Citizens of Greece Protesting Government
March 15, 2010
Mail Online
Street clashes broke out between rioting youths and police in central Athens today as tens of thousands demonstrated during a nationwide strike against the cash-strapped government.
Hundreds of masked and hooded youths punched and kicked motorcycle police, knocking several off their bikes, as police responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades.
The violence spread after the end of the march to a nearby square, where police faced off with stone-throwing anarchists and suffocating clouds of tear gas sent patrons scurrying from open-air cafes.
Police say 16 suspected rioters were detained and two officers were injured.
Rioters used sledge hammers to smash the glass fronts of more than a dozen shops, banks, jewelers and a cinema.
Youths also set fire to rubbish bins and a car, smashed bus stops, and chopped blocks off marble balustrades and building facades to use as projectiles.
Organisers said some 60,000 people took part in the protest. But an unofficial police estimate set the crowd at around 20,000 – including those that took part in a separate, peaceful march earlier Thursday. Police do not issue official crowd estimates for demonstrations.
Thursday’s strike – the second in a week – brought the country to a virtual standstill, grounding all flights and bringing public transport to a halt.
State hospitals were left with emergency staff only and all news broadcasts were suspended as workers walked off the job for 24 hours to protest spending cuts and tax hikes designed to tackle the country’s debt crisis.
Riot police made heavy use of tear gas during the start-and-stop clashes throughout the demonstration, including outside Parliament.
Strikers and protesters banged drums and chanted slogans such as ‘no sacrifice for plutocracy,’ and ‘real jobs, higher pay.’
People draped banners from apartment buildings reading: ‘No more sacrifices, war against war.
The demonstrators included hundreds of black-clad anarchists in crash helmets and ski masks, who repeatedly taunted and attacked riot police with stones and petrol bombs, at one point spraying officers with brown paint.
Shopkeepers along the demonstration route hastily rolled down their shutters, while a few blocks away, people sat at outdoor restaurants, nonchalantly continuing their meals.
Tear gas wafted through the city center’s streets, sending businessmen in suits scurrying for cover, their eyes streaming.
Minor clashes also broke out in the northern city of Thessaloniki, where about 14,000 people marched through the center.
Fears of a Greek default have undermined the euro for all 16 countries that share it, putting the Greek government under intense European Union pressure to quickly show fiscal improvement.
It has announced a raft of savings through public sector salary cuts, hiring and pension freezes and consumer tax hikes to deal with its ballooning deficit, but the measures have led to a new wave of labor discontent.
The cutbacks, added to a previous austerity plan, seek to reduce the country’s budget deficit from 12.7 percent of annual output to 8.7 percent this year. The long-term target is to bring overspending below the EU ceiling of 3 percent of GDP in 2012.
The new plan sparked a wave of strikes and protests from labour unions whose reaction to the initial austerity measures had been muted.
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Government Workers Feel No Economic Pain
March 12, 2010 by JP
Filed under Government
March 12, 2010
The Washington Times
By David M. Dickson
The recession and the ongoing jobless recovery devastated much of the private-sector work force last year, sending unemployment soaring, but government workers emerged essentially unscathed, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department.
Meanwhile, the compensation for state and local government employees continued to easily outdistance the wages and benefits for workers in private business, a separate Labor Department report showed.
Private-industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December, while total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour.
The average government wage and salary per hour of $26.11 was 35 percent higher than the average wage and salary of $19.41 per hour in the private sector. But the percentage difference in benefits was much higher. Benefits for state and local workers averaged $13.49 per hour, nearly 70 percent higher than the $8 per hour in benefits paid by private businesses.
Paul Booth, executive assistant to the president at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), attributed the pay difference to a changing government work force that has increased its proportion of higher-skilled workers during the past 15 to 20 years.
“In government payrolls, you no longer have low-wage occupations, such as janitors, whose jobs have been contracted out to the private sector,” he said. This trend has effectively increased the average wage of those higher-skilled workers who remain, said Mr. Booth, whose union represents 1.6 million workers.
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U.S. Wages Falling as Inflation Rises
February 10, 2010
Daily finance
by: Matthew Scott
Salaried employees hoping their 2010 annual raise will provide some relief as they attempt to recover from the worst economic downturn in 80 years are likely to be disappointed: Raises for U.S. workers may barely keep pace with inflation this year.
New projections from The Conference Board show that the average company will budget just 2.8% of its salary pool for wage increases, barely exceeding inflation — the first time in more than two decades that number has fallen below 3%. Furthermore, the business research organization says employers are adjusting their pay scales for all employees downward — in fact, the 2010 salary structure adjustment for all categories of employees is projected to be 2% or less, far lower than the Conference Board’s projected inflation rate of 2.6%.
After months of news about over-sized bonuses being paid to Wall Street employees whose companies were on the verge of bankruptcy last year, word that salaries across the board are in danger of being permanently adjusted lower will come as a heavy blow to the millions of U.S. employees who have been working longer hours to cover for laid-off colleagues.
