If you feel like it*s becoming increasingly more difficult to make ends meet, well, that*s because i

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/commentary.cfm?ArticleID=9518

If you feel like it*s becoming increasingly more difficult to make ends meet, well, that*s because it is.

May 29, 2007

Although productivity has grown at a historically rapid pace over the last six years, the wages and compensation of the typical worker-even for those with a college degree-have not improved in several years.

Couple this with soaring gas prices, skyrocketing health care costs and mounting personal debt and we end up with a middle-class mess. Some folks, however, are doing just fine. A recent analysis of IRS data found that the top 300,000 earners in America now make as much for their labors as all of the bottom 150 million of their fellow citizens
combined.

To put it bluntly, while the have and have-mores of this country are making out like bandits, working-class people have been getting a shrinking piece of the economic pie. And for African-American families, that slice is even smaller.

The facts speak for themselves: Black family income is still only 60 percent that of the average family in America. African American workers are also less likely than whites to have employer-provided health insurance and pension plans. According to the Department of Labor, only 44% of African American male workers have any pension coverage at all,compared with 58% of white men.

For decades, unions have helped women and people of color bridge the wage gap and get ahead. Through the power of collective bargaining, union workers have been able to negotiate better pay, win access to health insurance and other benefits for themselves and their families.

In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of LaborStatistics, African American workers who belong to unions earn 36 percent more than their nonunion counterparts and are more likely to have employer-provided health coverage and pensions.

William Lucy is , founder of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU. He is one of the highest-ranking black labor leaders in the country.

FULL story at link.

[Fridays Child]

1. Didn't the American ruling class try this, once before?

And aren't some of the names the same, this time around?