Vocaboly.com

[Ray Woodcock]

[From the New York Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/opinion/05HERB.html?th]


We're More Productive. Who Gets the Money?
By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 5, 2004

It's like running on a treadmill that keeps increasing its speed. You
have to go faster and faster just to stay in place. Or, as a factory
worker said many years ago, "You can work 'til you drop dead, but you
won't get ahead."

American workers have been remarkably productive in recent years, but
they are getting fewer and fewer of the benefits of this increased
productivity. While the economy, as measured by the gross domestic
product, has been strong for some time now, ordinary workers have
gotten little more than the back of the hand from employers who have
pocketed an unprecedented share of the cash from this burst of
economic growth.

What is happening is nothing short of historic. The American workers'
share of the increase in national income since November 2001, the end
of the last recession, is the lowest on record. Employers took the
money and ran. This is extraordinary, but very few people are talking
about it, which tells you something about the hold that corporate
interests have on the national conversation.

The situation is summed up in the long, unwieldy but very revealing
title of a new study from the Center for Labor Market Studies at
Northeastern University: "The Unprecedented Rising Tide of Corporate
Profits and the Simultaneous Ebbing of Labor Compensation - Gainers
and Losers from the National Economic Recovery in 2002 and 2003." ...

The study said: "In no other recovery from a post-World War II
recession did corporate profits ever account for as much as 20 percent
of the growth in national income. And at no time did corporate profits
ever increase by a greater amount than labor compensation."

In other words, an awful lot of American workers have been had.
Fleeced. Taken to the cleaners.

The recent productivity gains have been widely acknowledged. But
workers are not being compensated for this. During the past two years,
increases in wages and benefits have been very weak, or nonexistent.
And despite the growth of jobs in March that had the Bush crowd
dancing in the White House halls last Friday, there has been no net
increase in formal payroll employment since the end of the recession.
We have lost jobs. There are fewer payroll jobs now than there were
when the recession ended in November 2001.

So if employers were not hiring workers, and if they were miserly when
it came to increases in wages and benefits for existing employees,
what happened to all the money from the strong economic growth?

The study is very clear on this point. The bulk of the gains did not
go to workers, "but instead were used to boost profits, lower prices,
or increase C.E.O. compensation."

This is a radical transformation of the way the bounty of this country
has been distributed since World War II. Workers are being treated
more and more like patrons in a rigged casino. They can't win.

Corporate profits go up. The stock market goes up. Executive
compensation skyrockets. But workers, for the most part, remain on the
treadmill. ...