LABOR
WAGES DROPPED LAST YEAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/business/12wages.html?hp&ex=1113364800&en=e3fbb6cb690978cb&ei=5094&partner=homepage
STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NY TIMES - Beginning in the mid-1990's, pay increases for most workers slowly but steadily outpaced the rate of inflation, improving the living standards for nearly all Americans. But an unexpected reversal last year in those gains has set off a vigorous debate among economists over whether the decline is just a temporary dip or portends a deeper shift that may cause the pay of average Americans to lag for years to come.
Even though the economy added 2.2 million jobs in 2004 and produced strong growth in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell for the year, after adjusting for inflation - the first such drop in nearly a decade.
______________________________________________________________________________
JOHN SWEENEY'S TIES TO WAR HAWKS
http://www.laboreducator.org/sweenhawk.htm
HARRY KELBER, LABOR NOTES - AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has declined to explain why his name and title appear on a list of supporters of the Project for the New American Century, an organization whose prime activity is to promote the establishment of an American global empire through the use of military and economic power.
On the list of "people associated" with the Project, besides Sweeney, are: Vice President Dick Cheney, a founder; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and a gallery of neo-conservatives, many from the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. The list is "current to Dec. 2004."
The Project for a New American Century is a think tank, founded in 1997, whose principles are now the governing foreign and military policies of the Bush administration. In September 2000, the Project released a "grand plan" that called for sufficient combat forces to fight and win multiple major wars and be equipped for "constabulary duties" around the world, with American rather than U.N. leadership. The Project supports the doctrine of pre-emptive war and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Union members are entitled to know what, exactly, is Sweeney’s relations with the PNAC? What prompted him to collaborate with an organization that, to say the least, is hardly a friend of organized labor?
Sweeney is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, regarded as the most influential think tank on foreign and economic policy, whose recommendations are often adopted by the government. Executives from 200 "international companies representing a range of sectors" participate in special Council programs. They include the largest commercial banks, insurance companies and strategic planning corporations. Petroleum, military and media companies are also well represented.
How is Sweeney’s presence on the Council of any benefit to the 13 million union members he represents? Doesn’t his name on the Council imply support for its activities?
______________________________________________________________________________
LOOKS, WEIGHT, HEIGHT MATTER IN JOB PROMOTION
http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2005/b/pages/appearances.html
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS - In a recent book, journalist Malcolm Gladwell reported the results of his survey of about one-half of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. He found that the average CEO is approximately 3 inches taller than the average American man, who stands 5-foot-9. Further, 30 percent of the CEOs are at least 6-foot-2; the corresponding percentage for American adult men overall is only 3.9 percent. . .
A study by economists Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle uses survey data to examine the impact that appearance has on a person's earnings. In each survey, the interviewer who asked the questions also rated the respondents' physical appearance. Respondents were classified into one of the following groups: below average, average and above average.
Hamermesh and Biddle found that . . . a person with below-average looks tended to earn 9 percent less per hour, and an above-average person tended to earn 5 percent more per hour than an average-looking person. For the median male in 1996 working full-time, the respective penalty and premium amounted to approximately $2,600 and $1,400 annually. The corresponding penalty and premium for the median female worker are $2,000 and $1,100.
Occupations that require more interpersonal contact have higher percentages of above-average-looking employees. However, Hamermesh and Biddle showed that the plainness penalty and the beauty premium exist across all occupations.
In a separate paper, Biddle and Hamermesh investigated the influence of beauty on the wages of lawyers, using data collected from the same law school for graduating classes of 1971-78 and 1981-88. The school has photographs of each entering class, which form the basis of the study. . . They found evidence of a beauty premium for attorneys that increases with age, at least for the 1971-78 classes. Five years after graduating, a male lawyer from these classes with a beauty rating of one rank above average had approximately 10 percent higher earnings than his counterpart with a rating of one rank below average. Fifteen years after graduation, the beauty premium increased to 12 percent. The beauty premium was smaller for the 1980s classes and might be attributed to tighter labor market conditions at the time of graduation.
Economists Susan Averett and Sanders Korenman . . . showed that women who were obese according to their Body Mass Index in both 1981 and 1988 earned 17 percent lower wages on average than women within their recommended BMI range. . . When comparing by race, the authors found a wage penalty for obesity among white women but no significant penalty for black women. Among white men, they found a much lower wage penalty for obesity than for their white female counterparts. A small positive relationship was actually found between obese black men and wages.
In a similar study, economist John Cawley found that the only group for which weight consistently lowered wages is white females. His results show that for a typical white woman weighing 64 pounds more than an otherwise-similar white female of average weight, the former's wage will be about 9 percent lower.
