Wages Stagnate as U.S. Manufacturers Reap Record Profits

[NeoConsSuck]

Source: Bloomberg

Machinist Michael Pargeter reached for a reference to a TV cartoon set in the Stone Age to explain why union members were spurning a contract offer from Boeing Co. Wages would be set “back to the Flintstones era” with a plan to slow future raises for new employees, Pargeter, 62, said outside a Seattle union hall last week while ballots were being counted, referring to an animated television show about prehistoric family life.

Boeing’s quest for concessions and employees’ opposition exposed a fault line in U.S. industry’s post-recession comeback: Even with hiring and output robust enough to be dubbed a manufacturing renaissance by President Barack Obama, workers are falling behind. Factory pay hasn’t kept pace with inflation and has fallen 3 percent on that basis since May 2009, while average pay for all wage earners slid only about 1 percent.

“We need to focus on how many jobs there are that give an adult a chance to earn a decent living,” said Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center in Eugene. “Too much of the discussion has been about the number of jobs, and that’s obviously important, but there’s also a crisis in the quality of jobs.”

Boeing said it needed labor givebacks to keep the Seattle area as the home of the 777X jet, a new model with more than $95 billion in orders since September. Union workers said Boeing needed to share more of the wealth they help create.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-21/no-renaissance-for-u-s-factory-workers-as-pay-stagnates.html

---

The race to the bottom is alive and well in the USA.

[madrchsod]

1. alive and well since 1980!

usa!usa!usa!

[sakabatou]

2. Profit over people

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[Populist_Prole]

4. To the PTB this is a feature, not a bug

"What's good for XYZ company is good for you" isn't that way anymore. It's time that adage died a quick violent death.

[PSPS]

5. Boeing has been draining the state treasury for a long time

When the latest Boeing plea for $9 billion more in its corporate welfare was made, inquiries to the state asking just how much Boeing, a public company, actually was paying in state taxes (if any,) they were rebuffed because, well, "it's a secret." In other words, Boeing is just another Walmart where they pay no taxes plus get many billions of state funds to line their pockets.

When the CEO of Boeing retires, he will collect his pension of $260,000 -- PER MONTH.

Here's another tidbit: Washington has no income tax. That's why billionaire parasites like to live there. The only sources of income for the state are sales tax and, to a far lesser degree, property tax and "Business and Occupation" tax (a tax on gross income.) Boeing gets around paying any sales tax on the hundreds of billions in plane sales by using this sleight of hand: They fly the new plane outside the continental US, over the ocean, and "deliver" the plane there.

[Brigid]

7. Jesus.

Is there any company for which the phrase "business ethics" actually means anything?

[Laelth]

6. k&r for labor. n/t

-Laelth

[lastlib]

8. I say NO MORE wage concessions UNTIL the executives start making some sacrifices!

It's past time for this sh*t to END!!

.

[jtuck004]

9. So what's the alternative to Boeing moving their production to

Long Beach, Calif., Salt Lake City and Huntsville, Ala. or TeaParty-ville South Carolina?

What's the plan?

I remember talking with someone who was picketing outside the plant being shut down in one of Mi$$ RobMe's ventures. I asked what they would do, and they said they would move to the next plant that is shutting down.

Seems like a terrible strategy, sitting outside empty plants while the employers go exploit others with lower wage jobs, not paying the taxes we have traditionally relied on for schools and infrastructure, training, etc.

Those people are now jobless, some homeless, some dead. Stockholders doing very well, execs doing very well, country getting poorer and poorer.

I get the feeling that everyone is stuck in how they used to handle this in 1935, and haven't figured out a plan for 2013 yet.

[blkmusclmachine]

10. Savvy!