Peter Turchin explains the social-economic roots of UK and US crisis by violation of the existing social contract by rise of neoliberalism. This is pretty much what happened... but it's only half of the picture.
http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/the-structural-demographic-roots-of-the-uk-crisis/
In the UK this was symbolised by nationwide firefighters (!) strikes over salary rises where they actually were not putting down fires. One of the largest was 1977 fire in St Andrew's Hospital.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/14/newsid_3154000/3154632.stm
This event inspired Anthony Burgess to write "1985" novel. A situation like this - a strike of essential life-saving emergency services - is hard to imagine in any civilised country simply because it results in loss of life.
Union privileges were widely described in media back in 70's.
Situations where no builder can legally touch any part of the electric installation (including power switch), or do painting, or plumbing or whatever, because these were reserved only to members of respective unions, were absurd and abusive to the other workers.
Unions were also getting involved into foreign policy: in 1920 British dockers prevented UK shipping arms to Poland invaded by Bolshevik because they liked the latter.
So, when discussing the social contract, it should be always remembered that there are *two* sides to it.
If you build your career on blaming the "elites" for abusing their political power, and then you effectively turn into a rentier, living no longer off your work but off your political power then you become nothing else than the "elites" you blamed before.
🤷♂️
A few years ago there was an industrial action at the railway in the UK where I listened to some union activist explaining all serious that you absolutely need a railway worked in each carriage to open and close door on each station and that's critical to the safety of the passengers
Which left me with my mouth wide open, because everywhere outside of UK and in some trains in UK you had doors opening and closing automatically for literally decades, and there's nothing "unsafe" in it.
20th century witnessed rise of trade unions to protect labour rights, but it didn't stop there. What we actually saw truly dialectical transformation of unions from workers oppressed by elites abusing their economic power to the ones who actually were oppressing others using *their* economic position.