No Picnic

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/story/19790/

 

No Picnic

 

By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet. Posted September 6, 2004.

 

This Labor Day, most U.S. workers are worse off than

they were at this time last year.

 

Labor Day 2004 is anything but a picnic for the vast

majority of America's 147 million member labor force.

No matter how you slice it, most US workers are worse

off than they were at this time last year.

 

The average real wage – that is, adjusted for

inflation – has actually fallen over the past year.

This is in spite of the fact that the economy has

grown by 4.7 percent. In other words, even when the

economy is growing, most of the people who make it

grow aren't getting anything out of it.

 

This continues a long-term trend – briefly interrupted

in the late 1990s – that has dominated the last 30

years. Over the last three decades the median real

wage has grown by only about 8 percent. In other

words, the majority of the American labor force has

failed to share in the gains from economic growth.

 

This by itself is an outrage and ought to be a major

political issue in an election year. Prior to the " Age

of Greed " it was normal for the wages of most workers

to grow with productivity. If that had happened over

the past three decades, the typical (median) family

income would be more than $60,000, instead of the

$43,300 that it is today.

 

This is not a utopian " what if " scenario but rather

what would have actually occurred if most American

workers had not lost so much bargaining power. Most of

this loss stems from policy changes rather than just

" market forces. " For example, the decline in union

membership and strength results from legal and

institutional changes that have made it extremely

difficult for workers to organize unions and bargain

collectively. Tens of thousands of workers are

illegally fired each year for organizing or attempting

to join a union, and companies can refuse to bargain

with unions for years even when they are legally

obligated to do so. Human Rights Watch found that the

United States had a " culture of near impunity " for

employers who violate basic labor rights.

 

Our trade and commercial agreements with other

countries have also been deliberately designed to

drive down the wages of most workers, while

protectionism for professionals – doctors and lawyers,

for example – remains intact. It is no wonder that

most of the massive redistribution of income of recent

decades has gone from the bottom half of the labor

force to professional and other highly-paid employees.

 

To reverse these trends, we will need real labor law

reform that restores collective bargaining rights for

American labor. But it will still be difficult to make

up for 30 years of losses. So labor's best hope for

the foreseeable future is probably going to be found

in universal programs, such as health care, where

workers are currently losing ground as employers cut

back on benefits and increase employee co-payments.

Most European workers have not only universal health

insurance but four or five weeks of vacation a year,

paid family leave and often subsidized child care as

well. Their societies are no richer than ours; they

just have different priorities.

 

In the case of health care, our costs are so out of

control – we spend nearly twice as much per person as

other developed countries and still leave a sixth of

our population uninsured – that reform will be

increasingly difficult to avoid. But universal reforms

that allow workers to share in the prosperity that

their labor creates also have the advantage – like

Social Security and Medicare – of a broad political

appeal that makes them easier to win and preserve. If

we can make some progress in these areas by next

year's labor day, then maybe American labor will have

something to celebrate.

 

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for

Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.