PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH SQUEEZES LABOR
or
GREEDY CAPITALIST PIGS DRINK WORKERS' BLOOD

From the Los Angeles Times courtesy of Michael Moore.com:

But the hard work comes at a price, and the company's relentless efforts to cut costs hang over just about every worker.

Sales agents in Countrywide's Rosemead office are suing the company, saying they regularly put in overtime without pay. Other Countrywide workers in California have been warned that their jobs are likely to be transferred to states with laws less favorable to employees.

Countrywide also is accelerating plans to move operations offshore. By the end of next year, it will have 250 employees at a call center in India, each of whom will represent a savings of $35,000 over a U.S. worker.

Multiply Countrywide's example by thousands of hungry companies, and an explanation emerges for the nation's tremendous productivity gains in the last two years — as well as the toll on workers.

Employee productivity rose 4.2% in 2003, a jump Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan labeled "stunning." That was on top of a 4.9% gain in 2002. Together they marked the best back-to-back growth in worker output in five decades. The gains stoked corporate profits, which rose 10.3% in the second quarter of 2003 and 9.9% in the third.

Yet average wages barely budged. Many workers say they're pushed to put in additional hours without proper compensation. Some are retaliating in court.

For the rest, click here (and brave the LA Times annoying registration procedure--it's short and worth it).

The lawsuit angle is novel, but the really interesting thing about the article is the in depth look at how corporate productivity gains are coming, quite literally, at the expense of employees. Everyone already knows that it sucks to be unemployed: increasingly, it sucks to be employed, too.

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