What it does point up, however, is that the hard, dirty work of being a roughneck is not paying well enough to attract young white men anymore, even though the work load is much less than when I did it. The scale has increased over the years, but it hasn't kept up with the increase in the cost of living. Huh, your above passage sounds like something from the talikng points a text book union organizer would say, IMO, especially your last sentence.
"sounds like something from the talikng points a text book union organizer would say, IMO, especially your last sentence." I don't know where that came from, but the last union attempt made with which I'm familiar was in Hobbs, New Mexico.
They pulled out when two of the organizers were found dead hanging from a barbed wire fence.
The oil field, outside California, hates unions!