Unemployed workers who show up fully qualified to apply for a job only to be told that the prospective employer will not even consider someone who is already out of work should not have to feel that there is absolutely no alternative, that it is impossible to fight back. American workers should not be treated as if they don’t matter.

Working America is a pro-worker advocacy organization affiliated with the A.F.L.-C.I.O. that has signed up millions of nonunion members in an effort to increase the organized reach of workers. Much more organizing, on myriad fronts, is desperately needed.

Millions of Americans throughout the country are facing extreme economic hardship. The Community Service Society in New York City does an annual survey of low-income residents. Twenty-seven percent of respondents to its most recent survey said they had lost a job; 26 percent had had their hours, wages or tips reduced; 23 percent said they had often skipped meals because they did not have enough money to buy food; and 26 percent said they had been unable to fill a needed prescription because of a lack of money or insurance.

One of the saddest things I’ve read in The New York Times recently was a comment by Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist, who said that he views the current hostility toward unions by members of the general public as a sign of the erosion of the aspirational nature that has for so long characterized Americans. “It shows a hopelessness,” he said. “It used to be, ‘You have something I don’t have; I’ll go to my employer to get it, too. Now I don’t see any chance of getting it. I don’t want to be the lowest one on the totem pole, so I don’t want you to have it either.’ ”

Lewis Powell’s advice to the corporate community in 1971 is  though he certainly never intended it to be  the best advice I can think of for workers today who are fighting to hold off the tide of lower living standards. It is not a struggle that can possibly be won alone.