Productive American Workers Not Reaping the Benefits Of Their Labor

Bob Herbert's New York Times Op-Ed, We're More Productive. Who Gets the Money? (April 5, 2004), described the American worker treadmill that has resulted in more productivity. However, American workers are not reaping the rewards for their work. Corporations are - to the detriment of hard-working men and women.

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." Andrew Sum, the center's director and lead author of the study, said: "This is the first time we've ever had a case where two years into a recovery, corporate profits got a larger share of the growth of national income than labor did. Normally labor gets about 65 percent and corporate profits about 15 to 18 percent. This time profits got 41 percent and labor [meaning all forms of employee compensation, including wages, benefits, salaries and the percentage of payroll taxes paid by employers] got 38 percent." 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.

Please recall that I had posted in both in the comments section of my earlier post about Bush's misleading rising jobs statistics that since the Great Depression and WWII, the U. S. has suffered a series of devastating deficits. Herbert writes that "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."

The money from the strong economic growth Bush has boasted about has not gone to American workers. It was "used to boost profits, lower prices, or increase C.E.O. compensation."

Read the rest of Herbert's Op-Ed. I hope the people who continue to support Bush because they think he has done so many wonderful things for the average American wakes up soon. The sad thing is that far too many people who are not millionaire C.E.O.s continue to support Bush because they have fallen for his propaganda. Maybe when they file their taxes this year and the next couple of years and get hit hard by the Alternative Middle Tax, they will be forced out of their pro-Bush stupors and get rightfully pissed off.