it's relevant. Unions are practically non-existent. even their supposed 'friends', the Democrats, are only too happy to thumb their nose at labor (Obama hired scab-herding billionaire scamster/bankster Penny Pritzker as commerce secretary, for example while forcing two-tiered wage scales down the throats of union workers of UAW) - if anything, technological-based displacement of workers has increased in the interval between 1930s and 2010s. we're still dealing with the aftermath of the biggest financial collapse since 1929 (and the only reason it's not recognized as the disaster it was is due to the corporate media's spin - and creative financing - the politicians have effectively postponed economic judgement day for (they hope) another generation via the forced extension of credits (tot he tune of 23 trillion dollars) to the overextended banksters

as for welfare - i don't think you're old enough to remember when the "liberal" clinton administration teamed up with "conservative' republicans to "end welfare as we know it." there is not much of a 'safety net' these days - and while it's not yet regressed to the point of 1930s america, it's well on its way to doing so, thanks to the general low level of class consciousness and consciousness in general among the laboring classes (and not just 'blue collars' either - white collars got it even worse because they have more contempt for unions (as somehow 'beneath' them as supposed 'professionals')

even better than 'grapes of wrath' is 'in dubious battle'

(ps - if you don't think it's relevant today - then read this news story)

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. * John Steinbeck, "Grapes of Wrath"