[Before Gilligan had discovered his island, actor Bob Denver’s best-known role was a the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and his best known schtick was the electric double-take he would do whenever to word “work” was uttered:
Silverback Bill (Hinesburg SBs) takes a much more mature and insightful look at the State of Work in honor of International Workers Day. SB SM]
Ode to the Workers of the World on International Workers Day
Workers of the World Unite
May 04, 2026
When Utah Phillips agreed to do his first album for our company, Philo Records, in 1973, he insisted that I join the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also called “The Wobblies.” I’ve held on to my card with pride for 53 years.
The world is made better by hard work, especially hard work that enhances the common good and does not degrade nature. Earning money to support oneself and one’s family is a core element of the human condition. If one earns more than one needs and gives the excess away, either to the common good in the form of taxes or directly in the form of altruistic philanthropy, that, too, is beneficial. If one becomes addicted to the accretion of wealth for its own sake, that is a precarious and dangerous addiction like any other.
As my good friend Will Patten wrote in his book Rescuing Capitalism, Vermont Shows a Way, a balance of entrepreneurship, government regulation, taxation and commitment to one’s employees and community, vest both worker and employer in ways to achieve personal and community economic wellbeing.
Also, work is personally annealing. I can speak to that.
In my first job when I was age twelve, I worked for Volney Farr, our next-door neighbor, who had a successful dairy farm milking 28 Jersey cows. Before I walked to school, I’d go into his barn and open the 28 oak stanchions and walk “the girls” out to the pasture behind our house. When I returned from school, I went to the pasture, opened the gate and led the waiting cows back into the barn. Most remembered their stanchions and would go right to them and I would close them in. One or two might forget and so I’d lead them to the right one. Then I would go in to the farmhouse and Mrs. Farr would pour me a cup of hot cocoa and offer me one of her homemade donuts. Then I’d head home to start my homework.
In the summer haying season, I also worked forking hay to the back of a hay wagon as it tumbled down onto me from the haylift in the front to make room for more. When full, we’d go into the barn and a huge cast-iron hayfork would pick up the whole bundle and trolley it sideways, dropping it into the hayloft where we also played as kids.
I was proud of my work for Mr. Farr and even prouder when he taught me how to drive his Ford 640 tractor at age 14.
At 19, I moved to New York City to marry and find a job in the music industry. I got a menial job working for Sam Goody records for $68 /week. The job required me to join the Teamsters Union which I did. My employment was so short that my only benefit-harvest then was an eye exam and a pair of glasses in used frames with two different temples.
At 23, I was married with two kids and finishing a degree in French at UVM. I worked the student night shift at IBM for $62 / week. On graduating, I was hired at the recently opened Mt. Abraham Union High School teaching six classes of French a day and managing a homeroom first thing in the morning. My pay was $5800 a year, not quite enough to live on, so when school ended at 3:30, I’d ride my ancient motorcycle to Middlebury to work in the Vermont Book Shop until it closed at 7:00. Then I’d return home to my family in Vergennes.
Work would occasionally exhaust me, but I never found myself resenting the fact that I had to work to support myself and my emerging family. And as it turned out, my various workplace experiences also enriched my life with stories that later fed my writing.
Work is the personal or team energy that enables survival and even prosperity. It secures families and communities and multiplies new job opportunities. In an ideal world, the opportunity to work and the rewards it produces are equal for everyone. We are only catching up to equal pay for equal work. For example, women still earn typically 85% of what men do for the same job.
Also, unions are key to worker on-the-job safety conditions. The AFL-CIO recently published its 2026 annual report on workplace safety. In 2024, 380 workers a day died directly due to dangerous workplace conditions. 5070 workers were either killed or died on the job and an estimated 135,000 died from occupational diseases. There is a national campaign to get Amazon to allow to allow their employees to call 911 in an emergency.
Anti-union activity is pervasive among many employers, even as union-organizing is largely protected under law. Seven Days recently reported on efforts by Healthy Living in South Burlington, Williston and Saratoga Springs, New York to oppose their employees’ union-organizing efforts by engaging Sparta Solutions and Downs Rachlin Martin (DRM).
Perhaps, the best indicator of a productive society is the size of its “middle class” as measured against those in poverty and the top 1%. A common if little used metric for this is the “Gini index,” which compiles real income and distribution data to determine income and wealth inequality.
According to Forbes, between 1970 and 2021, “the share of U.S. aggregate income earned by the middle class shrank from formerly 62% to just 42%.” At the same time, aggregate earnings in the high-income group increased from 29% to 50%.
Meanwhile, the number of billionaires grew 50% from 2017 to 2025. The NY Times reports, “The top 1 percent of American households, which have a minimum net worth of $11.1 million, now collectively own about $25.6 trillion worth of stocks and mutual funds, the same amount as the remaining 99 percent of the country, according to the Federal Reserve.”
When it comes to the average earner, perhaps the key metric for the wellbeing of workers is how many are represented by unions. The state-by-state number varies widely from 24.8% in Hawaii and 21.3% in New York to 2.5% in North Carolina and 2.3% in South Dakota.
The “Golden Age” for the American middle class came right after World War II during the Eisenhower era. By 1960, the majority of American families lived in houses they owned. The ‘50s and ‘60s also saw a huge growth in the American trade union movement. In 1982 there were only 13 billionaires. As of December 2025, there are over 900.
Let’s be honest with each other, America is not well-served by such an explosion in wealth disparity. Unionization is a valuable tool to advance income equality, grow a productive middle class and make our country stronger economically.
Today, the average worker cannot afford healthcare insurance, a home of their own, or childcare.
The current federal administration’s abandonment of the poor and middle classes in favor of their technocracy has cast an economic pall over our country today and most Americans know it.
If you want to know the gap between a livable wage for yourself or your family where you live, log on to the MIT Living Wage indicator. For example, for a Burlington, Vermont family of two working parents with two children, each working parent would need to net $48.09 / hour. A single parent would need to net $79.27 / hour. Vermont minimum wage today is $14.42 / hour. The federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 / hour since 2009.
Workers of the World Unite!
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