jobs and bad jobs?
Good jobs pay decent wages with benefits and some security, while bad jobs are low-paid and insecure. The Week 2 slides argue that bad jobs exist whatever individuals do, and that unionization is what turned factory work into good jobs.
Exam move
Build a one-page timeline of the Unit I numbers: 20.1% membership in 1983, 10.3% in 2021, 6.1% in the private sector, and $7.25 since 2009. Then practise classifying any change at work under culture, structure or agency, and write one reply to the claim that hard work alone guarantees a good job.
