Falling Wages at Factories
Squeeze the Middle Class
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and PATRICIA COHENNOV. 20, 2014
For nearly 20
years, Darrell Eberhardt worked in an Ohio factory putting together
wheelchairs, earning $18.50 an hour, enough to gain a toehold in the middle
class and feel respected at work.
He is still
working with his hands, assembling seats for Chevrolet Cruze cars at the Camaco
auto parts factory in Lorain, Ohio, but now he makes $10.50 an hour and is
barely hanging on. “I’d like to earn more,” said Mr. Eberhardt, who is 49 and
went back to school a few years ago to earn an associate’s degree. “But the
chances of finding something like I used to have are slim to none.”
Even as the
White House and leaders on Capitol Hill and in Fortune 500 boardrooms all agree
that expanding the country’s manufacturing base is a key to prosperity,
evidence is growing that the pay of many blue-collar jobs is shrinking to the
point where they can no longer support a middle-class life.
A new
study by the National Employment Law Project, to be released on Friday,
reveals that many factory jobs nowadays pay far less than what workers in
almost identical positions earned in the past.
Darrell
Eberhardt, 49, an assembly line worker in Ohio, has seen his wages drop from
$18.50 an hour to $10.50 an hour. Credit Peter Larson for The New York Times
Perhaps even
more significant, while the typical production job in the manufacturing sector
paid more than the private sector average in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s,
that relationship flipped in 2007, and line work in factories now pays less
than the typical private sector job. That gap has been widening — in 2013,
production jobs paid an average of $19.29 an hour, compared with $20.13 for all
private sector positions.
Pressured by
temporary hiring practices and a sharp decrease in salaries in the auto parts
sector, real wages for manufacturing workers fell by 4.4 percent from 2003 to
2013, NELP researchers found, nearly three times the decline for workers as a
whole.
Despite that
widening gap, Washington still paints the manufacturing sector as a gateway to
the middle class, even if the gate is closing.
The White House
earmarked $100 million in grants last month to encourage manufacturing
innovation, part of President Obama’s goal of adding one million American
manufacturing jobs by the end of his second term.
After losing
more than six million factory jobs from 2000 to 2010, the sector has rebounded
a bit in recent years, with more than 700,000 positions created since early
2010. A total of 12.2 million Americans work in manufacturing, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“While they are
rebounding in numbers, which is good news, they are not delivering on the wages
front,” said Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel and program director at
NELP.
She argued that
if federal, state and local governments continued to promote manufacturing jobs
with tax breaks and credits, employers should be encouraged to pay higher
starting salaries and provide good benefits. “If you are getting a tax break or
a subsidy, we should make sure those jobs are good jobs,” Ms. Ruckelshaus said.
Based in New
York, NELP is a research and advocacy group for low-wage and unemployed
workers. It receives some financial support from organized labor, including
unions like the United Steelworkers and the United Food and Commercial Workers,
as well as the A.F.L.-C.I.O. The data in the study were drawn mostly from
government sources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau,
and independent experts confirm many of the trends NELP cites in the report.
“We are not
going to back to Detroit in the 1950s or Akron in the 1900s,” said Lawrence
Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard. “There still are many manufacturing
jobs that are high-paying, but they tend to be more senior or require a lot
more education than entry-level jobs do. And their numbers are shrinking, too.”
Laboring for Less ..... isn't that the entire reason behind AMNESTY?
Since 2007, the
average wage for workers in manufacturing jobs has been lower than the average
wage for all private-sector positions.
Even if it does
not continue to be a mass employer or a ticket to the middle class, Mr. Katz
said, manufacturing remains vital to the economy because it spurs innovation
and leads to higher-paying, value-added jobs like design, marketing and other
support services. It is also a major source of productivity gains, as well as a
generator of profits and exports for American companies.
But most of
those gains are not going to the workers on the factory floor. One major factor
in the downward pressure on overall manufacturing wages has been a particularly
sharp fall in hourly pay earned by workers like Mr. Eberhardt who make parts
that supply the big automakers. Parts workers make about one-third less than
assembly-line workers who put together cars and trucks, but parts jobs account
for 72 percent of all auto sector employment. From 2003 to 2013, median wages
for parts workers fell to $15.83 an hour from $18.35.
The auto
industry in the United States, both parts makers and large auto companies like
General Motors, have staged an impressive recovery since G.M. filed for
bankruptcy in 2009 and required a federal bailout. Lower salaries and
efficiency gains, along with less debt, have helped make Detroit more globally
competitive.
