Time to put workers first

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/essays/article996659.ece

By Cindy Hall, Special to the Times
In Print: Thursday, April 30, 2009

Our nation stands ready to emerge from the modern-day era of the Robber Baron. For three decades, we've valued corporate profit over people and CEO pay over people's pocketbooks. We've put up pedestals for Wall Street tycoons while building barriers for working people.

The results of this idiocy are now clear. In Florida, we have a whopping 9.7 percent unemployment rate which may jump over 10 percent in the very near future. The bankers and investors asked us to bend the regulatory rules and then drove the banks and our housing market into the ground.

In 1979, the wealthiest Americans controlled less than 10 percent of our nation's wealth. They now control nearly a quarter of it. CEOs brought home an average $10 million last year and got more perks than ever. The last time we knew this kind of income disparity was before the Great Depression.

If you're a working person in this country, you work harder than your parents did and you're worse off. Productivity is up 70 percent since the 1970s, but real wages are shrinking. In fact, if the real wages of Florida's workers had kept pace with gains in productivity since 1980, the workers would have brought home an average 24 percent more each week last year. Americans work longer hours than people in any other industrialized nation, including Japan.

We need to bring balance back to a system where wealthy CEOs are rewarded even if they fail, while the rest of us struggle. We need policy solutions that rebuild the middle class and allow everyone the chance to share in America's promise. Workers need real change. The Employee Free Choice Act will be crucial to that change.

A union card is the single best middle-class support in our country. When workers have the power to negotiate with their employers, they're able to bargain for their fair share of wages and benefits. Union workers are more likely to have health care, pensions and better job security. Communities with higher percentages of union workers have higher standards of living. Studies from the Economic Policy Institute show that the increased buying power of a unionized work force helps to stimulate demand for businesses.

In fact, a solid majority of Americans support legislation that would make it easier for workers to join and form unions, according to a recent Gallup poll.

FULL story at link.