CEOs vs. Slaves

by Barbara Ehrenreich

Recent findings shed new light on the increasingly unequal terrain of American society. Starting at the top executive level: You may have thought, as I did, that the guys in the C-suites operated as a team -- or, depending on your point of view, a pack or gang -- each getting his fair share of the take. But no, the rising tide in executive pay does not lift all yachts equally. The latest pay gap to worry about is the one between the CEO and his -- or very rarely her -- third in command.

According to a just-reported study by Carola Frydman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Raven E. Saks at the Federal Reserve, thirty to forty years ago, the CEOs of major companies earned 80 percent more, on average, than the third-highest-paid executives. By the early part of the twenty-first century, however, the gap between the CEO and the third in command had ballooned up to 260 percent...

Why is it so hard for the people at the top to graciously acknowledge their dependency on the labor of others? We need some sort of gravitational force to counter the explosive distancing brought about by greed -- before our economy imitates the universe and blows itself to smithereens.

The Innovation Manifesto

Nothing grates on nerves quite like corporate-speak. It's the lingo of Type A suits everywhere, proselytizing to the inspirationally challenged while exploiting their own clip-art fetishes...

Over all, this "manifesto" uses the word innovation upwards of sixty times, defined... as "creativity applied with intention to create value." I think that means attempting to co-opt everything that's great, wring whatever money is possible out of it, and then move on to the next fad like a swarm of well-tailored locusts. By the time I got to the 25th use of the word "innovation," and was only on page three -- I was ready to proclaim that I did not think that word means what [the author] thinks it means.


Okay, quick. A show of hands where this sounds a little too familiar?

Barbarians in charge

The end of the world begins not with the barbarians at the gate, but with the barbarians at the highest level of state. -- Nigerian novelist Ben Okri

The Enthusiastic Employee (Um, they're all gone)

The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want
By: David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind, and Michael Irwin Meltzer
Publisher: Wharton School Publishing
Pub Date: January 2005

Employee enthusiasm can be an invaluable asset to a business, but 90% percent of employees become indifferent to their workplace over time, says this trio of management experts. How do they know? They’ve surveyed over four million workers in 89 countries over the past 30 years to find out (although conclusions in the book are drawn from research conducted between 1993 and 2003). So, what are the lucky ten percent of companies doing right? They’re meeting the three goals that the vast majority of employees desire at work: equity, achievement and camaraderie. And those goals go for all workers, whether they’re baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, or Gen D (digital). While explaining just what those terms mean, the authors provide plenty of examples of management doing things right: Former Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill (later became the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury) met with hourly workers in the plant and gave them his home number so that they could call him if there were safety problems. Nordstrom’s employee handbook has one rule: “Use your good judgment in all situations.” Now there’s an organization that respects its workers. Numerous quotations from employees surveyed keep things brisk and absorbing. Bottom line: pure good sense on how to keep employees happy and productive. -- from Amazon.com review

Unemployment edged upward in April

"Unemployment edged upward in April and job creation fell to the lowest pace in two years, an expected sign that slow economic growth is starting to take a toll on the country's labor market.

As Wall Street digested a spate of merger talks... new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the unemployment rate rose to 4.5 percent, from 4.4 percent in March...

Overall the economy added 88,000 jobs during the month, a tepid performance compared to the 129,000 jobs added on average so far this year and the 189,000 jobs per month added in 2006. Continued job losses in the manufacturing and retail sectors were offset by continued hiring in the health-care industry and by the government."

Quote

"This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector." -- Plato

Happy "Loyalty Day"

"The holiday was first observed in 1921 as 'Americanization Day,' and was intended to counterbalance the celebration of the Labour Day on May Day — May 1, which was perceived as communist. -- Wikipedia

Beware whenever any Orwellian anti-communist initiative tries to crowd out what we assume is a normal celebration.

Americans Forget the Story Behind May Day

"May Day: The holiday of the workers. In days gone by, when men, women and children often worked 10 or more hours a day, seven days a week, May Day was an assertion on the part of wage-slaves that they were sovereign human beings with control over their own lives and destinies. They celebrated the day with marches of tens and hundreds of thousands throughout the world.

May Day was an expression of the international solidarity of the working class. 'Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains,' was not just a slogan. It was a battle cry in the war between classes. Their marches and rallies, with fiery speeches, impassioned poetry and stirring anthems, gave them a sense of their collective strength. It was an act of defiance of the combined forces of employers and public authorities. Often their gatherings were brutally attacked by police or thugs with clubs and guns.

Many of us have grandparents or great-grandparents who participated in these observances. Few of us acknowledge or are even aware of this inspiring part of our family histories. We Americans suffer from mass amnesia of the remarkable and some times glorious history of workers' struggles for liberty of expression and social justice. Who now remembers May Day?"

See the entire story by linking onto the title line above.