Economists Nicola Persico, Andrew Postlewaite and Dan Silverman . . . found that for white men in the United States, a 1.8-percent increase in wages accompanies every additional inch of height. Men's wages as adults can be linked to their height at age 16. For a given adult height, Persico, Postlewaite and Silverman found that increasing height at age 16 by one inch increased adult wages by 2.6 percent, on average.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/business/12wages.html?hp&ex=1113364800&en=e3fbb6cb690978cb&ei=5094&partner=homepage
STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NY TIMES - Beginning in the mid-1990's, pay increases for most workers slowly but steadily outpaced the rate of inflation, improving the living standards for nearly all Americans. But an unexpected reversal last year in those gains has set off a vigorous debate among economists over whether the decline is just a temporary dip or portends a deeper shift that may cause the pay of average Americans to lag for years to come.
Even though the economy added 2.2 million jobs in 2004 and produced strong growth in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell for the year, after adjusting for inflation - the first such drop in nearly a decade.
______________________________________________________________________________
JOHN SWEENEY'S TIES TO WAR HAWKS
http://www.laboreducator.org/sweenhawk.htm
HARRY KELBER, LABOR NOTES - AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has declined to explain why his name and title appear on a list of supporters of the Project for the New American Century, an organization whose prime activity is to promote the establishment of an American global empire through the use of military and economic power.
On the list of "people associated" with the Project, besides Sweeney, are: Vice President Dick Cheney, a founder; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and a gallery of neo-conservatives, many from the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. The list is "current to Dec. 2004."
The Project for a New American Century is a think tank, founded in 1997, whose principles are now the governing foreign and military policies of the Bush administration. In September 2000, the Project released a "grand plan" that called for sufficient combat forces to fight and win multiple major wars and be equipped for "constabulary duties" around the world, with American rather than U.N. leadership. The Project supports the doctrine of pre-emptive war and the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Union members are entitled to know what, exactly, is Sweeney’s relations with the PNAC? What prompted him to collaborate with an organization that, to say the least, is hardly a friend of organized labor?
Sweeney is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, regarded as the most influential think tank on foreign and economic policy, whose recommendations are often adopted by the government. Executives from 200 "international companies representing a range of sectors" participate in special Council programs. They include the largest commercial banks, insurance companies and strategic planning corporations. Petroleum, military and media companies are also well represented.
How is Sweeney’s presence on the Council of any benefit to the 13 million union members he represents? Doesn’t his name on the Council imply support for its activities?
______________________________________________________________________________
LOOKS, WEIGHT, HEIGHT MATTER IN JOB PROMOTION
http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2005/b/pages/appearances.html
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS - In a recent book, journalist Malcolm Gladwell reported the results of his survey of about one-half of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. He found that the average CEO is approximately 3 inches taller than the average American man, who stands 5-foot-9. Further, 30 percent of the CEOs are at least 6-foot-2; the corresponding percentage for American adult men overall is only 3.9 percent. . .
A study by economists Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle uses survey data to examine the impact that appearance has on a person's earnings. In each survey, the interviewer who asked the questions also rated the respondents' physical appearance. Respondents were classified into one of the following groups: below average, average and above average.
Hamermesh and Biddle found that . . . a person with below-average looks tended to earn 9 percent less per hour, and an above-average person tended to earn 5 percent more per hour than an average-looking person. For the median male in 1996 working full-time, the respective penalty and premium amounted to approximately $2,600 and $1,400 annually. The corresponding penalty and premium for the median female worker are $2,000 and $1,100.
Occupations that require more interpersonal contact have higher percentages of above-average-looking employees. However, Hamermesh and Biddle showed that the plainness penalty and the beauty premium exist across all occupations.
In a separate paper, Biddle and Hamermesh investigated the influence of beauty on the wages of lawyers, using data collected from the same law school for graduating classes of 1971-78 and 1981-88. The school has photographs of each entering class, which form the basis of the study. . . They found evidence of a beauty premium for attorneys that increases with age, at least for the 1971-78 classes. Five years after graduating, a male lawyer from these classes with a beauty rating of one rank above average had approximately 10 percent higher earnings than his counterpart with a rating of one rank below average. Fifteen years after graduation, the beauty premium increased to 12 percent. The beauty premium was smaller for the 1980s classes and might be attributed to tighter labor market conditions at the time of graduation.
Economists Susan Averett and Sanders Korenman . . . showed that women who were obese according to their Body Mass Index in both 1981 and 1988 earned 17 percent lower wages on average than women within their recommended BMI range. . . When comparing by race, the authors found a wage penalty for obesity among white women but no significant penalty for black women. Among white men, they found a much lower wage penalty for obesity than for their white female counterparts. A small positive relationship was actually found between obese black men and wages.
In a similar study, economist John Cawley found that the only group for which weight consistently lowered wages is white females. His results show that for a typical white woman weighing 64 pounds more than an otherwise-similar white female of average weight, the former's wage will be about 9 percent lower.
Economists Nicola Persico, Andrew Postlewaite and Dan Silverman . . . found that for white men in the United States, a 1.8-percent increase in wages accompanies every additional inch of height. Men's wages as adults can be linked to their height at age 16. For a given adult height, Persico, Postlewaite and Silverman found that increasing height at age 16 by one inch increased adult wages by 2.6 percent, on average.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 6:16 AM
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