Following the Industrial Revolution, Roosevelt's New Deal gave rise to a new era for workers in America. New Deal policies gave workers dignity, a voice and a safety net. A safety net gave workers and families a ladder out of poverty instead of a trap keeping them in poverty.
Programs like unemployment, workers compensation, pensions, Medicare, Social Security and collective bargaining allowed those of us who lived in those times to enjoy the best of times. Prosperity was equally divided throughout the income population. It was consistent and complimented the 2,800 verses of scripture teaching us to fight poverty like Johnson's "War on Poverty" rather than Republican attacks against those in poverty
Beginning with Ronald Reagan and the moral majority coalition, a conservative movement started a war on workers. Republican trickle-down economics gave us three decades of little or no trickle down, greed, and lack of moral values corrupting our democracy and Christian faith with inequality reaching record highs.
The Industrial Revolution and New Deal with white aristocracy in the South transitioned from black slavery to a new form of bigotry against the poor of all ethnic groups. The southern aristocrats, by becoming leaders in churches, got church support for economic slavery and that slavery formed the Moral Majority and Republican Party coalition. The Republican belief that freedom gives the wealthy a right to privatize profits and socialize losses gives the rich the liberty to exploit people without due regard to worker rights — paying them poverty wages like the plantation owner aristocrats of the slave era. Pope Francis said it best: "Worship of money is idolatry and we must pursue profits ethically while rejecting the premise that exploitation is at the center of profit." He also stated "Progressive values are Godly values."
Worker justice doesn't trickle and can't exist without workers' voices.