For U.S. workers, anxious times

The UAW contract struggled with thorny issues facing the entire workforce.

By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 2, 2007 edition

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A landmark labor contract reached last week carries a message that goes beyond Detroit and its struggling carmakers: From healthcare costs to global competition, American workers are looking for new answers, not just the status quo.

The central problem remains the same one that launched the labor movement in the first place: whether workers are getting their fair share of a growing economy.

In the heyday of American industrial might, the United Auto Workers set a standard for the rest of the economy with their pay and benefit victories. Now, with the auto industry on the ropes, the latest UAW deal may be a bellwether of tough choices in leaner times, as the union and General Motors Corp. found innovative approaches to pay raises, job security, and funding for retiree medical care.

The rest of America – with a private-sector workforce that is now 92 percent nonunion – won't be looking to replicate that agreement at any bargaining table. But for workers nationwide, similar issues of job guarantees are at stake, and pressure is on employers and government to find solutions.

"The disconnect between [economic] growth and living standards is something that's very much in the public debate," says Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington, D.C. "It's been a period of great productivity growth," he says, but "workers ... have some of the least clout of anyone in this economy."

Even in relatively good times, the ingredients of labor anxiety are very visible.

In recent years, per-hour productivity has grown faster than hourly compensation – pay and benefits – for US workers, according to government data tracked by the institute. Moreover, an increasingly large share of income has been flowing to upper-income Americans. The bottom 80 percent of households saw their share of the pie decline since the 1980s, according to research by the investment firm Merrill Lynch.

The pattern extends beyond the United States. In Japan, the European Union, and in many developing nations, the trend toward income inequality is the same.

This doesn't mean that the world's workers are on the verge of revolt.

In general, people with jobs are satisfied with them. And as much as ever, they know that their prosperity is linked to that of their employers. But concerns about health insurance, job security, and living standards are widespread.

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