Companies generally plan salary increases in their budgets to reward great performance during a particular year, allowing wage growth to exceed inflation and moving people into higher salary ranges. Lower budgets for salary increases suggest employers are eliminating higher paying positions or planning to pay less for the same level of work.
“Salary ranges also represent employers’ anticipation of what the job market will require,” says John Gibbons, program director for human capital at The Conference Board. “Projections of near zero percent in real terms mean that employers are making the assumption that the salary market is simply not going to move up, regardless of increases in the cost of living.”
Bad As It Sounds, It’s Better Than 2009
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, total compensation grew by 1.5% while consumer prices rose by 2.7% during the 12 months leading up to December 2009. That means, adjusted for inflation, total compensation fell by 1.3%. By default, the average U.S. worker took a salary cut last year, whether he got a raise or not.
As the rising cost of living continues to squeeze consumers, stagnating wages add another obstacle to the already struggling recovery in progress. Even though there have been five straight months of improving economic numbers that suggest job growth could be on the horizon, Gad Levanon, The Conference Board’s associate director of macroeconomic research, says a recovery in compensation is probably a few years away.
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Former Labor Secretary Says Destruction of Jobs in America is Permanent
December 7, 2009 by JP
Filed under Government
December 7, 2009
Washington’s Blog
By Robert Reich
The basic assumption that jobs will eventually return when the economy recovers is probably wrong. Some jobs will come back, of course. But the reality that no one wants to talk about is a structural change in the economy that’s been going on for years but which the Great Recession has dramatically accelerated.
Under the pressure of this awful recession, many companies have found ways to cut their payrolls for good. They’ve discovered that new software and computer technologies have made workers in Asia and Latin America just about as productive as Americans, and that the Internet allows far more work to be efficiently outsourced abroad.
This means many Americans won’t be rehired unless they’re willing to settle for much lower wages and benefits. Today’s official unemployment numbers hide the extent to which Americans are already on this path. Among those with jobs, a large and growing number have had to accept lower pay as a condition for keeping them. Or they’ve lost higher-paying jobs and are now in a new ones that pays less.
Yet reducing unemployment by cutting wages merely exchanges one problem for another. We’ll get jobs back but have more people working for pay they consider inadequate, more working families at or near poverty, and widening inequality. The nation will also have a harder time restarting the economy because so many more Americans lack the money they need to buy all the goods and services the economy can produce.
Reich is only confirming what many others have said:
JPMorgan Chase’s Chief Economist Bruce Kasman told Bloomberg:
[We've had a] permanent destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs in industries from housing to finance.
The chief economists for Wells Fargo Securities, John Silvia, says:
Companies “really have diminished their willingness to hire labor for any production level,” Silvia said. “It’s really a strategic change,” where companies will be keeping fewer employees for any particular level of sales, in good times and bad, he said.
And former Merrill Lynch chief economist David Rosenberg writes:
The number of people not on temporary layoff surged 220,000 in August and the level continues to reach new highs, now at 8.1 million. This accounts for 53.9% of the unemployed — again a record high — and this is a proxy for permanent job loss, in other words, these jobs are not coming back. Against that backdrop, the number of people who have been looking for a job for at least six months with no success rose a further half-percent in August, to stand at 5 million — the long-term unemployed now represent a record 33% of the total pool of joblessness.
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AIG CEO Takes $10.5 Million Dollar Compensation Package
November 25, 2009 by JP
Filed under Government
November 25, 2009
CNN Money
By Ben Rooney
After balking at government imposed pay restrictions, American International Group’s chief executive Robert Benmosche has officially agreed to a non-compete contract that could total $10.5 million, the company announced Tuesday.
Benmosche, who was named CEO in August, had expressed frustration with the constraints placed on AIG by the government after the global insurance company was bailed out last year.
He reportedly threatened to quit his post in board meetings earlier this month, before issuing a statement saying he is “totally committed” to staying on as CEO.
AIG spokesman Mark Herr said Benmosche agreed to a “non-compete” contract and that he is “committed to staying” at AIG.
Benmosche is one of several high-level executives at seven private companies under the purview of the Obama administration’s “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg.
In October, Feinberg unveiled a series of drastic pay cuts for 136 top executives at seven of the nation’s biggest bailed-out companies, including AIG (AIG, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500).
AIG received a $182 billion lifeline from the government last year as the credit crisis forced the company to the brink of collapse. In exchange, the government took an 80% ownership stake in the company.
Despite ongoing criticism of the company’s compensation practices, Benmosche successfully negotiated the largest award of any CEO under the government’s new curbs on executive pay.
In a press release, AIG said it will implement Benmosche’s previously announced compensation agreement, which includes a $3 million base salary and $4 million in AIG common stock.
