Rise in US corporate profits fueled by fall in real wages
OBAMA VOWS TO RATCHET UP THE LIES FOR LA RAZA
“Besides this, many American workers are displaced, and the oversupply of cheap foreign labor depresses the income of American workers by about $2,800 per year.”
“Scruggs points out that there are two groups favoring amnesty and an increase in legal immigration. First, the Democratic Party, that would gain millions of new voters. Second, business interests seeking an endless supply of cheap labor - who make large donations to GOP politicians. He argues that the GOP should take a principled stand against Obama's amnesty and regain the respect of American workers.”
Rise in US corporate profits fueled by fall in real wages
By Jerry White
24 October 2014
Despite the slump in Europe and Latin America and relatively low growth in the US and China, several US-based multinational corporations are announcing better-than-expected profits for the third quarter, particularly from their US operations. While a portion of the earnings came from a modest uptick in sales, the profits were chiefly attributable to continued cost-cutting, falling real wages and the ever-higher productivity being sweated out of workers.
Major manufacturers with third quarter profits beating Wall Street expectations included: General Electric (up 11 percent to $3.5 billion), Boeing (up 13 percent to $2.4 billion), General Motors (up 50 percent to $1.47 billion), Caterpillar (up six percent to $1.02 billion), 3M (a six percent rise to $1.3 billion) and steelmaker Nucor (up 66 percent to $245 million).
Several US airlines also posted large third-quarter profits. United Airlines saw its most profitable quarter in history, earning $1.1 billion, or more than double the same period last year. The new American Airlines, which was formed through the December merger of US Airways and AMR Corp., reported a profit of $1.2 billion, compared with a year-earlier profit of $771 million. Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways also posted record profits for the quarter.
Falling oil prices contributed to higher profits in the airline industry and helped boost the sales of highly profitable pickup trucks and SUVs made by GM and other automakers. However, major manufacturers such as Caterpillar, GE and US Steel have depended on the oil and gas boom for a large portion of their profits, and any decline in energy costs threatens their bottom line.
Analysts are pointing to the anemic growth in the US as the supposed shining light in the world economy. In fact, the corporations have exploited the vast reserve army of unemployed workers to fill many of their positions with part-time and contract laborers earning lower wages and few if any benefits while lacking any semblance of job security.
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.
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.
Real hourly wages declined for almost every segment of the US workforce in the first half of 2014, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute. This includes workers with no high school degree (-0.6 percent), with just a high school degree (-1.1 percent), with some college (-1.0 percent), with a college degree (-1.6 percent), and with an advanced degree, too (-2.7 percent).
This follows a consistent pattern since the crash of 2008. From the first half of 2007 to the first half of this year real wages declined 4.9 percent for workers with a high school degree and 2.5 percent for workers with a college degree.
Little if any of the profits being generated by major manufacturers will be reinvested in new plants and the hiring of additional workers, let alone used to improve wages and benefits. On the contrary, US corporations, which are sitting on an estimated cash hoard of $1.5 trillion, are using a large portion of their earnings to carry out stock buybacks in order to enrich their shareholders.
In a conference call Wednesday, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney boasted that the company’s 19 percent increase in core earnings per share “has allowed us to continue returning cash to our shareholders through our strong dividend and share repurchase program.” This has directly benefited McNerney, who pocketed $23.2 million last year, mostly from gains in restricted shares and stock options.
After threatening to pull production of its new 777x planes from the Seattle area and ship it to a low-wage state, Boeing executives, with the backing of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), forced through an eight-year concessions contract in January 2014. The sellout deal, which was first rejected by the 25,000 workers it covered, slashed retirement benefits, reduced health care benefits in accordance with Obamacare, and limited wage increases to one percent every other year. It also barred workers from striking until 2024.
McNerney—who would “earn” a quarter of a million a month under a future retirement package worth more than $40 million—has overseen the destruction of company-paid defined benefit pensions for Boeing workers.
Announcing Caterpillar’s third quarter profits, CEO Doug Oberhelman (total 2013 compensation of $14,989,569) said, “The fact that we continue to raise our profit per share outlook on relatively flat sales is a testament to our diverse portfolio of businesses, disciplined cost control and operational execution.” Shares of the giant earthmoving equipment manufacturer jumped nearly five percent after the announcement and are up 13 percent over the past 12 months.
Since taking the helm at Caterpillar in 2010, Oberhelman’s “disciplined cost control” has involved a relentless campaign to slash jobs and drive down workers’ wages and benefits. “I tell my people,” the executive said in an interview with
Businessweek last year, “we can never make enough profits.”
In 2012, Caterpillar locked out 450 workers at its locomotive factory in London, Ontario after they refused to take a 50 percent pay cut. It then shut the plant and shipped production to Muncie, Indiana, where workers earn $12.50 an hour, or half the wages of their Canadian counter-parts. The same year, relying on the betrayal of the IAM and United Auto Workers union, the company imposed deep concessions on workers after a 15-week strike in Joliet, Illinois, followed by similar givebacks on workers at the CAT plant in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
By slashing wages and shifting production to low-wage countries, Caterpillar boosted its profits from $12,000 per employee in 2007 to a staggering $45,000 per employee by 2012. Meanwhile, the average compensation for top executives doubled from $5.2 million in 2008 to $10.4 million in 2012.
