True, but since I think I read the Harvard article say that this has been going on over the last 30 years I’ll blame the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The sudden loss of competition on workers’ rights and healthcare probably allowed capitalists to just say “fuck it.”
you might like this essay which has a similar thesis
Capitalism sucks for workers. It’s common to see the obvious failures of our
current system as new horrors, and to conclude that we need to return to
some time when things were better. Maybe the “better time” is vague —
just a general hand-waving and an exhortation to make things great
again. Or maybe it’s explicit, with policy nods towards, for example,
Roosevelt’s New Deal. Either way, this better time was probably some
period after the workday was reduced to only 8 hours but before
neoliberalism really kicked off. Not coincidentally, this time period
lines up with the existence of the U.S.S.R. (1917-1991). Workers’ lives
improved when the West felt threatened by the rise of communism!
To protect their own interests against the growing enthusiasm for
communism, the capitalist class of the West permitted the passing of
worker-friendly social policies. Here, I’m going to walk through a few
examples of these policies that were motivated by fear of the U.S.S.R.
and its influence in the world. I want to show how these were strategic
concessions by the capitalist class rather than the result of the
establishment coming to see reason or bowing to the force of the better
argument. I will build this argument by citing contemporary capitalists,
mainstream news outlets and government officials, demonstrating how
these policies were explicitly linked at the time to fears of communist
organizing inspired by the U.S.S.R. I will also highlight how these
policies softened the hard edge of capitalism to quell the rising
interest in socialism, while still entrenching liberal, pro-capitalist
principles.
True, but since I think I read the Harvard article say that this has been going on over the last 30 years I’ll blame the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The sudden loss of competition on workers’ rights and healthcare probably allowed capitalists to just say “fuck it.”
you might like this essay which has a similar thesis
continues at https://redsails.org/concessions/
Yeah this data only goes to 2019. I’d say your analysis is good, is part of that long running loss of rights.