Jim Russell was born on Labor Day, 50 years ago.
Last week, he was on the 16th Street Mall swinging a picket sign with a group of fellow carpenters.
“People don’t treat Labor Day like a national holiday anymore,” Russell said. “It should be more important in people’s minds than what it seems to be.”
Russell still celebrates his birthday but says it’s getting harder to celebrate labor.
Labor unions, which inspired the holiday, have long lost their leverage. And labor itself is becoming a commodity that can be bought and sold like pork bellies.
Russell, who lives in Centennial, said he used to make $20 an hour but lost his job to people willing to work for $15. He and his union were picketing a Denver company they say is using unskilled workers and illegal immigrants instead of reliable union labor.
It’s a familiar complaint.
Blue-collar workers have been losing jobs to immigration. White-collar workers have been losing jobs to people willing to work for less overseas. Millions of Americans who remain employed have been taking hits as companies cut health care benefits, pensions and pay raises.
Labor Day remains an excuse to crack open a beer and fire up the barbecue. It also marks the beginning of the corporate job-slashing season.
U.S. companies issue about 38 percent of their pink slips between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31, according to research by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks job cuts. Employers announced 10.1 million job cuts from 1993 to 2004. Of those, 3.8 million came in the last four months of the year.
“The last part of the year is crunch time for many organizations,” Challenger said.
It’s a time when companies have to cut costs to meet financial goals. It’s a time when employees can be viewed as little more than expenses.
“Working Americans are fast losing economic ground,” AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said at a news conference last week. “They are in economic crisis, and they know it, even if the Washington and Wall Street elite don’t.”
In an AFL-CIO-sponsored survey, 53 percent of working folks said their family’s income is falling behind the cost of living. And 67 percent said they believed employers don’t share profits with employees when companies do well.
It is predictable for the union to gripe about the labor market. But Labor Day surveys by other organizations turned up similar responses. In a survey by Robert Half International and CareerBuilder.com, 42 percent said they believed it was harder to get a job today than it was a year ago. And only 25 percent of those surveyed by Ajilon Professional Staffing viewed the job market as improving.
“It’s no surprise,” said Ajilon president Neil Lebovits. “American workers have been overworked and underpaid for quite some time now, and it’s going to take a lot to convince them we have an enduring, strong job market.”
The economy has been growing steadily since the 2001 recession. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 26 consecutive months of job creation. Is it possible Americans’ perceptions of the job market are lagging reality?
Stuart Itkin, vice president at Kronos Inc., a Chelmsford, Mass.-based workforce management firm, said the balance of power between employers and employees is shifting. He says companies are finding it increasingly difficult to retain their best employees and are beginning to worry about brain drains.
“A year ago, people recognized that they were overworked. But they were more accepting that the economy was recovering, and they were willing to be patient,” Itkin said. “This year, people are telling us they are fed up with their employers and they are not going to take it any more.”
In a Kronos-sponsored Labor Day poll by Harris Interactive, 77 percent said they are looking for new jobs, and 39 percent said they’ve conducted job searches while at work. So much for productivity.
“It’s a wake-up call for organizations,” Itkin said. “Workers are beginning to wonder whether the grass may be greener, and when they start to look around, they find that it is.”
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Lewis at , 303-820-1967, or alewis@denverpost.com.
