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America’s Workers: Boxed In |
This is a crosspost from The Bonddad Blog. Click here for the full post.
Committee hearings on Capitol Hill focusing on the abuse of taxpayer funds, Iraq re-construction process and wrangling in the Senate over non-binding resolutions on Bush’s Iraq war have understandably taken center stage in recent media coverage. But there’s another set of congressional hearings under way equally as important for America’s workers.
Rep. George Miller, head of the House Committee on Education and Labor, on Jan. 23 launched hearings on Strengthening America’s Middle Class: Finding Economic Solutions to Help America’s Families.
The committee is considering three main items:
- Creating a competitive economy that includes good new jobs that pay well.
- Restoring workers’ rights—including their freedom to bargain for better wages and benefits.
- Making health care more affordable and accessible.
Or, as AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka summarized when the hearings reconvened Feb. 7:
Why, in the richest country in the world, is it so difficult for so many families to make a living by working?
It’s safe to say that in the Republican-controlled Congress of recent years, this committee—which under Republicans was renamed the Committee on Education and Economic Opportunities, in a deliberate slap at unions—never considered the growing economic distress of the middle class.
When hearings opened Jan. 23, William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., told committee members the economic recovery, which began six years ago, has not benefited working families. Instead it has meant more money for the rich while working people and the poor have seen their standard of living stall or drop.
One cause of the widening gap, says Spriggs, is the failure to raise the minimum wage for 10 years. But that’s only one source of the problem. Says Spriggs:
The other source is the redistribution of corporate income, from wages to capital income. The latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that the share of corporate-sector income going to wages is down to its lowest share in over 25 years….The latest CBO [Congressional Budget Office] figures show that almost 60 percent of capital income goes to the top 1 percent in the U.S. income distribution.
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3 Comments
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The graph says it all.
I realize politicians promise many things, but life has shown they only do what is best for them. For example, the fact that they have Medical and Retirement benefits that we can only dream of , and yet no matter which camp is in office they never make any inroads on getting us half of what they have.
Politics is run by the rich for the rich and we are but an after thought. We will never get all that we deserve because they are making sure they have as much as they can get and throw scapes to us.
One can not run for an office unless one has money, and they all have a greater agenda then the office they are running for, which we all know to be factual. Or, I would at least hope we realize how it works.
It would take a an act of God to have any one with the financial backing who would really stand up for the us..the people who truly keep this country moving.
Every company that makes cutbacks, crying they have to and really don’t want to, but have no choice, which means laying off the workers could avoid that by cutting back salaries and beneifits of top management, cutting back on limos and nonessentials, and save jobs, but GREED rules. They give us lip service, but the name of game is simply..THEY first and us…well let them eat cake!!
I don’t care which party is in becuase they still are out for themselves. The only thing with the Dems is they throw us a few more scrapes, but never what we shold have..but they make sure that their pay and beneifits and retirement is intact and grans.
Good stuff! Think the hearings will be reconvened?
Its so important to show that unions are the reason America has a middle class and the current attack on the middle class that has pushed most Americans in to dangerous precariousness is largely the product of the government allowing corporations to attack gains that unions won.