Op-ed: Indiana to celebrate Labor Day.
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| Mon, 09-06-2004 - 11:02am |
Hard-working Americans hit by job-market realities.
http://www.courierpress.com/ecp/letters_to_the_editors/article/0,1626,ECP_769_3159690,00.html
Once again union members will come together in Southwest Indiana to celebrate Labor Day. The participants realize that after Christmas and Easter, this is the most important day of the year. This year's event is in Princeton, Ind., where the local celebration originated in 1886. This celebration gives many workers, retirees and their children a chance to renew old acquaintances and make new friends. Past co-workers will come together to discuss the complexities of jobs and life. Many of those at the festivities, brought by proud parents and grandparents, will be young enough to attend in diapers. Others, old and broken down from years of loyal service to employers, will attend in wheelchairs. Let's hope there will be widget workers there. You know who I am talking about: the workers who make the widgets you always hear so much about from the financial analysts. I had a chance to talk with a widget worker and invited him to the local Labor Day celebration several years back. We had a discussion at that time on global competition. I stated that this is not generally viewed as good among those at the Labor Day celebration, and the widget worker questioned why. Labor unions and their members in general are concerned about the direction and speed of change in America, and globalization is viewed as part of the problem, taking jobs from American workers who pay the taxes to run the country. The widget worker had always trusted his company representative and never saw a need to join a union. The company said a third party wasn't needed at their workplace - just trust the company and go by the employee handbook. At that time the widget worker seemed concerned because the company kept changing the employee handbook with no input from the workers. I explained that this couldn't be done in a union contract and that the employer must bargain over wages and working conditions. Hey, there is the widget worker now! I haven't seen him in years! What did the widget worker have to say on this beautiful sunny day? I wondered how he was doing this year. We talked. The widget worker didn't smile much and seemed distanced from how I remembered him a few years ago. He seemed concerned that the original company representative he had worked for was now terminated, and that the company, Widget Works, had been sold to a larger company that wasn't interested in the widget business at all. The new owners saw a chance to shut the widget factory down and buy widgets from China. The Widget Works company would be reselling the China Widgets. The Widget Works name would be placed on each widget, and Widget Works would still make a profit by acting as a distributor of widgets to Mall Mart. The new buyers were going to tear down the Widget Works factory. The widget worker relayed that Widget Works had never paid taxes anyway on the building, as it was given tax abatements when it built the plant. The concept of being able to buy widgets cheaper seemed an innocent enough goal to my friend a few years ago. Now he explained that it didn't seem fair that American workers, who are taxpayers, were out of a job while the public was getting its widgets from China, even if they were cheaper. He realized now that it was a continuing problem in America. It is often repeated by centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans that widgets made in China are good for the American economy. Many politicians and those in big business have instilled this in the public's minds. They explain that widgets will in theory become cheaper and it will take less of American money to buy more widgets. My friend looked down as he said, "But I don't have money to buy even cheap widgets, because I don't have a job." His family prays daily that none of them develops health problems. They have just joined the 43 million Americans without health-care coverage. The widget worker has never been in this position before. The lack of health-care insurance makes them wonder: If a family member gets sick, could they lose the rest of their savings? It seems so unfair because they have worked so hard, played by society's rules and saved money. The widget worker starts thinking: The rich don't need to worry about money to pay medical bills. The poor have health-care insurance funded by taxes he has paid. The elderly have health-care coverage funded by taxes he paid long ago. The widget worker says it seems unfair that politicians in national, state and local government have taxpayer-funded health-care coverage. All men and women in the military have healthcare coverage. All government employees have it. Now one illness can ruin him and his family financially. "How could this happen?" he said. "What would you do differently?" I asked. "That is why I came to the Labor Day celebration this year," he said. "I heard you could register to vote here. I have never voted before. I am going to vote this election. "I am researching the candidates who will take a stand for keeping jobs in America and guaranteeing health care for all Americans."



Union leaders say troubling issues, concerns facing workers
http://www.courierpress.com/ecp/news/article/0,1626,ECP_734_3163484,00.html
As millions of American workers celebrate Labor Day with parades, picnics and personal time off, a swarm of troublesome issues nags them.
Outsourcing, rising health-care costs and unfair overseas trade practices are among the concerns facing workers today, according to local labor leaders. Many labor leaders also are concerned about the upcoming elections and are encouraging people to elect "labor-friendly" candidates this fall.
"Labor probably has more issues today than it ever has in my lifetime," said Mike Hoagland, business representative for the Chicago and Midwest Regional Board of the United Needle Trade, Industrial and Textile Employees.
And Chuck Whobrey, president of Teamsters Local 215, said the concerns go well beyond organized labor. They were affecting workers everywhere.
Two issues - job security and rising health-care costs - override all others, according to a survey of labor leaders by the Courier & Press.
Dave Willett, president of the United Steelworkers of America, Local 104, said that, unlike the 1990s when the country was creating jobs, today's workers face "the loss of jobs, good-paying jobs. The good ones are going overseas."
Other leaders also cited unfair overseas trade practices as a key component of job insecurity.
"I'm scared to death of what's going on today," said Charlie Wyatt, president of the Labor Day Association, citing the loss of jobs to workers overseas. "There's going to come a day that it's going to come home to roost."
Outsourcing, which occurs when companies contract with an outside company to do work formerly done within that company, is another job security problem, and most labor leaders saw it closely tied to unfair overseas competition.
