PERSPECTIVE ON THE ECONOMY : Distrust Is Fueling Workers’ Rage : The colossal income gap, corporate restructuring and demoralized employees all spell trouble for the private sector.

It is extremely likely that in the next decade the United States will experience a period of social unrest unequaled in this century. It will dwarf the protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The recent strikes and other demonstrations in France are a portent of what is to come for us.

Several things lead me to this dreary prediction:

% The growing disparity between the nation’s rich and its poor. In the middle of the 1970s, the income gap between the very rich and the very poor was at its narrowest: 1% of the population controlled 18% of private wealth; now, 1% of the population controls 40% of the wealth.

Corporations reflect the same widening gap between the haves and have-nots. There is a colossal disparity between the average pay of CEOs and the pay of the average worker; estimates of the ratio range up to 140 to 1. The disparity persists even in adverse times. While CEOs walk away from mergers and other corporate upheavals with multimillion-dollar golden parachutes, the downsized thousands get a few months’ severance pay and lose sleep over their health-care coverage.

% The inverted trust factor. In the mid-1950s, about 70% of Americans believed our government was genuinely concerned with the common good. The trust in government began to erode noisily in the mid-1960s and continues to decline at an accelerating rate. Recent studies indicate that only 25% of Americans now trust their government. Vice President Al Gore tells the apocryphal story of a government pollster who asked: “Do you trust the government more or less than you did five years ago?” Ten percent of those surveyed said they trusted the government more; 15% said they trusted it less; the remaining 75% refused to answer: They thought the survey was some sort of government plot.

% The abandoned “other half.” British management philosopher Charles Handy wrote about a CEO who boasted that his equation for success was “half times two times three equals success.” The CEO explained that with half the work force he could produce twice as many goods with three times the revenues. Not bad. But, Handy asks, “What about the other half?” Most of us try to duck the question or finesse it. Some business leaders respond by talking about “employability.” They say that while they cannot guarantee job security, they can provide knowledge and tools for their laid-off workers to find employment elsewhere. But where is “elsewhere” these days? And who knows just what “knowledge and tools” are going to work the necessary magic in this shrinking job market?

% Lack of empowerment. Even the still-employed are in a chronic state of anxiety. For them, empowerment is an increasingly Orwellian term, not simply a lie, but an infuriating inversion of the truth. A demoralizing sense of powerlessness is what many jobholders are feeling. Nearly everyone worries about getting a pink slip.

How can you have workplace empowerment in the absence of trust? The kind of trust necessary for truly creative work has become just a nostalgic memory.

Empowerment and restructuring are on a collision course. It’s impossible for a company to reengineer and empower at the same time, even though many firms are attempting it.

Unless the private sector finds a way both to make money and reestablish a sense of trust in the workplace, we’ll continue to be in trouble. Worried workers do not engage in the kind of creative problem-solving that contemporary business requires. And unless some solution is found to the dilemma facing those losing their jobs--a population segment that now includes the middle class as well as the poor--we will see public expressions of rage and fear that make the recent strikes in France look like a stroll in the park.