U.S. Real Wages Fall

A government report just out is confirming what most Americans are already feeling, a real bite on their wages.

Thanks to the rising cost of food, the latest Consumer Price Index showed its biggest jump since Feb. 2013, resulting in a drop in real hourly wages for workers last month. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also reported this week that real average hourly earnings for all U.S. workers fell 0.2% from April to May, seasonally adjusted.

Some are advocating raising the minimum wage as a way to boost wages but CWA President Larry Cohen, who also supports raising the minimum wage, says don't stop there. Raise wages for all American working and middle class families. Two main factors have pushed down wages for working and middle class workers, he said. Trade policies that have made many jobs and sectors "trade-able," meaning they can be done anywhere in the world, and the destruction of bargaining rights for most workers.

"One of the major factors that explains this wage stagnation is our approach to globalization that we call trade policy, which is not trade policy, it is investment policy," Cohen said.

Cohen says the way to solve that is, instead of bargaining away labor rights and protections for American workers, U.S. trade negotiators need to do what their counterparts in other industrialized nations do, bargain 21st Century trade deals that include protections for American workers and industries.

Corporations increasingly have a stranglehold on our elected officials, elections and public policy. That has resulted in a reactionary Congress and big money that pollutes our political process. For the long term, if we want to restore collective bargaining and fix our democracy to allow reform, Cohen urges a mass political movement to change the way our governments function now.

"Remember, we are the 99%," Cohen said, "which means there are more of us than there are of them."