At the same
time, one of the most important reasons for lower pay is the increased use of
temporary workers. Some manufacturers have turned to staffing agencies for
hiring rather than employing workers directly on their own payroll. For the
first half of 2014, these agencies supplied one out of seven workers employed
by auto parts manufacturers.
The increased
use of these lower-paid workers, particularly on the assembly line, not only
eats into the number of industry jobs available, but also has a ripple effect
on full-time, regular workers.
Even veteran
full-time auto parts workers who have managed to work their way up the
assembly-line chain of command have eked out only modest gains.
When Timothy
Shelly first started working at the Faurecia Automotive Seating plant in
Cleveland, Miss., he was earning $8 an hour. Nearly 10 years later, with a
promotion that moved him up to managing three other workers, he earns $12.72,
not much more than the rise in the cost of living over the same period.
“The work is
very strenuous. It’ll wear you down,” said Mr. Shelly, who loads 35-pound tubs
of parts on pushcarts and then walks miles every day delivering them.
Mr. Shelly can
supplement his paychecks with overtime, which pays 50 percent more, but, he
said, “it’s not easy at all to get those extra shifts.” Instead, according to
Mr. Shelly, his plant regularly uses a service to hire temp workers who are
paid $7.50 an hour and do not receive health insurance or other benefits.
In Ohio, Mr.
Eberhardt, who works a 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. shift, is due for a raise of 50
cents an hour, having just completed his first year in the job. “Once in a
while we get a Saturday or a Sunday shift, and that helps,” he said. “It’s time
and a half.”
THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES!
"We could cut
unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal
workers," said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the
Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. "President Obama is on the wrong side of the
American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help
citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than
fail to enforce immigration laws."
US government, corporations preparing new offensive against workers’ pensions
By Jerry White
20 November 2014
The release of the annual report of the US Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is being seized upon by the media and politicians of both parties to press for a new round of devastating cuts to pension benefits for tens of millions of retired industrial and other private-sector workers.The PBGC is the government insurer for 24,000 defined benefit pension plans, which cover more than 41 million workers, retirees and their dependents. On Monday, the government-backed corporation released a report showing that the long-term projected deficit of its multiemployer program rose by $34 billion in fiscal year 2014 to a record $42 billion. This was largely due to potential losses from shoring up two large pension funds that could become insolvent in the next decade.
Although they were not named in the report, the two funds are reportedly the Teamsters Central States fund and the United Mine Workers fund, which together cover some 10 million current and retired workers. The precarious position of the funds, which are jointly administered by the two unions and trucking and mining companies, is due to the wiping out of hundreds of thousands of jobs, which has left many companies with more retirees than active workers. The pension funds were also hit by stock market losses.
The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal zeroed in on a single paragraph in the report warning that the PBGC could go broke over the next eight years if the current rate of premium payments from corporations continues. The “risk of insolvency” would rise over time, the report said, “exceeding 50 percent in 2022 and reaching 90 percent by 2025.” It added, “When the program becomes insolvent, PBGC will be unable to provide financial assistance to pay guaranteed benefits in insolvent plans.”
Nowhere in the media or political commentary on the report was there any suggestion that the government should carry out a Wall Street-style bailout of the pension insurer. The Post noted that that such a bailout was a “political non-starter” in Washington.
Nor was there any suggestion that Congress should mandate a major increase in contributions from the big corporations, which have extracted billions from the labor of workers while deliberately diverting funds from their pension plans and keeping them chronically underfunded.
Instead, in the name of “saving” the pensions, the capitalist media is demanding savage cuts in the workers’ benefits.
The Wall Street Journal wrote Tuesday that any solution to the agency’s “long-running problems” would likely include “sharp benefit cuts for the plans.” The Post concurred on the same day, saying, “Unless Congress makes changes, which could include raising insurance premiums for multiemployer plans or the controversial move of allowing for preemptive pension cuts in struggling plans,” the PBGC will go bankrupt.
One proposal, cited approvingly by the Wall Street Journal, came from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. A 30 percent benefit cut on average for current retirees, the report said, would allow the Teamsters plan “to remain solvent indefinitely and increase the aggregate welfare of plan participants.”
Leading Democrats and Republicans added their voices to the choir demanding action.
The annual report was “a sober reminder that time is running out” said Congressman John Kline (Republican from Minnesota), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The multiemployer pension system “is a ticking time bomb that will inflict a lot of pain on workers, employers, taxpayers and retirees if Congress fails to act,” he added.
