Well, not to be reductive, but what have you done in that time, and for who? You said a lot about conditions of work, and that's great stuff, but often times a McDonald's employee has more visibility into where their work goes than a developer making stupid widgets to increase their numbers for the week. A construction worker can point to a house and say "I built that foundation, it'll be there for 20 years, during which someone will live in it"