All workers don’t receive the wealth they create

Coming at the end of the summer (especially with our all-too-short Maine summer), Labor Day means a last time to enjoy the beach, barbecue, or perhaps a time for Labor Day specials and getting ready to go back to school.

However, the story and meaning of Labor Day have been largely lost for many of us. The first Labor Day parade was held in New York City in 1882. Workers organized together to celebrate their labor and call for fair treatment. Many signs in the parade simply stated “Labor Creates All Wealth.”

What is wealth? Essentially, it is goods and services. So it’s the clothing on our back, or the house we live in or the televisions we watch. It’s also those services we enjoy such as eating out, watching a movie, receiving medical care or financial advice. All these products or services are directly created by the labor of workers.

Just to say workers create all wealth doesn’t mean they receive it all. And here lies the importance of Labor Day. Labor Day is to appreciate and respect those who create our society’s wealth. Its also a time to reflect on questions like: How much wealth does labor receive these days? Is it fair? Is that good for America?

At this point in time in America, the reality hasn’t been good for workers. Workers have witnessed job loss pay cuts, and loss of benefits, while corporate profits are up 28.4 percent (real annualized after-tax corporate profits).

In the past several years the pay and benefits for millions of jobs have been cut perhaps without any historical parallel. Take, for instance, Saucony Shoe in Bangor, where workers received approximately $8 to $12 an hour, with decent benefits. Considering health insurance and benefits, the full wage would be on the order of $15 to $20 an hour.

In December 2001, Saucony moved its production to its new plant in China. Though detailed information from China is hard to come by, wages and benefits average less than 50 cents an hour. The pay and benefits for that job at Saucony has now been cut an astounding 3,000 percent pay.

This outsourcing of jobs, i.e. slashing labor costs, has occurred throughout Maine and across the nation. Dexter Shoe has moved nearly a thousand jobs out of Maine to China, in part to its facility there. In Bangor Osram Sylvania is currently moving production to Mexico.

Since January 2001, across the United States, we have lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, many of them to outsourcing overseas. Now, white-collar jobs are going as not only transportation, but also communication technology shrink the globe. We have fewer jobs today than we did in January 2001.

Nationwide new jobs in growing industries pay 25 percent less than the outsourced industries, while in Maine for those lucky enough to find a new job, the pay is on average 27.6 percent less. Making it worse, from 2001 to 2004 workers’ share of family health care premiums has increased by nearly 50 percent.

This is horrible, no? But according to “The Economic Report of the President, 2004,” “When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to provide it domestically.”

The question is, it makes more sense to whom – the worker who produces that good or service or the person who profits from that work? And what are workers to think when a presidential report declares this is good? (If these words sound like engaging in class warfare, they aren’t. Supporting the export of American jobs is.)

Just before Labor Day, on Aug. 23, President Bush’s new rules on overtime went into effect. These rules could mean the end of overtime for more than 6 million workers according to the Economic Policy Institute. Three of the highest-ranking Department of Labor officials under Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton have issued a report that condemned the Bush administration’s new overtime rule, saying that it “fails to protect and promote the interest of working people in the United States…”

Labor creates all wealth. All the goods and services that we enjoy – from cars and roads to day care to schools – are all created and provided for by workers. Labor Day is a day to honor and appreciate work and the people who do it. Back in 1882, the organizers of that parade could scarcely imagine that their work would help bring to America the weekend, pensions, child work laws, Medicare, Medicaid, family and medical leave and all the other worker benefits. We have come a long way, but recently we have begun to slide backward and we need to recommit to our cause as it’s both right and necessary today.

Today, at 3 p.m., at the Greater Bangor Area Central Labor Council Solidarity Center, we will hold a Labor Day celebration featuring fellow worker and congressman Mike Michaud, followed by a potluck picnic with food from our Union Supported Agriculture program, which supports local farms and unions while keeping money in our local economy and providing healthy fresh food. These events are open to the general public.

Jack McKay is president of the Greater Bangor Area Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO.