Major firms implementing a strategy to permanently drive down wages far below anything middle class

[Better Believe It]

Firms See Long-Sought Goal in Sight: Major Pay Cuts Through Two Tiers
By Roger Bybee
November 24, 2010

The outlines of a massive new structural downshift in wages are merging more and more clearly.

The largest wage-cutting wave since the Great Depression has already been sweeping the United States for the last couple years in response to the Great Recession. At small firms, many of these pay cuts have been viewed as a temporary means of reducing costs until the recession is fully ended.

The pervasiveness of this trend leads much of the public to assume large corporations are merely seeking the same temporary relief as small firms when they demand concessions in high-profile negotiations. The workers' pay will surely rise back to previous levels when the situation improves for the company, as occurred during the 1980s, right?

Not this time around.The recession camouflages a far more insidious and long-lasting corporate strategy: Instead of temporary pay cuts to get through a few tough months, major corporations have something very, very different in mind.

These firms are systematically implementing a major strategy to permanently drive down wages far below anything considered "middle class." The key tool for corporations: forcing acceptance of permanent two-tier wage structures and the insertion of nonunion casual workers into union plants to drive down union pay to levels unimaginable a couple years back. Big business is essentially trying to take back the hard-won gains of working people won over generations.

Read the full article at:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6694/firms_see_long-sought_goal_in_sight_major_pay_cuts/

[leveymg]

1. One-two punch. This and a permanent transfer of operations offshore by Multinationals.

A race to the middle in terms of global wage structures, which is far below the U.S. middle-class standard.

[EarthFirster]

13. Romney was Mr. OUTSOURCE!

Thats why Poppy Bush luvs him. The Blue Bloods are getting their way.

[ItNerd4life]

2. It's why executive pay and employee pay need to be linked

Executives only get raises if employees do, and if employees pay gets cut so does the executives.

It takes away the issue of rich getting richer, poor getting poorer.

Also, must link executive pay to keeping jobs in America.

[postulater]

4. And corporations that are publicly traded must actually

share a portion of their stock with the community they extract their labor from.

They will be owned partly by the community and will be less able to move.

Like the Green Bay Packers, a community-owned *Socialist* team.

[postulater]

3. Isn't this how HarleyDavidson was kept in Milwaukee?

The workers agreed to stuff like this to keep their jobs.

[Better Believe It]

7. Yes. As the article points out:

As I reported on this site in various articles, the two-tier trend has emerged this year in Wisconsin at Mercury Marine (see here, here, and here) and Harley-Davidson (here, here, and here) and was demanded at the Kohler Corp. (here and here.) In each case, the powerful threat of relocating jobs provides the corporations overwhelming leverage to impose their low-wage vision of the future for working people.

At Harley, as Uchitelle notes, "The Milwaukee agreement, recently ratified, will shrink the full-time payroll to 900 from 1,250 today and more than 1,600 before the recession. Up to 250 “casuals”...will be used to handle surges in demand for Harley bikes."

Mercury Marine, Harley-Davidson and Kohler have been pursuing a more advanced form of what many other firms have achieved. For example, new workers at GM and Chrysler are making just $14.50 an hour for grueling work on the assemblyline. Caterpillar also has imposed a two-tier wage system after long-running wars with the UAW in the 1990s, as has Delphi.

Expect the downward wage spiral to continue under relentless pressure from corporations who see an endless surplus army of labor with 9.6% unemployment and benefits running out for two million in Deember.

For example, "Toyota 's goal has become $12.64 an hour, the median wage for comparable manufacturing in Kentucky, where it has its largest plant, or $10.79 in Alabama, where it is building a new plant," reports UC-Berkeley Prof. Harley Shaiken, a long-time scholar on labor issues and the auto industry.

[postulater]

11. Guess I should read the article.

Thanks.

[postulater]

12. Guess I should read the article.

Thanks.

[Andy823]

5. All part of the republican plan!

The right has always wanted cheaper labor, and since the days of Reagan they have been doing everything they can to make sure there will be a source of cheap labor, and they could start driving down the wages of american workers. Off shoring, no enforcement of immigration laws, Bush taking the economy into the worst crisis since the great depression, all working towards the goal of lowering wages in this country! What the right wing voters fail to see when they vote for republicans is that sooner or later "their" wages will also drop, they will lose their health insurance, homes, cars, retirement investments, etc. and be forced to work for much lower wages than they are used to. For some reason they seem to ignore the facts because right now many of them still have good jobs, health insurance and are still making pretty good wages. It's the old idea that they got theirs and so the hell with the rest of the country! Of course when it finally hits them they will simply buy into the right wing lies and blame it all on the "democrats"! It's a sad sight to see so many people so gullible that they can't see the truth when it's right in front of their faces!

[Better Believe It]

6. Shouldn't Democratic politicians fight this, austerity and cuts so they won't be blamed?

[katnapped]

8. Nope, because they're on the same team n/t

[fascisthunter]

9. "what a bunch of conspiracists you all are..." truns out we were right

again...


why is the right called the right when they are always wrong? Hmmmmm.... can you say poser?

[moondust]

10. Permanent state of corporate feudalism/slavery.

Thanks to every dumb American who has voted for the Big Business Party of Reagan, Bush, and the union busters.

Did Nixon really go to China for the cheap labor?

:puke:

[Better Believe It]

14. Shouldn't the pro "working class" Democratic Party fight against the cuts. Have they, will they?

We're all patiently waiting!