Wages Slump, Output Jumps, Profits Soar;
What Do Our Leaders Plan to Do About It?

In the five years that the economy was expanding, productivity increased by about 14%. The reward that the nation’s workers received for working longer, harder and smarter was an average wage cut of 2%, factoring in the inflation rate.

Corporate executives, big-time investors and the very rich never had it so good. They enjoyed not only the extraordinary tax cuts, but high rates of profitability from corporations operating in the global marketplace.

Corporate profits have risen to their highest level since 1960. The current period has been described as “the golden era of profitability.”

In a speech last week, Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said that government policy makers must try “to ensure that the benefits of global economic integration are sufficiently widely shared.”

There is no evidence that the Bush administration or the Republican controlled Congress is at all concerned about the injustice to working people. President Bush has been making speeches, assuring the public that the economy is in great shape. He has issued a number of executive orders that make collective bargaining more difficult for unions.

With economists predicting an economic slowdown, it is unlikely that there will be a halt to the continuing erosion of the living standards of the nation’s middle class. Rising health-care and energy costs are eating into their income. Median family income is down about $1,500 since 2000, and more than five million people have been added to the poverty rolls.

Why Are Our Labor Leaders Not Involved?

It has not been a mystery (workers know it all too well) that many unions have been making significant concessions on wages, health-care, pensions and working conditions. But hardly anything has been done, either by the AFL-CIO or the Change-to-Win leadership to at least rally their members to fight back.

Most labor leaders are being cautious, complacent and conservative, hoping that the situation may improve with Democratic election victories in 2006 and 2008.

In the past year, neither the AFL-CIO nor the CTW has said anything publicly about what is a growing crisis affecting the living standards of working people. They have not sought to appear — nor have they been invited — to discuss what economic policy changes are needed so that workers would have a fairer and just share of what is produced.

The AFL-CIO’s slogan, “America Needs A Raise!” and the CTW’s “Make Work Pay!” are hollow messages in the absence of a workable plan to make them a reality.

If the two labor federations have nothing to say and offer no course of action to deal with the questions of wages, productivity and profits, how are they going to organize the millions of workers who desperately need help?

The members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council have earned a reputation for playing deaf and mute on issues like the war in Iraq, politics, organizing and globalization. Let’s see if any of them can tell us what ought to be done. And let the always articulate Andy Stern of the SEIU tell us, concretely, how we can “restore the American Dream.”

We’ll be waiting to hear.

Our two weekly columns (LaborTalk and The World of Labor) can be viewed at our website: www.laboreducator.org.

Harry Kelber's e-mail address is: hkelber@igc.org.