a reasonable wage -- and I'm thinking it was $5/day without bothering to do any research at all -- I do know that all the other car companies were outraged. How dare he! But Ford with all his many flaws, understood that his workers needed to be able to purchase the cars that they made, and so he almost single-handedly helped create the working middle class.
Both of my now ex husband's grandparents moved to Detroit because of those wages, although they fairly quickly left the automobile industry and found employment elsewhere.
In 1969 I went to work as an airline ticket agent at National Airport in Washington, DC, for Mohawk Airlines. (For those of you not conversant with a lot of airline history, they were taken over by Allegheny in 1972, which became USAir in 1979, which has since absorbed several other airlines). Even though my job was not itself unionized, we were the recipients of certain kinds of union benefits. For instance, any day in which I worked more than 8 hours, I got overtime for the extra. While my specific airline was on the lower end of the overall pay scale for ticket agents, we got yearly raises in part because the other airlines also got raises. I did not really appreciate it at the time, but I was earning a pretty decent living. In one or two years in the mid-1970's I actually maxed out on FICA. Imagine that.
Unfortunately, the airline industry is not the only one which has lost ground in recent decades. And even more unfortunately, management has absolutely forgotten the lesson that if you pay the rank and file will, they will spend that money and reward you by working hard and well.
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