"The pressure for us to compete in the global marketplace is greater now than it was 15 years ago," said Dave Jones, president of Local 808 of the International Union of Electrical Workers. "We want a level playing field."
The other top issue among labor leaders was health-care costs. "They just keep eating up everybody," said Jack McNeely, president of the Central Labor Council of Evansville. "It's a major issue in every contract negotiation."
Labor leaders cite recent studies that say 40 million to 45 million Americans aren't covered by health insurance. Some workers elect not to be covered because it costs too much. "I think it hurts the whole country," Jones said.
McNeely said if the problems of high health-care costs and job security could be fixed, labor would go a long way to solving its current problems. But the bread-and-butter issues also continue to be concerns.
Don Travis, president of the Evansville Teachers Association, said achieving "a fair and livable contract," including good wages and benefits, was one of the uppermost issues on his mind this Labor Day.
And Jones said it was important to maintain workers' living standards, which appeared to be deteriorating. "We're losing buying power. I think that's definitely related to unfair competition."
Some labor leaders criticized the new federal law governing overtime, but have to work too much overtime was also a problem. Wyatt said some companies today put off hiring needed workers by having others work long hours. "You hear people working 60 to 70 hours a week," he said.
There were other concerns. Although drug testing of employees came up in contract negotiations between Local 808 of the IUE and Whirlpool Corp. early this year, it was rated a relatively low concern of labor leaders.
Martyn Pyle, president of the Local 4700 of the Communication Workers of America, said his only problem with drug testing is "when it's not done fairly among the employees ... when some are targeted."
Travis of the Teachers Association said he was concerned with attempts to minimize his profession. He said he was offended by people who think anyone, regardless of training and certification, can enter today's classrooms and teach.
Whobrey said he also was concerned about corporate greed. "When you've got CEOs (chief executive officers) making millions and millions of dollars and putting more health-care costs on employees, I think they've lost their moral conscience."
For many of the labor leaders surveyed, these concerns are linked to the upcoming presidential election. They are critical of President George W. Bush. "We feel the current administration isn't labor friendly," said Pyle.
An Economy That Turns American Values Upside Down
By BOB HERBERT
September 6, 2004
The Labor Department reported last week that 144,000 payroll jobs were created in August. Let's put that in perspective.
The number was below market forecasts. It was also below the number of jobs needed to accommodate the growth in the employment-aged population. In short, this was not good news. It's only by the diminished job-creation standards that have prevailed since the last recession that any positive spin could be put on last month's performance.
As the Economic Policy Institute tells us, in a book-length report it is releasing today: "The United States has been tracking employment statistics since 1939, and never in history has it taken this long to regain the jobs lost over a downturn."
In "The State of Working America 2004/2005," the institute shows in tremendous detail how those lost jobs and other disappointing aspects of the recovery are taking a severe economic toll on working families.
According to the institute:
"After almost three years of recovery, our job market is still too weak to broadly distribute the benefits of the growing economy. Unemployment is essentially unchanged, job growth has stalled, and real wages have started to fall behind inflation. Today's picture is a stark contrast to the full employment period before the recession, when the tight labor market ensured that the benefits of growth were broadly shared.
"Prolonged weakness in the labor market has left the nation with over a million fewer jobs than when the recession began. This is a worse position, in terms of recouping lost jobs, than any business cycle since the 1930's."
What is happening is nothing less than a deterioration in the standard of living in the United States. Despite the statistical growth in the economy, the continued slack in the labor market has resulted in declining real wages for anxious American workers and a marked deterioration in job quality.
From 2000 through 2003 the median household income fell by $1,500 (in 2003 dollars) - a significant 3.4 percent decrease. That information becomes startling when you consider that during the same period there was a strong 12 percent increase in productivity among U.S. workers. Economists will tell you that productivity increases go hand-in-hand with increases in the standard of living. But not this time. Here we have a 3.4 percent loss in real income juxtaposed with a big jump in productivity.
"So the economic pie is growing gangbusters and the typical household is falling behind," said Jared Bernstein, the institute's senior economist and a co-author of the new book.
This is the part of the story that spotlights the unfairness at the heart of the current economic setup in the U.S. While workers have been remarkably productive in recent years, they have not participated in the benefits of their own increased productivity. That doesn't sound very much like the American way.
According to the institute, "Between 1947 and 1973 productivity and real median family income both grew 104 percent, a golden age of growth for both variables." That parallel relationship began to break down in the 1970's, but it is only recently that it fell apart altogether, leaving us with the following evidence of unrestrained inequity:
"In the 2000-03 period income shifted extremely rapidly and extensively from labor compensation to capital income (profits and interest)," so that the "benefits of faster productivity growth" went overwhelmingly to capital.
American workers are in an increasingly defensive position. In a tight labor market, when jobs are plentiful, workers have leverage and can demand increased wages and benefits. But today's workers have lost power in many different ways - through the slack labor market, government policies that favor corporate interests, the weakening of unions, the growth of lower-paying service industries, global trade, capital mobility, the declining real value of the minimum wage, immigration and so on.
The end result of all this is a portrait of American families struggling just to hang on, rather than to get ahead. The benefits of productivity gains and economic growth are flowing to profits, not worker compensation. The fat cats are getting fatter, while workers, at least for the time being, are watching the curtain come down on the heralded American dream.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/opinion/06herbert.html?hp
ALSO:
The State of Working America 2004/2005
http://www.epinet.org/
The EPI report
http://www.epinet.org/books/swa2004/news/swa2004_release_final.pdf