These days, most of the middle class forgets how much we owe to American unions. Good wages, safe working conditions, and 40-hour workweeks are just a few examples. Now that we already have those things, we look at unions and ask “what do we need you for?”

It’s no secret that unions aren’t as powerful today as they once were. Thanks to conservative policies bought and paid for by the rich and corporations, membership in unions is down. Thanks to the relative comfort the middle class has enjoyed in recent decades, we haven’t been alarmed at the trend.

But it’s time for us to rethink our complacency. It’s no coincidence that as the union membership has declined, income inequality in America has soared. As workers have lost our representation, we’ve been faced with the ugly consequences: Corporate profits and the incomes of the rich are up, while the bottom 90% have actually seen our wages decrease.

We got so used to good-paying jobs that we thought we were just entitled to them. But as soon as we let our guard down, corporate bosses seized the opportunity. Increased revenues that once would have meant raises for employees were instead earmarked as profits and executive bonuses. We should have known better: Middle-class wages weren’t just given to us by magnanimous corporate executives, they were hard-fought victories„ brought to us by our unions.