Forum Post: It's Labor Day, How's labor doing?

There is a real disturbing trend going on in America today that neither party seems to be doing much about; prosperous companies demanding major givebacks of their workers and outsourcing American jobs.This is going to end with with all of our children working for min wage and no benefits if working people don't wise up and start supporting each other.

22,000 AT&T workers were recently on strike because they didn't want their pensions robbed and their healthcare gutted. The company makes billions in profit and the CEO's salary is 25 million dollars a year.

Caterpillar is a prosperous company, The stock was surging ,but that didn't not seem to stop the corporate suits from demanding major givebacks of the employees. Pay freezes, pension freezes, it's all fair game. The Caterpillar employees were on strike for 3 months with barely a media story covering it. They finally had to agree to concessions rather than starve.

There was just a one month lockout at Con Edison, another prosperous company, where the 11 million dollar a year CEO locked out 8500 employees and immediately canceled their health insurance! Their stock was at an all time high but the executives still wanted givebacks related to pensions, healthcare, and other things.. Governor Cuomo had to step into the negotiations to shame the heartless executives into bargaining fairly and get people back to work.

Verizon may lock out 45,000 employees soon. The company is a money making machine. The top 5 executives have been paid 350 million dollars over the past 5 years yet they are demanding everything under the sun back from the employees. Pensions, healthcare, sicktime, overtime etc.... And they are sending lots of American jobs to India and the Philippines.

Seems to me profitable corporations are doing their best to kill the American middle class even as they enjoy tax breaks and get favorable legislation from the politicians that are supposed to be representing "the people". These politicians may find themselves on the wrong end of a pitchfork wielding mob soon if they don't stop siding with greedy SOB interests over working middle class American's interests. A disgrace.