Stalin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
- Messages
- 2,277
Can we please have an intelligent discussion on this rather than the brainless manufactured consent that seems to dominate these forums. If all you can do is recycle cliche and name-call, please do not bother.
For a lesson on what is MC, please consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media
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The lead article in Friday’s New York Times business section, penned by Louis Uchitelle, praises the role of the US trade unions, in alliance with corporate management and the Obama administration, in implementing an historically unprecedented attack on the wages of US manufacturing workers.
The newspaper brings together data documenting the impoverishment of large swaths of manufacturing workers, focusing on the introduction of two-tiered wages at a General Electric plant in Louisville, Kentucky. The wages of new workers, the newspaper notes, “are $10 to $15 an hour less than the pay scale for hourly employees already on staff—with the additional concession that the newcomers will not catch up for the foreseeable future.”
The entry wage of unionized workers in auto, steel, tire and other basic manufacturing has fallen to as little as $12 an hour, which, based on a regular work week, just barely exceeds the official federal poverty level for a family of four (about $22,000).
Corporations throughout the country are bringing in younger workers at these wages, while pushing out older workers and slashing their benefits. The unit labor cost of manufacturing products has fallen 13.6 percent over the past decade, which, according to the Times, is the sharpest decline since the statistic was first tracked in 1951.
The Times stresses the role of the unions in facilitating this process. The newspaper quotes Gordon Pavy, president of the Labor and Employment Relations Association and, until this year, the director of collective bargaining at the AFL-CIO: “Some companies want to keep work here, or bring it back from Asia, but in order to do that they have to be competitive in the final prices of their products, and one way to be competitive is to lower the compensation of their American workers.”
The remarks of Pavy give voice to the unions’ calculated policy of assisting in the permanent reduction in wages of manufacturing workers, eventually bringing them on par with their counterparts in China and other countries. The well-paid union executives—Pavy himself made $122,000 on the AFL-CIO payroll last year—see this as a means of preserving their own dues base and proving their worth to corporate management.
more at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/wage-d31.shtml
Comrade Stalin
For a lesson on what is MC, please consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media
"
The lead article in Friday’s New York Times business section, penned by Louis Uchitelle, praises the role of the US trade unions, in alliance with corporate management and the Obama administration, in implementing an historically unprecedented attack on the wages of US manufacturing workers.
The newspaper brings together data documenting the impoverishment of large swaths of manufacturing workers, focusing on the introduction of two-tiered wages at a General Electric plant in Louisville, Kentucky. The wages of new workers, the newspaper notes, “are $10 to $15 an hour less than the pay scale for hourly employees already on staff—with the additional concession that the newcomers will not catch up for the foreseeable future.”
The entry wage of unionized workers in auto, steel, tire and other basic manufacturing has fallen to as little as $12 an hour, which, based on a regular work week, just barely exceeds the official federal poverty level for a family of four (about $22,000).
Corporations throughout the country are bringing in younger workers at these wages, while pushing out older workers and slashing their benefits. The unit labor cost of manufacturing products has fallen 13.6 percent over the past decade, which, according to the Times, is the sharpest decline since the statistic was first tracked in 1951.
The Times stresses the role of the unions in facilitating this process. The newspaper quotes Gordon Pavy, president of the Labor and Employment Relations Association and, until this year, the director of collective bargaining at the AFL-CIO: “Some companies want to keep work here, or bring it back from Asia, but in order to do that they have to be competitive in the final prices of their products, and one way to be competitive is to lower the compensation of their American workers.”
The remarks of Pavy give voice to the unions’ calculated policy of assisting in the permanent reduction in wages of manufacturing workers, eventually bringing them on par with their counterparts in China and other countries. The well-paid union executives—Pavy himself made $122,000 on the AFL-CIO payroll last year—see this as a means of preserving their own dues base and proving their worth to corporate management.
more at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/wage-d31.shtml
Comrade Stalin
