When Does The Average American Worker Get a Raise?

Who says wages are flat-lining? They maybe if you are working in the private sector, but if you happen to be lucky enough to work for the Federal government, happy days are here again. President Bush signed an executive order authorizing the increases that affects 1.8 million workers. While I would never begrudge any worker their pay or any increase they can get, I can’t help but notice that those groups of workers who are organized continue to receive pay raises while those who are not organized do not. I wonder if this is a coincidence or if dark forces are at work here conspiring against the average worker?

President Bush today signed an executive order that provides nearly 1.8 million federal employees with an average 3.5 percent pay raise and also increases salaries by smaller percentages for the armed forces, members of Congress, federal judges, diplomats and others.

Under the order, the vice president will receive a $5,400 salary increase, to $221,100. The speaker of the House will receive a $5,300 increase, to $217,400, and the majority leader of the Senate will get a boost of $4,600, to $188,100.

In 2008, members of the House, senators and U.S. District Court judges will be paid $169,300. The chief justice of the United States will be paid $217,400, and Supreme Court justices will receive $208,100.

Members of the Cabinet, usually heads of large departments, will be paid $191,300 this year. Deputy secretaries of departments and heads of major agencies will receive $172,200.
Members of the Senior Executive Service, the government's career senior officials, will be paid from $114,468 to $172,200, according to the order.[1]

Now granted a 3.5% pay increase is not a lot, it does however underscore the disconnect between the Beltway and the rest of middle-America. When most other workers will be scrambling to hopefully this year get the increases that have eluded them in the past few years, it is nice to know that our Federal brethren will be taken care of. According to my crack research staff, there have only been two years since 1969 that Federal workers have not received an annual increase 1983 and 1986. I wonder how many of the other average wage earners in America can make that same claim.

Despite reports to the contrary, there are struggles going on in America. There is the struggle to return democracy to the people and away from corporate lobbyists and career politicians, there is the struggle to gain equal protection and opportunities for all Americans, and there is the struggle to balance the threat of terrorists with the freedom of democracy. There is also the struggle of closing the gap between the wealth and incomes of the wealthy with the average American, a gap that has grown larger in the last few years than at any time in our history. In this struggle I believe and agree with John Edwards that it is naive to believe those wealthy people will redistribute their wealth easily or happily. No my friends there will be an epic struggle. It is unfortunate that doing the right thing doesn’t come naturally to these folks, but I guess that’s how many of them got into their positions of affluence. There are those who would have us believe that everything is well in America, but that is a lie. In their usual fashion the MSM is failing to report the concern and in many cases the downright anger of many people with the disparity that continues to grow between the corporate interests and their interests.

People no longer believe the old mantra that what is good for General Motors is good for America. Corporate America has proven time and time again that their interests do not mirror the interests of the average American. The days of blind loyalty and trust of the American people to corporate America are coming to a close. The curtain is being pulled back and Mr. Edwards is exposing the greed for what it is. It is a shame that only one mainstream candidate is trumpeting the cause of the downtrodden and he is being marginalized and ignored. What many people have failed to understand is that as the middle-class goes, so goes America. With so many of our middle-class citizens finding it harder to make ends meet, drowning in debt and stagnant wages the very fabric of America is being unraveled. The sleeping giant is about to awaken and the silent majority will speak.

If the next President does not begin to address these issues there will be large scale restlessness in America unlike any we have seen in decades. The media would have you believe that Mr. Edwards and those calling for change are anti-wealthy, that is false. They are not anti-wealthy, they are anti-greed. Americans have always accepted the tenets of capitalism that some will be wealthy and some will not, but the level of greed that is occurring today is unprecedented. Not only is there great disparity in wealth, but also in the democratic process. Our democracy has been hijacked by the greedy and their tentacles are reaching into every aspect of our lives.

No, there will be no surrender of the lobbyists, corporate interests, or the ruling-class. The change will only come with a fight. Many pundits and talking heads refer to John Edwards as the angry candidate, I for one am glad that he is angry. I know I sure am.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010402402.html?hpid=moreheadlines

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Shrinking Middle-Class; Shrinking Labor

There has been much talk lately about the state of the middle-class, the insecurity of workers, and the flat-lining of wages in America. Much of the debate has revolved around the changes in the make-up of our labor force today. It has been erroneously reported that the shrinking of wages and of the middle-class is due to our no longer being a manufacturing society and due to out-sourcing. While this provides a convenient foe, it does not accurately depict the situation. There is a direct correlation between the flat-lining wages and the shrinking middle-class with the reduction of the labor movement in America. The only groups who have seen real growth in wages the past few decades are groups who are represented by unions. If this is true, then why are unions and the labor movement not more powerful and vibrant?

