Unions caused decline in America's properity

When unions were at their strongest, early 1970s, CEOs were paid roughly 20 times that of a frontline worker. Today, after decades of dismantling labor, it is 400 times that of front line workers in the U.S., though in most other industrial nations it remains comparable to what it was in the U.S. at the height of more prosperous times under more LIBERAL wage and labor protections.

When we get back closer to where we were in more prosperous days, and more in line with the rest of the world, then you can start talking about those big, bad “greedy” unions.

In the meantime, I’m not impressed.

Brief exerpt from Business Week, 11-4-2008:
For most of the past century, CEOs earned roughly 20 times as much as the average employee, according to the Economic Policy Institute, as quoted in The New York Times on Dec. 18, 2005, and again on Jan. 1, 2006. And also for much of the past century, there was nothing like the excesses within the financial industry that we see today, which enable its managers to earn almost obscene levels of compensation—and then get favorable income tax treatment to boot.

Today, however, average public company CEO compensation is 400 times that of the average employee. And thousands of senior managers in addition to CEOs are drinking at the same frothy trough, especially, as we have all just seen, senior managers in the financial services industry. (By contrast, the ratio of CEO pay to that of the average employee has remained around 22 in Britain, 20 in Canada, and 11 in Japan.)

Full article:
http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/nov2008/ca2008114_493532.htm