Quote of the Day
'Mr. Obama also needs to inspire Americans who have been ground down by the
economic crisis and Washington's small-bore sniping. He needs to rally the
nation around a big idea - a project that is worth sacrificing for, worth
paying for, worth working for.One that lets them know that there is more
ahead than just a return to a status quo of lopsided growth in which
corporate profits surge while jobs and incomes lag.
'... Mr. Obama and his economic team had clearly hoped for an economic
rebound in time for the midterm elections. They are not going to get it. The
economic damage they inherited was too deep, and the economic stimulus they
pushed through Congress, for all of the fight, was too small. Standing back
is not doing the country or his party any good. We believe Americans are
ready for hard truths and big ideas.'
Editorial
New York Times
August 29, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/2cfuavz
***
Labor Day Heroes
By Dick Meister
Let's pause for a moment this Labor Day to recognize some of our most
important, yet most maligned workers.
They're teachers and librarians, police officers andfirefighters. They're
bus drivers, doctors and nurses.Judges and lawyers, landscape gardeners and
arborists.They're laborers and other maintenance and construction workers .
They are, of course, public employees. There are millions of them, who every
day perform many thousands of the essential tasks that keep our country
going.
It is they who keep our streets and highways, our parks and playgrounds safe
and clean, who help educate our children, provide emergency health care,
convey us to our jobs and back home, who sometimes risk their very lives to
protect us from harm.
Yet for all that, public employees have come under heavy bipartisan attacks
by political leaders and would-be leaders who find them an easy target to
blame for the budget shortfalls that beset government at all levels. Labor
costs, after all, make up the bulk of government spending everywhere.
The politicians and too many others who benefit from the public employees'
services - and, in fact, demand the services - say public employees are
paid too much and their fringe benefits are way too generous, especially
their pensions.
The employees' pay and benefits were in most cases the result of democratic
give-and-take collective bargaining and are guaranteed in union contracts
that their government employers agreed to, sometimes after a long and
difficult struggle by the workers.
But that was then, this is now. This is a time to make scapegoats of public
employees, to shift the blame for economic troubles to them.
Public servants they were then, but public enemies they are now in many
quarters, where they're characterized as overpaid and underworked members of
greedy and much too economically and politically powerful unions. Their
unions are now in the vanguard of the labor movement, growing larger and
stronger while other unions shrink, and becoming serious new threats to
anti-labor forces on Wall Street and elsewhere that seek profit from the
work of others in private and public employment alike.
There's no legitimate reason for any government entity to finance operations
at the expense of its employees, whose jobs are among the nation's most
important, or to deny them much deserved pay and benefit increases. There's
plenty of money available to cover the costs.
And where is that treasure trove to be found? Where else but in
money-hungry corporate America. It's simple. Repeal the huge tax cuts that
President Bush and his corporation-loving, union-hating Republican
colleagues bestowed on their wealthy friends.
That would bring in an estimated $3.75 trillion over the next ten years and
just about erase the federal budget deficit. But that's not going to happen
as long as Republicans retain enough votes in Congress to wage a filibuster.
GOP leaders would rather try to reduce the deficit by such outrageous steps
as raising the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 70, and thus deny
much-needed benefits to millions of the working class Americans who we honor
on Labor Day.
None are more deserving of our appreciation, none more deserving of being
honored than the men and women who do the work of government that benefits
us all.
Happy Labor Day.
____________________
Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based columnist, has
covered labor and politics for a half-century as a
reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him
through his Web site, www.dickmeister.com
***
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/03
FDR's Labor Day Plea Resonates Today
by Sarah Anderson
CommonDreams.org: September 3, 2010
On the eve of Labor Day in 1936, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned
in his "Fireside Chat" of a potentially dangerous surge in class divisions
if more was not done to support ordinary workers.
For FDR, providing the opportunity to labor for a "decent and constantly
rising standard of living" was fundamental to a healthy democracy.
"The Fourth of July commemorates our political freedom," he said. "Labor Day
symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average
man which will give his political freedom reality."
This year, our economy is similar to 1936 in at least one way. A rebound
from crisis is evident in many indicators - except those most important to
working families. When FDR delivered that radio address, unemployment was
down from the peak of the Great Depression but still a painful 17 percent.
Our current jobless recovery is even more unfair by one particular measure:
paychecks for the guys at the top of the corporate ladder. After adjusting
for inflation, CEO pay at the top 50 U.S. companies was eight times higher
in 2009 than it was in 1936.
What's even more outrageous is that the executives who are cutting the most
jobs are also getting the biggest payouts. According to a new report by my
organization, the Institute for Policy Studies, CEOs of the 50 firms that
have laid off the most workers since the onset of the crisis took home
nearly $12 million on average in 2009. That's 42 percent more than the
average for CEOs of S&P 500 firms as a whole.
Each of the 50 firms surveyed cut at least 3,000 jobs between November 2008
and April 2010. Seventy-two percent of the companies announced mass layoffs
at a time when they were earning profits.
These numbers all reflect a broader trend in Great Recession-era Corporate
America: CEOs are squeezing workers to boost short-term profits and fatten
their own paychecks.
William Weldon of Johnson & Johnson, for example, announced 8,900 job cuts
in 2009. His compensation package that year was so large - $25.6 million -
that it could have covered the cost of nine weeks of average unemployment
benefits for all the workers he fired.
Many investors would point to the pharmaceutical company's $12.3 billion in
profits last year as proof that Weldon is worth every penny. But such mass
layoffs tend to have serious long-term costs, not just for workers who lose
their jobs, but also for the corporations that fire them.
Beyond the immediate blow to morale for remaining employees, companies that
slash their workforces often face higher costs down the road related to
hiring and training new employees. A University of Colorado survey of S&P
500 firms over nearly two decades found no evidence that downsizing leads to
increased returns on assets.
Seventy-four years ago, Roosevelt ended his Labor Day address by declaring
that the needs of all American workers "are one in building an orderly
economic democracy in which all can profit and in which all can be secure
from the kind of faulty economic direction which brought us to the brink of
common ruin."
Roosevelt's pro-worker policies helped lay the foundation for several stable
decades with relatively narrow income gaps during the post-World War II
period. As we struggle to recover from the worst crisis since FDR's day,
let's
put the focus back on what's good for working families. The Great Recession
will only be over when the nation is back to work.
Sarah Anderson is a co-author of the new Institute for Policy Studies
report, Executive Excess 2010: CEO Pay and the Great Recession.
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