The reason is simple, corporate America and their Washington whores have gutted the labor movement in America. The only defense that middle-income folks had against the big money lobbyists and government thieves were the unions. The unions allowed the workers to pool their resources to be able to fight against the influence of corporate America. They provided cover for and contributions to politicians with the courage to stand up to corporate America. Unions for many years were the driving force behind the increase in the standard of living for all working Americans, not just their union members. Unions allowed the development of a strong middle-class which is essential to a thriving economy and a vibrant democracy. It was the unions that guaranteed their workers an honest wage and a secure job environment. How many of today’s workers cite job insecurity as a major concern with the economy?

While the unions provided many positives for their members, they also provided excesses for their leaders. I would be remiss and disingenuous if I only extolled the positive without the negative, there were many instances of abuse of power in many unions by leaders. However, that abuse of power is not because of unionism, isn’t it more because of a human frailty; greed? The problem is that corporate America began a campaign decades ago to destroy the labor movement in America, the labor movement through unions offered the only protection of the American workers against the type of abuse that they are suffering today. With the help of their “political allies” in Washington, corporate America has used the broad brush of union corruption and legal defeats to cripple the unions and the labor movement in America as a whole.

The great sit-down strikes and labor uprisings in the 30s and 40s brought our nation close to real democracy when the voices of the majority, American workers, was heard loud and clear. Corporate thugs, police agencies, and federal troops openly murdered workers and their families. The corporate media supported those actions, even calling for hanging of labor organizers. Unfortunately, labor leaders mistakenly accepted the passing of the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA] as remedy. Nothing more than deception, the Act reaffirmed the Corporation's superiority over the Constitution and made the criminal behavior by employers, labor violations, effectively undermining rights our founders sought to give. Each time labor stood up and mobilized, the Corporation, with the aid of congressional pimps and the corporate media, passed new labor acts to beat down the rights of workers. A prime example was the passage of Taft-Hartley.[1]

Using PR firms and restrictive organizing regulations supported and sponsored by the politicians, corporations have created an atmosphere of appeasement and apathy for today’s workers. Many of today’s “high tech” workers have been brainwashed to believe that the cause of labor no longer applies to their concerns. I have been at many tech jobs where the younger workers have blamed labor for the loss of industry and jobs. Many of today’s workers do not believe that labor is relevant anymore. There is only one small problem with this thinking, as the unions have shrunk the disparity between the salaries of the average worker and the top executives have reached all-time highs. Are we to believe that this is a coincidence? Correspondingly, the wealth of our nation is also being concentrated in to fewer and fewer hands. The American worker has been sold a bill of goods concerning the labor movement and its relevancy to their lives.

Without a strong labor movement including unions the American worker is at the mercy of greedy corporate executives and money grubbing politicians. The call of the union is just as relevant today as it ever was, there is strength in numbers and solidarity. It is foolish for today’s worker to rely on the benevolence of corporations, just as it was foolish for their grandparents to do so. Today’s worker must not buy into the hype that the dynamics of our economy and industries have outgrown the need for labor and unions. If nothing else the proof is in the fact that corporate executive compensation has increased at the same time workers compensation has decreased or flat-lined. Never in our history has there been disparity on the scales we are now witnessing.

These are outcomes of the long, unfolding crisis, not root causes. Despite the novelty, but obvious seriousness, of the current debate, U.S. Labor did not arrive at this point of historic impotence in just the past several years. This downward spiral has been in process for decades. Workers at the base became painfully aware that corporate capital was breaking the so-called "social contract" many years ago. Their initial anticipation that leaders of the nation's unions might devise appropriate strategies to resist or blunt the assault or that, in many instances, their own local determination to fight back would be welcomed and fully supported was one of the first casualties of this new chapter of class warfare being written in America.

Unabated disinvestment, corporate whipsawing of one plant's workers against another's, job blackmail, often with union leadership complicity, and a magician's trunk full of solidarity-busting workplace reorganization schemes had, by the mid-1980s, become the backdrop for the renewed concerted employer aggression. Most labor bureaucrats were either untrained and/or more often unwilling to venture out of their comfort zones to lead struggles against this eviscerating reality.[2]

[1] http://www.labornet.org/news/0106/wvwarzon.htm
[2] http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/tucker210705.html

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Regulators, Mount Up

As the mortgage crisis continues to worsen and the big R word (recession) is showing up more and more in stories about the economy, it once again illustrates the true intentions of corporations and the Congressional minions who do their bidding. For the past three decades the conservatives and the corporations have been continually assaulting the regulatory arm of the Federal Government. Whether it is the inspectors that safeguard our food supply, our water, or our medicines all have been under attack. Although it is never presented in truth, but always in code, the fact remains that the goal has been to weaken our ability to regulate their business practices.

