Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wages war on middle class

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's editorial board is waging an unrelenting attack on Wisconsin's middle class.

While supporting an extension of all of the Bush era tax cuts, including for those making over $250,000, it continues to demand more cuts in Milwaukee County workers' very modest wages and benefits.

In a recent editorial the editorial board opinied: Private employees have been required to take pay cuts, furlough days, cuts in their companies' contributions to retirement benefits and have made other sacrifices. They see no reason why public employees shouldn't feel some of the pain. That's one of the messages voters sent Tuesday. Union leaders and county supervisors who fail to recognize that have blinders on.

Surely the MJS editorial board knows that County workers are already saddled with 26 furlough days, an avergae salary cut of $5,000 annually.

And surely the editorial board knows that more than one thousand middle class County jobs have been eliminated, including 65 layoffs last year, contributing to Milwaukee's soaring poverty rate which the board routinely bemoans.

It is gross dishonesty for the MJS editorial board to imply that County employees and other public sector workers haven't made sacrifices because they have.

The MJS editorial board has consistently supported demands for employee concessions by firms like Mercury Marine and Harley Davidson without ever exploring whether the firms' financial position requires these concessions. Now that private sector employees have been forced to accept the destruction of their middle class wage and benefit structures that took generations to build, the editorial board is using these concessions to whipsaw public sector employees into even more concessions.

But to imply as the editorial did that County workers haven't made concessions is either dishonest journalism or misinformed reporting.

Either way, the MJS editorial board is waging a dishonest and one-sided class war against the state's hard working, middle class while urging tax breaks for millionaires.

How much do middle class workers need to give up to satisfy the MJS editors?

How much of a pay cut is enough?

Harley Davidson demands concessions because it can!

Jack Norman, the research director for the Institute for Wisconsin's Future and a former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel economics reporter, asks:

Was Harley forced by market conditions to demand enormous cuts in jobs, wages and benefits? Or was it a deliberate strategy to take advantage of the economic crisis?

His answers suggest that many large corporations are using the threat to relocate to secure significant labor cost reductions not because the market requires them, but because they can.

Norman's analysis is linked here.

Recession hits Milwaukee as firms lay off workers

The US economy has shed 300,000 private sector jobs over the past three months.

Wisconsin lost 8,600 manufacturing positions last year and 9,600 private sector jobs in total.

And things appear to be getting worse.

Yesterday, Harley Davidson announced it will lay off 730 employees, including hundreds at its Milwaukee facilities where just a few year ago workers agreed to concessions in an effort to secure work.

Midwest Express is eliminating 109 positions, 3.5% of its workforce.

Briggs and Stratton might halt the production of small engines in May if the market for lawn and garden equipment continues to sag.

For those left working, workweeks and wages are being reduced.

4.9 million workers are now employed in part-time positions because they cannot find full time employment!

The New York Times reports today that:

The gradual erosion of the paycheck has become a stealth force driving the American economic downturn. Most of the attention has focused on the loss of jobs and the risk of layoffs. But the less-noticeable shrinking of hours and pay for millions of workers around the country appears to be a bigger contributor to the decline, which has already spread from housing and finance to other important areas of the economy.

While official unemployment has risen only modestly, to 5.1 percent, the reduction of wages and working hours for those still employed has become a primary cause of distress, pushing many more Americans into a downward spiral, economists say...

Last month, the hours worked by those on American payrolls dropped, compared with six months earlier, according to an index maintained by the Labor Department. The last time the index moved into negative territory was February 2001, when the economy was on the doorstep of recession. A similar slide emerged in August 1990, one month into what proved an even more severe downturn.

And on Wednesday, the government reported that average earnings slipped in March after accounting for the rising costs of food and fuel — the sixth consecutive month that pay failed to keep pace with inflation.

As people bring home paychecks that do not go as far, they are forced to economize, eliminating demand for goods and services that once captured their dollars, spreading pain to providers like auto dealers and lawn care providers. They, too, must trim their outlays on pay, shrinking working hours more and furthering the slowdown

Immediate federal action is required to help those who are losing jobs and income and to reinvigorate the economy.

A basic stimulus package would include extending unemployment benefits, which currently lapse after twenty-six weeks, and providing assistance to the twenty-five states that are facing budget deficits. The time to act is now!