Is your boss stealing from you?

by Ken

This morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report with the thrill-packed title:

PRODUCTIVITY AND COSTS

Third Quarter 2009, Revised

As soon as I see phrases like "Nonfarm business labor productivity" -- as it happens, the very first words of this report -- I know this isn't my kind of reading, especially when, by the end of the sentence, I'm being referred to "tables A and 2." So you can either read it for yourself or trust my reduction (call it "Nonfarm Labor Productivity for Boobs") to this:

In the third quarter of 2009 productivity among us nonfarm workers increased at an 8.1 percent annual rate, owing to a combination of "a 2.9 percent increase in output and a 4.8 percent decline in hours worked." In the manufacturing sector, productivity grew a whopping 13.4 percent, from a combination of an 8.4 percent increase in output and a 4.4 percent drop in hours worked. These increases outstripped increases in payment to workers by enough to produce a drop in "unit labor costs" of 2.5 percent in nonfarm businesses and 6.1 (!) percent in the manufacturing sector.

[If you're on the edge of your seat for more news, please note: "The preliminary Productivity and Costs press release for fourth-quarter 2009 is scheduled to be released on Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 8:30 a.m. (EST)." Let's all set our watches.]

"So what?" you say. For an answer, let me turn the floor over to one of my favorite writers, Natasha Chart, in a Campaign for America's Future blogpost called "Your Boss Is Still Stealing From You":

American workers have been producing more, in less time, and not getting raises. In short, your boss is stealing from you.

Indeed, if the minimum wage had tracked productivity over the past 30 years, it would be $19/hour. That's how much our bosses have been stealing from us.

Get the picture?

They make more money off of your work and they don't share the increased returns. They invest money, you invest time and expertise, blood, sweat and tears, hours spent commuting and separations from your family. They get to realize a profitable return on their investment, you get to keep treading water and waiting for a ship that probably isn't coming.

They are stealing. From. You.

This is what it means to have organized labor in disarray, in retreat. This is what it means to have politicians in the pockets of the investor class, their donor classes, totally unaccountable to voters. This is what it means when both political parties are the property of the economic aristocracy. This is what it means when consumer debt obligations are sacrosanct, and business pension obligations aren't worth the paper they're written on. To paraphrase Anatole France, this is what it means when it's a crime to steal bread or sleep under a bridge, but not to crash the whole world's economy. It means they get to keep stealing from you, steal more over time, and can steal with impunity.

There are consequences to a lack of political power, to the working classes being too tired (all too understandably) to maintain civic participation, and these are them.

They get to steal from you and no one will stop them.

Now this kind of hits home for me, because my company has been hit badly by the economic meltdown. In my corner of the company, where we mostly publish magazines, it's done bad things to circulation and simply ghastly things toadvertising. I remember riding down in the elevator last fall with our advertising sales director, one of the most likable individuals you'll ever meet, and getting an inkling of what it was like dealing even with his regular clients. You may imagine how thrilled they were to hear from him. Nobody had any money to spend, or much hope that things would be much better in the next quarter.

And so in my office those of us who still have jobs (we had been through several rounds of staff slashings before the meltdown-related one) just soldier on, hoping for better times, with fewer and fewer soldiers to do the soldiering. In addition to the layoffs, we've noticied that whenever one of our number finds a better job elsewhere, that person isn't replaced. Somehow the job is supposed to get done, and indeed gets done, by the people who are left behind. This would correspond, as I understand it, to both conditions measured in the BLS statistics: a substantial drop in hours worked, and a notable increase in output from those of us still here.

I suppose to our bosses this proves that we were overstaffed before, if we can produce the same amount of work with so many fewer people. Another possibility is that we've been taken serious advantage of. Morale is, shall we say, not good.

The feeling, I guess, is that we're lucky to have jobs. I have a pretty good idea that management feels this way, and thinks we should be grateful to them for preserving our jobs. (For what it's worth, I haven't noticed any depletion in our managerial ranks. I wonder what their productivity stats look like.) In fairness, given the nature of our industry, our company was under substantial pressure before the meltdown. But the pattern with regard to labor costs seems consistent. The staff has shrunk considerably, and raises have been out of the question, at least for the people I know about.

If I don't like it, I guess I could quit.

Could this be the famous table A? Or maybe

table 2? I don't know, and I don't want

to know. I've already got a headache.

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