Corporate Cuts Hurt Only the Employees

Reports about IBM, Northwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines and the American auto industry declaring the sky is falling while demanding concessions in salary, healthcare benefits and pensions from their employees are a powerful indication by any measure of a dangerous paradigm shift for America’s economic engine and the state of the middle class.

The Dow Jones industrial average just reached a 4 1/2 -year high because, according to government analysts, the business community was able to keep a lid on wages, which translates into lower inflation figures, which is apparently good news for a giddy Wall Street. Not so for beleaguered Main Street, that barometer for working Americans.

The corporate spin tells us that those concessions will keep everyone’s boat afloat. It certainly works for those executive negotiators who pocket piles of bonus bucks on the deal. But the employees will likely forgo any retirement plans and learn to adjust to the rising costs of housing, food and healthcare on far less income.

Wall Street has transmogrified from the retirement nest-egg vehicle of the middle class to the driver of extreme wealth for a craven group of investors and executives with golden parachutes at the expense of everyone below.

David Ohman

Irvine