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The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.

As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

. . . .

In Europe and Japan, the profit share of economic output is also at or near record levels, noted Larry Hatheway, chief economist for UBS Investment Bank, who said that this highlighted the pressures of globalization on wages. Many Americans, be they apparel workers or software programmers, are facing more comptition from China and India.

In another recent report on the boom in profits, economists at Goldman Sachs wrote, “The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income.”

. . . .

“If I had to sum it up,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the institute, “it comes down to bargaining power and the lack of ability of many in the work force to claim their fair share of growth.”

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This week, The New York Times reported that the current U.S. expansion is the first in which output and productivity both rose but most people's wages declined. All the new wealth went to corporate profits and the top few earners. Everyone produced the increase, but the rich creamed it off. This is simply unfair, and workers will want not just a cut but basic economic justice. The reason they keep losing out, say economists, is lessened bargaining power due to declines in union strength. And what caused that? Mostly it's trade "liberalization," a.k.a. free trade, globalization etc. Even Ben Bernanke, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, says this kind of inequity -- once workers realize it -- could "derail" further trade liberalization, thus acknowledging the real source of the rip-off.

That dynamic -- globalization as a device to rob workers -- has been obscured since 9/11 by the obsession with terror. Some unions backed out of anti-globalization protests right afterward. Yet, it continues to eat its way through people's lives. Buzz Hargrove's CAW recently agreed to historic contract concessions out of fear of globalization's impact on its members. One benefit of a sense of self-respect and dignity is that those feelings help lend workers the confidence to resist the forces that stiff or demean them.

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[ 08 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

Class warfare in the USA

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Business Week, October 12, 1974: Some people will obviously have to do with less....it will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more.

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Fidel: Although unions are the only real opposition to fascism in a market economy, Unions are a pacifier, an opiate of the masses. We need revolutionary change ... [blah-blah]

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Greg Palast writes:

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Is America getting poorer? No, just its people, We the Median. In fact, we are producing an astonishing amount of new wealth in the USA. We are a lean, mean production machine. Output per worker in BushAmerica zoomed by 15% over four years through 2004. Problem is, although worker productivity keeps rising, the producers are getting less and less of it.

The gap between what we produce and what we get is widening like an alligator's jaw. The more you work, the less you get. It used to be that as the economic pie got bigger, everyone's slice got bigger too. No more.

The One Percent have swallowed your share before you can get your fork in....

Of course, there are killjoys who cling to that Calvinist-Marxist belief that a system forever fattening the richest cannot continue without end. Professor Michael Zweig, Director of the State University of New York’s Center for Study of Working Class Life, put it in culinary terms: “Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon.”

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The super-rich represent one-hundredth of 1 percent of the world’s adult population and have 24 percent of the world’s wealth.

In the United States resides the single greatest portion of the global rich. Of the world’s 8.7 million millionaires, 2.67 million are right here....

In stark contrast are the lives and fortunes of immigrants who face armed militias and life-threatening conditions to cross borders in hope of a better life — dreams soon to be dashed. They and the entire working class are victims of ever-increasing exploitation by the bosses. While the workers and the oppressed are poorer and deeper in debt, the minimum hourly wage has remained at $5.15 for the last nine years, the longest stretch without a raise since 1938. Over 46.6 million workers have no health insurance. The poverty rate has risen to nearly 13 percent. The statistics would be much higher if they were focused on Black and Latino workers and other oppressed nationalities. Workers World

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:

Fidel! Don't be such an ultra-lefty! Argg.

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You're absolutely left. I'm no longer a pinko, I'm ultra-violet now.

[ 17 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say

[ 19 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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It’s time to turn things around

A campaign to win “30 for 40”—30 hours’ work for 40 hours’ pay—could be one of the threads to be woven into a long-overdue offensive. Commit tees advocating 30 for 40 could be organized in unions, workers’ centers, community and progressive groups, and single-issue organizations. A brilliantly planned campaign is required to forge a class-wide, independent strategy. It’s something to think about.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
We know what happens when workers come close to achieving fair wages and social democracy. At around that point, mongrel capitalist dogs look for another port in a storm to cock their hind legs up. And war. Although unions are the only real opposition to fascism in a market economy, Unions are a pacifier, an opiate of the masses. We need revolutionary change, and this time to preserve the planet for society based on all our present and future needs.

There would be no need for unions if we had some decent labour standards in this country,and a way to hold companies to task on abiding them.

"No more replastering - the structure is rotten"

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Down there he gets two weeks max vaycay with no upgrade to three weeks until seven years with the same company, and practically no stat days off at all.