With the slump continuing in Europe and Latin America, and demand for new equipment falling in China, a new global scramble for market share and profits is on the horizon, which will lead to even deeper attacks on the working class. This is already working its way throughout the global auto industry.
While losing money in Europe and spending about $700 million on repairing the defective vehicles it has recalled, GM chiefly relied on its North America operations last quarter, which generated an operating profit of $2.5 billion.
The company is slashing thousands of jobs in Europe and has recently announced plans to offer buyouts to 400 workers at its St. Petersburg, Russia plant. Reductions are also planned for South America. In the US, however, the Detroit automakers are announcing new hiring, including 850 workers that will be added at Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan pickup truck assembly plant.
As part of the restructuring of the auto industry by the Obama administration, the United Auto Workers agreed to the halving of wages for the next generation of factory workers.
In recent months, the UAW has boasted that wage cutting in the US has lured GM and other companies to relocate their operations from low-wage countries, like Mexico and China, to the United States, the new haven for cheap labor.
SCOTT BROWN: put
Americans (Legals) in American jobs first???
LIVING
WAGE... is it really un-American or merely unWALL STREET?
LOS ANGELES: Mexico’s second largest city and the war
against paying a living wage.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/10/los-angeles-and-war-against-paying.html
AMERICA: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY? How many jobs do you see employees that only
speak Spanish?
“Should Congress continue adding one million
immigrants every year to compete for jobs, or should the jobs go to the
millions of Americans and legal immigrants already here still looking for
work?” the ad queries.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/10/america-no-legal-need-apply-new-ad.html
It refers to a study that
found that “between the first quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2013,
the native-born population accounted for two-thirds of overall growth in the
working-age population (16 to 65), but none of the net growth in employment
among the working-age has gone to natives.”
POVERTY – HALF OF
AMERICA HITS BOTTOM!
OBAMANOMICS:
HALF or NEARLY HALF OF AMERICA TEETERS ON THE
EDGE OF POVERTY… and yet the
Democrat party is determined to legalize Mexico’s
looting and hand millions
more jobs to Mexicans… simply to keep wages
depressed for their campaign
contributing paymasters!
OBAMA: SERVANT OF THE 1%
Richest one percent controls nearly half of global wealth
The richest one percent of the world’s population now controls 48.2 percent
of global wealth, up from 46 percent last year.
The report found that the growth of global inequality has accelerated sharply
since the 2008 financial crisis, as the values of financial assets have soared
while wages have stagnated and declined.
IS
OBAMA BUSH’S THIRD AND FOURTH TERMS ON STEROIDS?
Obama replaced George W. Bush, who left office the most
reviled president in US history. The election campaign was accompanied by an
enormous amount of media marketing, with a candidate who had no significant
political history packaged as the agent of “hope” and “change.”
Upon coming to office, however, Obama pursued the most
right-wing agenda in US history. It quickly emerged that whatever vague
promises he made were insincere, and that his administration was committed to
an acceleration of the policies of the Bush administration—overseeing a
historic transfer of wealth to the rich, escalating military violence abroad,
and deepening the attacks on democratic rights within the United States.
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 .
SURGE IN ILLEGALS
OVER BORDER
STAGGERING NUMBER OF ILLEGALS respond
to Obama’s call to invade, loot and VOTE DEM!
NAFTA BORDERS and BILLIONAIRES
AMNESTY: America’s death warrant
THE CONSPIRACY to DESTROY AMERICA’S BORDERS… Obama
and his Wall Street banksters
“This nation no longer is a democratic
republic...rather it has become a tool of the super-rich members of the above mentioned elite who
preselect our presidents based on their cooperation and complicity with the
elite’s ultimate goals. Obama has, in their opinion done superbly carrying out
the plans well laid out for him by his backers.”
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.
BARACK OBAMA IS MERELY BUSH’S THIRD
AND FOURTH TERMS ON STEROIDS!
HE SERVES THE 1%, CRIMINAL
BANKSTERS AND THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA.
OBAMA IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MEXICO
ELECTS OUR PRESIDENTS. DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TERM, TWO-THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT
TO IMMIGRANTS, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGAL AND BANKSTER PROFITS AND CRIMES SOARED AS
DID FORECLOSURES THESE BANKS CAUSED!
The
dismal jobs situation in the United States is not merely the product of
abstract economic forces, but the direct result of the policy of the ruling
class, led by the Obama administration, in response to the economic crisis.
Since the collapse of 2008, the government has devoted itself to bailing out
the banks, then initiating a policy through the Federal Reserve of funneling
hundreds of billions of dollars into the stock market.
The assault on the working class
continues. While preparing to spend billions of dollars on a new war against
Syria, the federal government has rejected any financial assistance to Detroit,
where an unelected emergency manager has thrown the city into bankruptcy in
order to impose wage cuts and layoffs on city workers, while decimating
pensions and other benefits. This is seen as a model for cities throughout the
country.
BANKS v JOBS… OBAMA’S BANKSTER DONORS
WINNING BIG TIME!
AMERICA RULED BY WALL STREET CRIMINALS.
OBAMA’S BANKSTER DONOR’S PROFITS ARE SOARING. SO ARE THEIR
CRIMES AND FORECLOSURES!
CALL IT OBAMANOMICS!
There
is one thing to blame, and we know what it is. It isn't as simple as: Washington
cares more about bank profits than bankrupt people.
Employment
Down, Profits Up: The Aftermath of the Financial Crisis in 1 Graph