Bush’s Happy Talk Doesn’t Apply to Very Many Workers

Most American voters will be bewildered by the masses of contradictory statistics hurled at them during the next 11 weeks by number crunchers in the presidential campaign camps of Michael S. Dukakis and George Bush.

And things will not be made easier for them after the 14.5-million-member AFL-CIO throws its political muscle behind Dukakis on Wednesday, when it will officially endorse his presidential bid.

The nation’s unions have accumulated their own thick volumes of figures, which will be added to the barrage of data coming from the Dukakis side of the battlefield.

While the figures themselves are confusing, their political purpose is elementary.

The confusing numbers from the Bush forces are calculated to prove that most people, including average working men and women, are doing remarkably well after nearly eight years of the Reagan-Bush Administration.

The numbers pouring out of computers operated by unions and the Dukakis campaign are designed to rebut that rosy view.

But if voters pay really close attention, they probably will be able to see through the welter of numbers that the standard of living for most American workers has declined during the Reagan-Bush years and they have to work harder just to stand still economically.

To hear President Reagan and Bush tell it, most of us are content with what they say are our steadily improving fortunes.

Among the prize achievements claimed by the Reagan-Bush Administration are that nearly 17 million “new” jobs have been created and that most pay over $20,000 a year, that family income is rising and unemployment falling.

But data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics contradicts that optimism. And the Administration is downright wrong, according to data from several independent sources who lean toward Dukakis and from the obviously partisan Dukakis and union economists.

True, close to 17 million workers have been added to the ranks of the employed during the eight Reagan years. But that sounds better than it really is because it isn’t as good as the gains made under the much-maligned Administration of President Jimmy Carter.

In Carter’s four years in office, employment increased by 10.3 million workers. That’s double the increase during Reagan’s first term and on par with the rise in employment during Reagan’s current term.

Also, there is no evidence that most of these “new jobs” pay $20,000-plus a year, as Reagan has said.

A BLS researcher said millions of workers already on the job did move above the $20,000-a-year category since 1981 by getting pay raises, and that might have led to some misunderstanding by the Administration. But the vast majority of those who have been newly hired did not earn nearly that much.

More specific data will come in a new book, “The Great U-Turn,” by Prof. Benjamin Harrsion of the University of Massachusetts-Boston and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Prof. Barry Bluestone. They will report that their latest research essentially confirms and elaborates on their controversial earlier study made for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

Now, they report, 56% of those taking the so-called new jobs (many are just really reopened old jobs) are making only $6 an hour or less, which is poverty-level income for a family of three.

In the central cities, where new jobs are so critical, more than 75% of such jobs pay $6 an hour or less.

And there seems to have been no overall increase in family income, as the Administration contends. The increase in real income--that is, wages adjusted for inflation--was very slight and even that was due in large part to significant increases in the number of family members working, overtime hours and the second jobs that many family members have taken to avert economic disaster.

The real wage, or buying power, of the average individual worker--in contrast to family income--has gone down, not up, since Reagan took office, the bureau’s figures show.

Unemployment is down, but that seemingly good news isn’t good at all because the number of temporary and part-time workers has risen steadily, and they are counted as “employed” if they are on a job for as little as one hour a week.

And almost all of those new part-timers and are “involuntaries” that is, they are in those jobs because they cannot get full-time work.

Also increasing in number are those who are listed by BLS as “discouraged workers” who are no longer counted as unemployed because they have given up job hunting.

Another batch of statistics will be released Sept. 4 by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute in a study called “The State of Working America.” One of its authors, Lawrence Mishel, says that families of low-income workers are being pushed further down the economic ladder, those at the middle are pretty much standing still and those at the top of the ladder are doing better than ever.

He also notes that while the decline in real wages is hurting most workers, that burden is increased by a reduction in fringe benefits. More and more companies, for instance, are making employees pay an ever-increasing share of health-care costs.

The silliest statement in the Bush campaign rhetoric was his much-ridiculed pledge to create 30 million jobs in eight years. There simply would not be enough workers to fill those jobs even if, miraculously, no one retires before 1996 and everyone now unemployed is put to work.

These figures are just a soupcon of the flood of statistics the presidential rivals are pouring out for us to swim through between now and election day.

Voters probably could decide whether a change is needed in the White House without the help of the huge ocean of baffling figures, including those statistics cited here. But, helpful or not, they should brace for the deluge.

Some Ask Why Drexel Aids Worker Buyouts

Drexel Burnham Lambert may have decided that helping regular workers improves both its profits and image.

But whatever its motive, the firm, which is currently under investigation for alleged insider trading, is promoting employee buyouts of companies.

The latest worker-clients of Drexel are employees of WFI Industries, a financially troubled tugboat and shipbuilding firm in Seattle.

Drexel has been deeply involved in corporate raids and is an ally of financial manipulators whose dealings have forced the restructuring of many companies that put thousands of workers out of jobs. Connie Bruck, author of “The Predators’ Ball,” accuses Drexel of “bullying both clients (corporate raiders) and their prey for its own profits.”

Encouraged by the Washington law firm of Aylward & Finchem, Drexel has moved into employee buyouts. Attorney David Aylward says it is a logical extension of Drexel’s deals with managers who want to buy out their companies.

Drexel’s Michael Milken, who is sometimes called the “junk bond” king and who is at the center of the government investigation, was a key figure in helping unions at WFI buy the company to save some 500 jobs that were in jeopardy.

Jeff Fiedler, director of corporate affairs for the AFL-CIO Food and Allied Services Trade Department, said Drexel “cannot clean up its lousy image by saving a few hundred jobs after its corporate takeover maneuvers forced “untold thousands of workers like those at Safeway onto the unemployment lines.”

Still, Drexel got praise, and profit, from Avis employees when they took over that firm last year through an employee stock ownership plan.

And Drexel unsuccessfully tried to help four unions at Pan American World Airways buy out that company.

Today in Seattle, WFI employees will take over their company, making it the largest union-led, employee-owned company on the West Coast. Don Liddle, former president of the Inland Boatman’s Union, will be chief executive officer of WFI, which is being renamed Unimar International.

The worker-oriented moves by Drexel may help a few workers while bringing the firm more profits. But if the firm also continues to help corporate raiders force more companies to lay off workers, its role in worker buyouts will look suspiciously like nothing but an image-remaking effort. That isn’t likely to succeed, especially if more of its officers are convicted of insider trading.