In our economy a pornographer can make a good living while social workers who deal with victimized children get laid off and categorized as unnecessary government overhead. This illustrates how we make judgments about the value of work. How the economy determines value has little or nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with supply and demand. The need for social workers comes from social ills, but the number of social workers employed comes from policy decisions made by government.

The Campbell government has campaigned viciously against hospital workers, and its health authorities systematically drive down wages and working conditions through contracting out. They get away with that not only because they have the power, but because they think they have public support. It is another example of government determining demand in a labour market, and in this case, also interfering on the supply side.

When first elected, and just before hiring the former BC Liberal party president as a deputy minister, the Premier said that government had to pay top dollar in order to attract the best and the brightest. Resentment of decently paid hospital workers can come from those who are highly paid and unable to understand what it is like to barely scrape by. It can also come from those who are envious of workers who make more. The "politics of envy" is a term used to describe how some people resent what other people have. A person making $10.00 an hour is living in poverty and paying taxes to support workers making $18.00 an hour. If they are doing substantially the same work, the bitterness created is far more dangerous for unionized workers than any pressure coming from the six figure set.

Organizing the unorganized so as to improve the pay and working conditions of low paid workers, may be the most effective strategy for protecting rights that have been won. There are more low income than high income people; political support, or at least the apathy of low income workers, is necessary for government to retain power.

Many of our living standards are taken for granted. The eight hour day, weekends off and living wages didn't happen by accident. Like many of our social programs, from Medicare to pensions, they were hard fought for. Today our standards are being attacked and eroded. Defending the gains of the past may well depend on fighting for those who have been passed over and remain the working poor. Their support must not be won by those who would drive more into their ranks.