View Point
FOR most of us, Labor Day is a time to spend with our families, maybe have a picnic at the beach. It is easy to forget its purpose and background. Wages decline
while CEO
income zoomsPeter J. McGuire, founder of the Carpenters Union, felt it was important to have a day that recognized working men and women and their unions. After 31 states recognized it as a holiday, the federal government followed in 1894.
So, on this Labor Day -- as we relax and take the day off -- let's recognize and honor those who truly created our country's wealth: its workers. Let's also continue the effort to build an economy that works for everyone and not just for the rich.
It's easy to forget that the wages of millions of workers are lower than ever before, even though corporate profits are up, the stock market is booming and CEO compensation is through the roof.
According to Business Week magazine, the average CEO of a major corporation made 42 times the pay of a typical American factory worker in 1980. By 1990, that ratio had more than doubled to 85 times the average factory wage, and almost quintupled again to a staggering 419 times more in 1998.
If that rate were to continue, the average CEO would make the salary equivalent of more than 150,000 American factory workers in the year 2050.
What about worker pay? Over the past 20 years, American workers rose to the challenge of global competition and increased productivity 24 percent. Yet their wages went down by 15 percent.
More and more working people are looking to unions to protect their interests, to champion their values and to ensure that they have a voice in decisions that affect their lives.
With our unions as our voice, we pushed for a strong public school system, effective safety and health regulations, and the prepaid Health Act that guaranteed basic health insurance for all workers.
Unions also outlawed discrimination and harassment in the workplace, and guaranteed every worker a minimum wage and retirement with dignity. Generation after generation of workers were lifted out of poverty and into the middle class.
Yet there are those who say that unions are the problem to improving the economy, that they are no longer needed, that union "bosses" are too powerful.
Tell that to the 240 workers at Straub Clinic who faced delays, veiled threats and hostility from the hospital's new owner, Tennessee-based PhyCor.
What had these Straub employees done? Exercised their right to choose their own representative, and to be able to vote in a fair and free election.
This is nothing new. A recent study by Cornell University Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner revealed that 75 percent of private-sector employers opposed unions aggressively. Their tactics included firing union supporters, hiring anti-union consultants, threatening to eliminate all jobs if workers joined a union, and intimidating employees in one-on-one meetings.
In fact, 10,000 workers in the U.S. are fired each year for attempting to form unions, a right protected by law.
THE irony is that in workplaces where employees have a voice through their unions, labor-management relations are more stable, morale is higher, products and services are better and productivity is higher -- 16 percent higher, according to a new study by Tufts University and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
So as we enjoy a well-deserved holiday, let's take a moment to honor every working man and woman, acknowledge those before us who fought for the right to organize and renew our commitment to continue this struggle.
Eusebio Lapenia Jr. is president of
the Hawaii State AFL-CIO.