<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/weekinreview/03uchitelle.html> September 3, 2006 Here, Take Back Some of My Pay, It's Too Much By LOUIS UCHITELLE
A number is missing. No one knows how many American workers have agreed to accept, however reluctantly, a cut in their wages or benefits or both in recent years. The government tracks unemployment, job creation, layoffs, hours worked, average hourly pay and various other aspects of employment. But it doesn't add up the number of people who have forfeited big chunks of their pay and benefits, and neither do unions or academic researchers. That was true of layoffs until the early 1980's, when the Rust Belt experience, and the devastating loss of blue-collar factory jobs, became a political issue. Congress, in response, asked the Bureau of Labor Statistics to count the layoffs in national surveys. The tally: at least 30 million full-time workers have been laid off over more than two decades. Keeping a job, but losing 15 or 20 percent of a salary and most of a pension, is a painful experience — and certainly not good for consumer spending. Still, there has not been enough political pressure for an accurate count of those affected. That is partly because many workers and unions have agreed to the concessions to preserve jobs. Is there a ballpark number? Piecing together union data shows that it is probably above two million people in this decade alone. But no one knows. The concessions, for example, are particularly noticeable now among pilots and flight attendants at troubled airlines. Unions representing these workers, however, do not keep a running tally, and the same is true for workers at tire factories, supermarkets and auto parts plants, to name just three areas going through the experience. "None of our earnings surveys show these concessions," said Thomas L. Nardone, an assistant commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "We just don't track that number." -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