Senate Finance Committee leaders Ron Wyden (Democrat from Oregon) and Orrin Hatch (Republican from Utah) issued a joint statement saying they remained “very concerned” about the multiemployer system.
As usual, the trade unions are willing accomplices in the crime being prepared against the working class. According to the Washington Post, “A coalition of unions and businesses has been pushing for reforms, including more flexible coverage structures and pension cuts in financially struggling plans.”
Last year, “a commission made up of representatives from employer and labor organizations,” the Wall Street Journal reported, issued a proposal “that would include the extreme step of cutting pension benefits for some current retirees in the most troubled plans.”
One such joint labor-management body is the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans, which includes the presidents of the Teamsters, the AFL-CIO’s construction trades, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). It has called for congressional action, warning that employers planned to exit the system and “leave retirees behind.”
The union executives could care less about their retired members. These unions have spent decades collaborating in gutting pension benefits in order to boost the corporations’ profits. The threatened liquidation of multibillion-dollar pension investment funds, however, threatens the income and portfolios of the aspiring capitalists who control the unions.
There is an element of deliberate crisis mongering in the PBGC report. The shaky position of the agency has long been known and nothing has been done about it.
Over the last three decades, more and more corporations have jettisoned their employer-paid plans—one of the most important gains won by the working class in the mass industrial battles of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. All but a few have forced current workers onto employee-paid 401(K) plans subject to the vagaries of the stock market.
Earlier this year, aerospace and defense giant Boeing worked in tandem with the International Association of Machinists (IAM) to force 33,000 IAM workers onto 401 (K) plans. The company’s top executive, Jim McNerney, has a special retirement plan valued at $42 million, which will provide him with over $270,000 per month after he quits.
It has long been a standard business practice for American corporations to dump their pension obligations onto the PBGC through bankruptcy. Since Congress established the PBGC as part of the 1975 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the government-backed corporation has paid out billions to cover pension plans terminated by giant corporations, particularly in the steel and airline industries.
As millions of workers know through painful, first-hand experience, when the PBGC takes over an insolvent fund, the workers are hit with brutal benefit cuts. Congress limits the amount the agency can pay to retirees to less than $13,000 a year, effectively condemning the workers to poverty. A worker with a very modest annual pension of $20,000 after 30 years of labor stands to lose more than $7,000 a year—a cut of over 35 percent.
The decks are being cleared for the next stage in the relentless, bipartisan assault on the working class. Private-sector pensions will be targeted along with other supposed “ticking bombs” such as Social Security, Medicare and public-sector pensions.
The nationwide offensive against the pensions of state and municipal workers has already been launched with precedent-setting rulings by federal bankruptcy judges in Detroit and Stockton, California declaring null and void provisions of state constitutions guaranteeing the pension benefits of public employees.
Last week, a federal bankruptcy judge gave final approval to the Detroit bankruptcy settlement, which imposes huge cuts in the pensions and health benefits of retired city workers and imposes 401(k) plans on active workers. This week, the PBGC report has signaled the widening of the attack to include the private sector.
The official justification is the claim that society simply cannot afford to keep the “overgenerous promises” made to workers in an earlier, more prosperous period. The situation is supposedly made worse by the problem of workers living too long after retirement and imposing an unsustainable burden on the rest of the population.
These are self-serving lies pumped out by the ruling class through its political servants and media apologists. Since the financial crash of 2008, the Obama administration’s pro-business policies of bank bailouts, virtually free money for the banks from the Federal Reserve, wage and benefit cuts for auto workers, corporate tax cuts and deregulation have transferred trillions from the working class to the super-rich.
The share of the gross domestic product going to corporate profits is at the highest level since World War II, while the share going to workers’ wages is at the lowest. American corporations are sitting on an estimated cash hoard of $1.5 trillion and using it for stock buybacks, executive bonuses and mergers and acquisitions that are occurring at their most frenzied pace since 2007.
The total $60 billion deficit of the PGBC could be wiped out overnight by using only a portion of the $360 billion being hoarded by tech giants Google, Apple, Cisco and Microsoft, or employing one-tenth of the annual Pentagon budget.
Instead, the financial oligarchy that controls the economy and both big-business parties is determined to steal the pensions that tens of millions need to survive and return workers to the dark days when they labored without end until they died.
OBAMA’S AMNESTY: Soaring welfare for
illegals… they already get our jobs!
illegals… they already get our jobs!
