{"id":8374,"date":"2006-09-04T13:00:41","date_gmt":"2006-09-04T17:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8374.html"},"modified":"2006-09-04T13:00:41","modified_gmt":"2006-09-04T17:00:41","slug":"labor-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/labor-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recognition of [tag]Labor Day[\/tag], I’d planned to do a lengthy, link-rich post about the ongoing challenges facing American workers. But then I decided there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel — the Center for American Progress covered this ground nicely in its most recent Progress Report. I hope the fine folks at CAP won’t mind if I blatantly steal<\/strike> borrow it to help honor the holiday.<\/p>\n

In 1898, Samuel Gompers, one of the original founders of the American Federation of Labor, called Labor Day “the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed<\/a>.” This Labor Day, U.S. workers have many grievances that deserve attention. The New York Times reported recently<\/a> that the median real hourly wage for American workers has declined two percent since 2003, despite the fact that productivity has been steadily rising. Worker productivity rose 16.6 percent<\/a> from 2000 to 2005, while total compensation for the median worker rose 7.2 percent. Among the reasons economists offer to explain this phenomenon are that workers’ bargaining power is being slowly eroded and “trade unions are much weaker than they once were<\/a>.” The trends have left U.S. workers feeling bleak about the future. A poll of laborers conducted recently found that 63 percent<\/a> of the workforce believes the country and the economy are on the wrong track; a majority now believe their children are going to be worse off economically than they are<\/a>. […]<\/p>\n

“Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’ s gross domestic product<\/a> since the government began recording the data in 1947.” A majority of today’s workers say the number one issue they face is that the wages they are paid are not keeping up with the cost of living<\/a>. Aug. 20th marked 10 years<\/a> since the last time the federal minimum wage<\/a> has been raised. Frozen at an unlivable $5.15\/hour, the minimum wage is at the lowest buying power<\/a> it has been in 51 years. Workers earning above the minimum wage are struggling as well. According to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, “Real median earnings for men working full-time and year-round were lower in 2005 than in 1973. In inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars, a typical man working full-time in 1973 earned $42,573. Thirty-six years later, this figure has fallen to $41,386<\/a>.” Yet, productivity — as President Bush likes to frequently point out<\/a> — remains high<\/a>. “What jumps out at you is the gaping hole between productivity growth and earnings,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). People are “working harder and smarter but not really seeing remuneration<\/a> that they ought to be seeing.” The wage crunch<\/a> isn’t affecting the entire labor force, however. The top one percent of earners — including many corporate CEOs — received 11.2 percent of all wage income in 2004<\/a>, up from 8.7 percent a decade earlier and less than six percent three decades ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Happy Labor Day to the millions who clearly deserve the day off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recognition of [tag]Labor Day[\/tag], I’d planned to do a lengthy, link-rich post about the ongoing challenges facing American workers. But then I decided there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel — the Center for American Progress covered this ground nicely in its most recent Progress Report. I hope the fine folks at CAP won’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}