Anyone arguing against the right-- indeed, the necessity-- of service sector workers to organize to increase wages in the industries within which they work-- now some of the leading ones in the US economy--would, based on their politics, probably have been the ones making this same case vis a vis "unskilled" industrial workers, miners, truckers, and forestry worker in the 1930s to 70s.
And, ironically, many of you are probably of the age that makes you the intergenerational beneficiaries of unionization, minimum wage laws, favorable worker legislation, and GI Bills from the New Deal era. I would bet that in many cases your so-called "unskilled" industrial worker fathers and grandfathers, with their guarantee of a "family wage" for their 40 hour work week, provided the material foundation for your educational opportunities in a now almost completely bygone era of class mobility through relatively affordable post-secondary education.
And yet here you are, using the education you imagine you boot-strapped your way to achieving, to argue that a life similar to what your "unskilled" fathers and grandfathers enjoyed should be forever unavailable to the mass of today's "unskilled" coffee servers, hotel cleaners, delivery drivers, care workers, etc, because they are somehow unworthy (even as you spend your own disposable income on the services they provide).
Who exactly do you think is going to produce the goods and services that make your wealth and income real, and how do you expect them to live?
And if you say American industry is different now and will never be able to produce wages and benefits comparable to 60-70 years ago, that's not an indictment of American service economy workers (whose labor is clearly wanted and needed); it's an indictment of American capitalism itself.
