The other popular solution to the crisis of the working class was job retraining. President Obama promoted job retraining, as did Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate, along with many Republicans. PhotoNow when politicians invoke “the working class,” they are likely to gesture, anachronistically, to an abandoned factory. It showed that a new kind of solidarity was in reach, even if the old unions may not be ready. In 2016, the ailing A.F.L.-C.I.O., which for more than six decades has struggled to hold the labor movement together, suddenly dissolved the Northeast Indiana Central Labor Council, citing obscure bureaucratic imperatives.

Source: New York Times February 23, 2017 10:00 UTC