The Need for Strong Trade Unions in America Gerry OShea In John Lennon’s fine album titled “Working Class Hero” he bemoans the betrayal of the American working class, “duped by religion, sex and TV” into believing the myth that they, above people in any other country, live in the land of the free and the home of the brave where every man and woman can join the elite. On the same theme of workers’ abandonment in England, “The Red Flag,” the idealistic anthem of the British Labour Party, invites a cynical response from some party supporters that matches Lennon’s bleak words about American capitalist culture. The working class can kiss my ass, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last. Adolph Wagner, a famous German 19 th century economist assessed the burgeoning industrial revolution underway in those years and foresaw good times ahead driven by what is now called “Wagner’s Law” which confidently predicts that when countries get richer people always get better salaries and m