"President Obama is going
rogue, doubling-down, and driving full speed towards a constitutional
crisis," Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican who’s
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
SEN. JEFF SESSIONS VOWS TO FIGHT OBAMA’S IMPERIAL AMNESTY:
Polling data compiled for the National Republican
Senatorial Committee (NRSC) by firm Paragon Insights shows that 71 percent of Americans are
more likely to support a Republican for U.S. Senate if they know that that
Republican will stand up for American workers against illegal aliens. Polling
from Kelly Anne Conway’s the polling company, Inc., backs that point up, finding that post-midterm
election that 75 percent of Americans reject executive amnesty and 80 percent
believe that foreign workers shouldn’t be taking jobs from Americans.
JOBS 71% GO TO FOREIGNERS.
Report: 71
Percent of New Jobs Go to Foreign Born Legal, Illegal Immigrants in NH | CNS
News ….
THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS STILL GETS THE TAX
BILLS FOR MEXICO’S WELFARE STATE IN OUR OPEN
BORDERS!
THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS STILL GETS THE TAX
BILLS FOR MEXICO’S WELFARE STATE IN OUR OPEN
BORDERS!
UNIONS JOIN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY,
MEXICO AND WALL STREET TO ASSAULT THE AMERICAN WORKER… but haven’t they always
been organized crime???
UNIONS
PARTNER WITH OBAMA AND WALL STREET TO
ASSAULT THE AMERICAN WORKER WITH AMNESTY
AND OPEN BORDERS…
It’s all about keeping wages depressed
ASSAULT THE AMERICAN WORKER WITH AMNESTY
AND OPEN BORDERS…
It’s all about keeping wages depressed
For
their part, US trade unions such as the United Auto Workers have functioned as
junior partners in the impoverishment and exploitation of the working class, suppressing
any opposition to the attack on living standards.
In
this corporate America has enjoyed the full backing of the
Obama administration
and both big business parties, which have
slashed food stamps and long-term
unemployment benefits. The
White House, which orchestrated the slashing of
wages in the auto
industry restructuring of 2009, has made the lowering of
living
standards for US workers the centerpiece of its so-called revival of
American manufacturing.
UNIONS AFL-CIO
OBAMA BROKE
PROMISE ON IMMIGRATION??? Not really! Illegals are pouring over our borders in
response to Obama’s bit by bit amnesty.
AND UNIONS?
What promise have they kept to the AMERICAN (Legals) worker?
THE REASON WHY OUR BORDERS ARE WIDE OPEN, EVEN IN TIMES OF GLOBAL TERRORISM, IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED!
AND WHAT HAS THE BLOOD SUCKING UNIONS DONE ABOUT THE
DEMOCRAT PARTY’S ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER?
NADA!
WALL STREET-OWNED BARACK OBAMA’S ASSAULT on the
AMERICAN WORKER as he builds the LA RAZA Mexican welfare state.
UNIONS PARTNER WITH WALL STREET-OWNED BARACK
OBAMA and MEXICO TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED
These are self-serving lies pumped out by the ruling class
through its political servants and media apologists. Since the financial crash
of 2008, the Obama administration’s pro-business policies of bank bailouts,
virtually free money for the banks from the Federal Reserve, wage and benefit
cuts for auto workers, corporate tax cuts and deregulation have transferred
trillions from the working class to the super-rich.
Instead, the financial oligarchy that controls the economy and
both big-business parties is determined to steal the pensions that tens of
millions need to survive and return workers to the dark days when they labored
without end until they died.
OBAMA’S AMNESTY: Soaring welfare for illegals… they
already
get our jobs!
"President Obama is going
rogue, doubling-down, and driving full speed towards a constitutional
crisis," Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican who’s
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.
OPEN BORDERS AND
ENDLESS HORDES OF IMMIGRANTS
POURING IN IS ONLY ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED
To
cite just one example, if there is a shortage of U.S. engineers, are 1.5
million Americans with engineering degrees either unemployed or working in
other fields? In all too many cases, U.S. tech companies prefer foreign workers
on temporary visas because they are cheaper and more exploitable than
Americans.
BILLIONAIRES partner with MEXICO,
OBAMA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to assault the AMERICAN WORKER….
Amnesty, it’s all about keeping wages depressed and passing along the real cost
of all that “cheap” mex labor to the American middle class.
OPEN BORDERS AND
ENDLESS HORDES OF
IMMIGRANTS POURING IN IS ONLY
ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED
To
cite just one example, if there is a shortage of U.S. engineers, are 1.5
million Americans with engineering degrees either unemployed or working in
other fields? In all too many cases, U.S. tech companies prefer foreign workers
on temporary visas because they are cheaper and more exploitable than
Americans.
