What I like to tell my RW friends regarding their "working HARDER to EARN a better wage" chestnut -

[HughBeaumont]

71. How sad is it that literally one of his FIRST actions in his FIRST year . . .

. . . was the one that set the tone for labor's progress and corporate America's wholesale quashing of that progress for the next 33 years?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_(1968)

Michael Moore said that Reagan's firing of the PATCO strikers was the beginning of "America's downward slide", and the end of comfortable union jobs, with a middle-class salary, raises, and pensions. Moore stated that wages have remained stagnant for 30 years. He also blamed the AFL-CIO for telling their members to cross the PATCO picket lines.

President Reagan's director of the United States Office of Personnel Management at the time, Donald J. Devine, argued that "when the president said no...American business leaders were given a lesson in managerial leadership that they could not and did not ignore. Many private sector executives have told me that they were able to cut the fat from their organizations and adopt more competitive work practices because of what the government did in those days. I would not be surprised if these unseen effects of this private sector shakeout under the inspiration of the president were as profound in influencing the recovery that occurred as the formal economic and fiscal programs."

In 2011, Oxford University Press published Joseph McCartin's book, "Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, The Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America". Reviewing the book in Review 31, Richard Sharpe claimed Reagan was "laying down a marker" for his presidency: "The strikers were often working class men and women who had achieved suburban middle class lives as air traffic controllers without having gone to college. Many were veterans of the US armed forces where they had learned their skills; their union had backed Reagan in his election campaign. Nevertheless, Reagan refused to back down. Several strikers were jailed; the union was fined and eventually made bankrupt. Only about 800 got their jobs back when Clinton lifted the ban on rehiring those who had struck. Many of the strikers were forced into poverty as a result of being blacklisted for employment."

Oh, and to top himself . . . the following year, he signed the Garn/St Germain bill, which relaxed FDR-era limits on thrifts and sent banksters and speculators on their 80s financial/real estate piracy, setting a precedent in the form of taking a big black axe to the savings and well being of seniors and workers. The S & L Crisis of the 80s happened in no small part due to this horrible piece of legislation. All part of the Reagan-fused "Great Risk Shift" which continues unabated to this day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garn_-_St_Germain_Depository_Institutions_Act