Striking Verizon Workers Are an Example to Us All | The Nation

The Verizon Corporation is asking its workforce to accept wage and benefit reductions—despite being a very profitable company. Morgan Stanley’s recent analysis shows Verizon’s net income from ongoing operations was $13.9 billion in 2010, up more than 16 percent from 2007. No wonder Verizon’s stock has outpaced that of the S & P index and other telecommunication’s firms, something Verizon itself brags about in its last annual report. How, then, can Verizon freeze current workers’ pensions and eliminate pensions for new workers? Ask their workers to accept reductions in holidays (to seven), reduced sick pay and the substitution of the current health plan with one having high deductibles and contributions? The unions involved estimate that benefit and wage reductions would total $20,000 per worker each year.

Meanwhile corporate profits are doing just fine. Those artificial persons, remember them? Heck, we don’t need robots from the future to wage war on us. Corporate robots are doing it right now.

What we have is  an economy in which businesses and highest-income households do very well even when the vast majority is deeply hurting. Over the last four quarters only 73.7% of the income generated in the corporate sector went to employees in wages and benefits, the lowest share since during World War 2, when wages were deliberately suppressed. Correspondingly, the 26.3% share of corporate output going to profits is the highest since the World Was 2 years.

via Striking Verizon Workers Are an Example to Us All | The Nation.