Labor Day is traditionally a time for picnics and
parades. But this year is no picnic for American workers, and a protest
march would be more appropriate than a parade.
Not only are 25 million unemployed or underemployed, but American
companies continue to cut wages and benefits. The median wage is still
dropping, adjusted for inflation. High unemployment has given employers
extra bargaining leverage to wring out wage concessions.
All told, it's been the worst decade for American workers in a
century. According to Commerce Department data, private-sector wage
gains over the last decade have even lagged behind wage gains during the
decade of the Great Depression (4 percent over the last 10 years,
adjusted for inflation, versus 5 percent from 1929 to 1939).
Big American corporations are making more money, and creating more
jobs, outside the United States than in it. If corporations are people,
as the Supreme Court's twisted logic now insists, most of the big ones
headquartered here are rapidly losing their American identity.
CEO pay, meanwhile, has soared. The median value of salaries, bonuses
and long-term incentive awards for CEOs at 350 big American companies
surged 11 percent last year to $9.3 million (according to a study of
proxy statements conducted for The Wall Street Journal by the management consultancy Hay Group.). Bonuses have surged 19.7 percent.
This doesn't even include all those stock options rewarded to CEOs at
rock-bottom prices in 2008 and 2009. Stock prices have ballooned since
then, the current downdraft notwithstanding. In March 2009, for
example, Ford CEO Alan Mulally received a grant of options and
restricted shares worth an estimated $16 million at the time. But Ford
is now showing large profits -- in part because the UAW agreed to allow
Ford to give its new hires roughly half the wages of older Ford workers --
and its share prices have responded. Mulally's 2009 grant is now worth
over $200 million.
The ratio of corporate profits to wages is now higher than at any time since just before the Great Depression.
Meanwhile, the American economy has all but stopped growing -- in
large part because consumers (whose spending is 70 percent of GDP) are
also workers whose jobs and wages are under assault.
Perhaps there would still be something to celebrate on Labor Day if
government was coming to the rescue. But Washington is paralyzed, the
President seems unwilling or unable to take on labor-bashing
Republicans, and several Republican governors are mounting direct
assaults on organized labor (see Indiana, Ohio, Maine, and Wisconsin,
for example).
So let's bag the picnics and parades this Labor Day. American workers
should march in protest. They're getting the worst deal they've
had since before Labor Day was invented -- and the economy is suffering
as a result.