The code is couched in language like “big government”, free market, and self-regulation. The results of course have always been the same; pollution, tainted food and medicines, and loss of consumer choice. Because they have been so good at their marketing practices anyone who has the audacity to request regulation is immediately labeled a socialist or obstructionist. Every time deregulation has come to an industry the consumers have suffered, whether it was communications, travel, or banking. Deregulation requires us to rely upon the greediest to recognize the common good and to do it, instead of maximizing their gains. Why anyone would think that this would work is beyond me.

The scary part is that even when misdeeds are reported by the few regulators we have, they often times go unheeded. Whether it is Medicare fraud, war profiteering, or gas price gouging the response is often times the same; inaction on the part of superiors or a cover-up. How many stories have we read of government “whistleblowers” who were retaliated against by managers or supervisors, hell we even had to create a law making retaliation illegal? The latest in the long saga of ignored warnings is the mortgage crisis, it appears that almost a decade ago there were warning signs and alerts that were being ignored. This included a direct warning to Alan Greenspan, our economic guru and market manipulator. Although Mr. Greenspan has always claimed political neutrality, many of his policies were timed to benefit the current and past Republican administrations.

In order to keep the “recovery” on track for young Mr. Bush, Mr. Greenspan ignored warnings from a Federal Reserve governor and an advocacy group to investigate the growing lending crisis. Lenders were initiating risky loans as early as 2001 and were generating mortgages that would balloon into unmanageable payments for the borrowers. I remember when I first heard of the balloon mortgages, my first reaction was disbelief and slowly over time turned into anger. The concept to me seemed as solvent as the “junk bond” fiasco that took place two decades earlier, both were predicated on greed and the lack of financial knowledge of the consumers. Just because someone can get credit doesn’t mean they understand credit.

WASHINGTON — Until the boom in subprime mortgages turned into a national nightmare this summer, the few people who tried to warn federal banking officials might as well have been talking to themselves.

Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor who died in September, warned nearly seven years ago that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford.

But when Mr. Gramlich privately urged Fed examiners to investigate mortgage lenders affiliated with national banks, he was rebuffed by Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman.[1]

Because Mr. Greenspan was trying to create the illusion of prosperity to buoy the fortunes of President Bush, he refused to rein in a lending market that had gone crazy. In what is being called the pursuit of innovation and Mr. Bush’s “ownership society”, lenders were allowed to generate loans to low-income or sub-prime borrowers. While in theory this was an excellent goal, because it represented a market that had longed been ignored and discriminated against. However, when theory became practical application the sharks began to infest the waters. These consumers who were not credit savvy were placed into loans that promised initially low interest rates, but were back ended with astronomical rates that based on their incomes the consumers could not afford. Also included in many of these loans were predatory lending fees and clauses that bound the consumers to these high interest loans for years.

Customarily, mortgaged loans are generated by one institution only to be sold to another lender after about a year. Many of these loans were created with high buy-out clauses that prevented the loans from being sold or allowing the consumer to shop the loan for a lower interest rate. The good news is you finally get a home; the bad news is in three years you won’t be able to afford it. This is the results of the Republicans privatization of HUD. Rather than having the government regulate and assist with these new homeowners, the conservatives believe that the consumers are best served by private industry. The same private industry that ravaged the communications, healthcare, and airline industries was entrusted with the lives and homes of unwary consumers. Now, that shouldn’t have set off any red lights or alarms.

“Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers?” Mr. Gramlich asked in a speech he prepared last August for the Fed’s symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo. “The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.”[2]

The problem I have with corporate America and their Congressional minions is not capitalism, everyone is entitled to make a buck; no it is their greed. With these guys there is never enough money, power, or stuff. The truth of the matter is there was no Bush recovery; it was all smoke and mirrors orchestrated by Greenspan, the markets, and the corporations. This explains why even with a “so-called” recovery middle and poor Americans were still struggling and there was no consumer confidence. I just hope the next administration will have the courage of its convictions and will rein in the greed that has been allowed to run rampant for nearly a decade.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/business/18subprime.html
[2] Ibid.

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