Business People are Prospering, but Workers are Languishing
The DOW is rising and journalists are happily announcing that business is improving. The business cycle IS on its way up. This means, pundits say, that happy days will soon be here. Yes, they will be here, and have been here, for business owners and corporations. But not for people who work for a living. The prospects for workers, both skilled and unskilled, are grim.
Recently the number of unemployed in the workforce fell to a pretty good 5.9%. But this measure does not include those who are underemployed and those who have been discouraged from seeking employment due to the fact that they could not find a job after months, sometimes years, of searching. Add these folks and the number of unemployed rises to 9.7%.
This is not all. Some people have full-time jobs, but do not make enough to support their families. This is a disgrace. These unfortunate folks, the working poor, represent 4.9% of the labor force. Add them to the 9.7% unemployed and you get 14.6%. In other words, almost 15% of the labor force is struggling and cannot make ends meet.
This is not the end of the story either. Wages of the vast majority of workers in the U.S. have been stagnating. From the business point of view this is wonderful since inflation is down. But for workers, both skilled and unskilled, it is tragic.
One big reason why wages are down is that business owners and corporations let workers know that it may not be hard to transfer operations overseas.
The number of companies actually transferring operations overseas is escalating. Why pay an unskilled worker $20 per hour when you can get workers for 20 cents per hour, or even per day, in China, Vietnam or Bangladesh?
Work transfer overseas is not limited to unskilled workers. It is happening to highly skilled workers too. Here's a sign of the times: IBM, which at one time had a policy of no layoffs, is laying off WHITE-COLLAR workers and transferring their jobs overseas. Bob Hebert quotes an IBM executive:
"I think probably the biggest impact to employee relations and to the H.R. field is this concept of globalization. It is rapidly accelerating, and it means shifting a lot of jobs, opening a lot of locations in places we had never dreamt of before, going where there's low-cost labor, low-cost competition, shifting jobs offshore."
What does Bush do? He offers tax cuts for business. This makes business stronger. What happens to workers in America? They face a sad future.
The future of the working man and woman can be mitigated only with legislation benefiting workers. Don't expect that from Bush. Elect a Democrat to the White House in 2004.