UNDER OBAMA, TWO-THIRDS
OF JOBS GO TO HIS PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS!
“At
the hearing, Dr. Rakesh Kochar, Associate Director for Research at the Pew
Hispanic Center, testified that in the year following the official end of the
recession (June 2009), foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while
native-born workers lost an additional 1.2 million jobs.”
"We
have a situation where the job market — the bottom fell out, yet we kept legal
immigration relatively high without even a national debate," he said.
"As a consequence, a lot of the job growth has been going to
immigrants."
Mr.
Obama did take action this year to grant many illegal immigrants up to 30 years
of age a tentative legal status that prevents them from being deported and
authorizes them to work in the United States.
Some
Republicans in Congress have criticized Mr. Obama's policy, saying it violates
his powers and will mean more competition for scarce jobs.
JEFF SESSIONS FIGHTS FOR THE
AMERICAN WORKER AGAINST BARACK
OBAMA' LA RAZA SUPREMACY AMNESTY
HOAX
Incoming Senate
Budget Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions says that President Barack Obama’s
executive amnesty is something that is “endangering our entire constitutional
order” as a democratic Republic.
“President Obama’s executive amnesty
violates the laws Congress
has passed in order to create and implement laws
Congress has
refused to pass,” Sessions said in a statement. “The President is
providing an estimated 5 million illegal immigrants with social
security
numbers, photo IDs, and work permits—allowing them to
now take jobs directly
from struggling Americans during a time of
record immigration, low wages, and
high joblessness.”
Sessions noted that Obama’s specific
actions were each rejected by Congress, and as such acting without
congressional approval puts the U.S. system of government in jeopardy. Even
though Obama and the White House claim that Obama’s actions are backed up by
each previous president dating back to Dwight Eisenhower, the previous
presidents’ immigration executive actions—at least the Republican ones—were
done in conjunction with the will of congressional approval. Obama’s does not
have congressional approval.
“This amnesty plan was rejected by the
American people’s Congress,” Sessions said. “By refusing to carry out the laws
of the United States in order to make his own, the President is endangering our
entire Constitutional order.”
Sessions also hammered the specific detail
of Obama’s plan that allows illegal aliens to get green cards—and a fast track
to citizenship and taxpayer benefits.
“The President’s plan will apparently also
allow many illegal immigrants to receive green cards and become legal permanent
residents—meaning they can access almost all U.S. welfare programs, have
lifetime work authorization, obtain citizenship, and sponsor foreign relatives
to join them in the U.S.,” Sessions said. “Law enforcement has warned this unprecedented amnesty
will unleash a ‘tidal wave’ of new illegal immigration flooding into American
neighborhoods at taxpayers’ expense.”
Sessions hit Obama, too, for importing
millions of foreign high-tech workers to replace American workers seeking jobs
at IT companies in this country. He called for Congress to use the power of the
purse to stop him.
“The President’s plan also calls for
boosting foreign worker programs for IT companies that experts tell us displace
U.S. workers and keep wages low,” Sessions said. “The President’s
unconstitutional action is a direct threat to our Republican system of
government and will have catastrophic consequences for the American people. It
must be stopped. And the way to stop it is by using Congress’ power of the
purse.”
Sessions said that the House should block
funding for this immediately.
“The House should send the Senate a
government funding bill which ensures no funds can be spent for this unlawful
purpose,” Sessions said. “If Reid’s Senate Democrats vote to surrender their
own institution to an imperial dictate and block the measure, then the House
should send a short-term funding measure so the new GOP majority can be sworn
in and pass a funding bill with the needed language.”
The reason Congress needs to fight this so
hard, Sessions said, is because the foundation of American government depends
on it.
“Congress has no higher duty than to
protect the American people and our Constitution,” Sessions said. “The
President’s action is a threat to every working person in this country—their
jobs, wages, dreams, hopes, and futures. For years, the American people have begged and pleaded
for a lawful system of immigration that serves the nation and makes us
proud—but the politicians have refused, refused, refused.”
Sessions said now is the “time” to “stand
strong” for Americans over illegal aliens and special interests the nefarious
forces Obama is standing up for. Sessions said Americans must light up the
phone lines in Congress to demand answers to where their senators and
representatives stand.
“It is time to stand strong for the
American people,” Session said. “It is time to champion the interests of those
constantly neglected on the question of immigration: the men, and women, and
children we represent—the citizens of this country to whom we owe our ultimate
allegiance. Every American must ask their senator where they stand.”
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