{"id":34784,"date":"2011-03-28T10:17:34","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T15:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=34784"},"modified":"2011-10-12T00:35:21","modified_gmt":"2011-10-12T05:35:21","slug":"moving-beyond-wisconsin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/03\/28\/moving-beyond-wisconsin\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving Beyond Wisconsin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The struggles in Madison have understandably focused attention on the wages and working conditions of public sector workers.\u00a0 Thankfully, it appears that these struggles have helped to promote greater solidarity between public and private sector workers.\u00a0 Now, we must build on this new solidarity to focus our collective energies on the bigger challenge: transforming a system that demands that workers (in both the public and private sector) accept ever worsening living and working conditions.<\/p>\n

As many involved in the Wisconsin struggles have pointed out, there is plenty of wealth being produced\u2014the problem is that those who are doing the producing are being increasingly denied access to it, both collectively and individually.\u00a0 For example, as the\u00a0Economic Policy Institute points out<\/a>:<\/p>\n

U.S. productivity grew by 62.5% from 1989 to 2010, far more than real hourly wages for both private-sector and state\/local government workers, which grew 12% in the same period. Real hourly compensation grew a bit more (20.5% for state\/local workers and 17.9% for private-sector workers) but still lagged far behind productivity growth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The\u00a0chart\u00a0below<\/a> highlights this development.\u00a0 As one can see, the real issue isn’t whether public sector workers make more or less than private sector workers (and the chart covers compensation which includes pay and benefits).\u00a0 Rather it is that workers together have been increasingly productive but\u00a0receving an increasingly smaller share of the fruits of their labor.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Those who are well place to benefit, those at the very top of the income scale, have of course done quite well.\u00a0\u00a0For example<\/a>, the richest 1% received 56% of all the income growth between 1989 and 2007 (before the start of the recession).\u00a0 By contrast the bottom 90% got only 16%.<\/p>\n

If we want to change this we are going to have to build a powerful political movement, one that is prepared to take on the powerful interests that are determined to keep spending on the military; privatizing our educational, health, and retirement systems; promoting corporate mobility; weakening labor laws; and confusing us all about\u00a0the causes of existing\u00a0trends.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our\u00a0Guidelines for Guest Bloggers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The struggles in Madison have understandably focused attention on the wages and working conditions of public sector workers.\u00a0 Thankfully, it appears that these struggles have helped to promote greater solidarity between public and private sector workers.\u00a0 Now, we must build on this new solidarity to focus our collective energies on the bigger challenge: transforming a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,29,36,85],"class_list":["post-34784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34784"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34793,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34784\/revisions\/34793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}