Fat cats pay $45000 for a single Thanksgiving meal

The vast majority of working Americans haven’t seen a real raise in 35 years. 

Meanwhile, every year, their health care, education, insurance and household costs rise. Their employers eliminate pensions. And their kids struggle with rising college or technical school tuition and debt. 

Workers worry whether they will ever be able to pay the bills.

By contrast, on the other side of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the richest 1 percent are supersizing their feasts. For example, three families will spend $45,000 – each – for Marie Antoinette-style meals, gold flakes and all, at the Old Homestead Steakhouse in New York City. That’s up by $10,000 from the restaurant’s Thanksgiving fare for eight last year. It’s more, for one meal, than the average American worker earns in a year.

The Marie Antoinette $45,000 Thanksgiving includes two turkeys. Because when would one, 20-pound free-range, organically raised bird at $75 a pound ever be enough?

The 1 percent can spend $45,000 for a Thanksgiving supper because they’re gobbling up virtually all of the income from workers’ productivity increases. And now they’ve launched a new assault on workers. It’s a lawsuit called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA). The 1 percent hopes it will prevent public service workers like teachers from joining together to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

The Marie Antoinette $45,000 Thanksgiving includes gravy made with Pappy Van Winkle bourbon, which goes for $4,900 a bottle. Because when would $9 worth of cooking sherry ever be good enough?

If the $45,000-Thanksgiving-dinner crew wins the case, they’ll go after private-sector labor organizations next. They do not intend to stop until there’s nothing left for the other 99%.

The Friedrichs case is about power. 

Individual workers don’t bargain for raises with gigantic multinational corporations and government agencies. 

They beg.

But when workers band together and seek raises as a group, they gain for themselves the power necessary to negotiate. A fact that is intolerable to 1 percenters. And that’s why they’re backing the Friedrichs case – to prevent workers from ever gaining that negotiating power.

Defending their right to collectively bargain are public service workers ­– the likes of firemen, teachers, social workers and public health nurses. The labor organizations these workers belong to try to ensure that they receive living wages and decent retirement benefits.

But just as importantly, public service workers also use their collective voice to negotiate in the public interest, including improving response times for paramedics and lowering social worker caseloads to allow adequate time to investigate child abuse allegations. 

Public school teachers, who spend an average of $500 a year out of their own pockets for classroom supplies, routinely bargain to secure the smaller class sizes that parents want, to protect the recess breaks that elementary students need and to preserve arts and music education.