by Leo Gerald
The jobs report Friday set off cheering: a quarter million positions added in December; unemployment declining to 5.6 percent. This good news arrived amid a booming stock market and a third-quarter GDP report showing the strongest growth in 11 years .
It’s all so very jolly, except for one looming factor: wages. They’re not rising. In fact, they fell in December by 5 cents an hour , nearly erasing the 6-cent increase in November.
Hard-working Americans need a raise. Their wages are stuck, rising only 10.2 percent over the past 35 years . Workers are producing more. Corporations are highly profitable. CEOs, claiming all the credit for that as if they did all of the work themselves, made sure their pay rose 937 percent over those 35 years. That’s right: 937 percent!
It doesn’t add up for workers who struggle more every year. Something’s gotta change. The AFL-CIO is working on that. It launched a campaign last week to wrench worker wages out of the muck and push them up.
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Know your enemy.
David DeGerolamo
Three enemies here, obviously the workers who marcyrumkaoh, demanding more despite failing to improve their skillset, offering nothing more to the market. Second, the bastard Trumka, who exploits them. Last, the corporations who, with Trumka, have sold out and denigrated our industrial base.
The biggest enemy is Leo Gerald.