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Umfragen in USA / Artikel, engl.
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Polls Say Workers Uneasy With Economy, Executives
By Kirstin Downey Grimsley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 3, 2002; Page E01
Labor Day 2002: The job is no picnic.
A bevy of studies and surveys conducted by groups across the political spectrum timed for the three-day weekend honoring workers have captured an anxious and angry mood among America's workforce. With 8.3 million Americans unemployed, amid a steady diet of allegations of misdeeds at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc., workers around the country are expressing pessimism about the economy and the leaders of the companies they work for.
With management in disrepute, unions are being viewed more favorably than in the past, according to surveys by both management and unions.
About 58 percent of 1,000 Americans surveyed in August said they supported unions organizing workers in more companies to ensure that they are better protected, according to the Employment Law Alliance, a San Francisco-based association of large law firms that represent management on employment matters. About 73 percent of respondents said there should be mandatory representation of rank-and-file workers on corporate boards, and 84 percent said employee pension funds should force corporations to be more accountable.
The poll results indicated a"high level of mistrust, anxiety and frustration... that can be felt in every assembly line and cubicle throughout America," said Stephen J. Hirschfeld, chief executive of the ELA."This is a major change in people's perceptions."
Hirschfeld said employers should take note of these changing attitudes among workers if they hope to head off unionization drives.
"Most companies don't want their workers organized, and the reality is that they better come up with some solutions," he said.
Unions have found similar results in their polling data. Half of workers who don't belong to a union told the AFL-CIO in a survey conducted three weeks ago that they would join a union tomorrow if they had a chance, up 8 percentage points from 2001, when the AFL-CIO asked the same question. About 58 percent of the 800 workers surveyed said they had a negative view of chief executives.
"Working Americans are anxious and struggling," AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said."Wages are stagnant, unemployment is up, and people are angry that they are losing their savings to a corrupt corporate system they thought they could trust."
The AFL-CIO is seeking to capitalize on bad feelings engendered by what has happened at Enron and WorldCom, where thousands of workers have lost both their jobs and their retirement savings when the companies went broke amid accounting improprieties. Enron and WorldCom employees have been traveling around the United States, at union expense, telling workers about their experiences.
Sweeney said other workers are listening to the stories with concern.
Other reports say there is likely to be more bad news for workers before the good times return. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, has published its book-length biennial analysis of the economy from the perspective of employees, called the State of Working America. It said the wage gap between rich workers and poor workers, which had narrowed in the late 1990s when low unemployment rates boosted wages, is widening again.
EPI officials said they expect unemployment -- now at 5.9 percent, up from 4 percent in July 2000 -- to continue to climb.
"We expect it to rise higher in the next year and remain high for the next year," said Lawrence Mishel, one of the book's three authors.
The attacks on Sept. 11 hit low-wage workers, including people in the hospitality and transportation industries, particularly hard, the group reported, and it affected many workers in other industries at least indirectly.
"From a labor perspective, September 11 lengthened and deepened the recession," said economist Jared Bernstein, a co-author of the report.
The American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning Washington think tank, found similar misgivings toward business among some respondents in two analyses it conducted of recent polling data.
It found that although American support for the free-enterprise system remains strong, fewer people believe that"what is good for business is good for the average person," according to the poll question. In 1981, for example, 57 percent believed that to be true, but by 1999, only 48 percent thought so. In 1981, about 18 percent described themselves as having"mixed feelings" about the old truism, and by 1999, 29 percent said they had"mixed feelings" about it.
The group reported that a Gallup Organization poll in July found a large increase in the percentage of the population that considers"big business" to be the"biggest threat to the future of the country." Thirty-eight percent said they considered big business to pose the most danger to Americans, up from 22 percent in October 2000. The percentage of the population that viewed big business as a threat had never been so high in the 48 years pollsters had asked the question.
In 1954, for example, only 16 percent of respondents said big business was the biggest threat, while 46 percent identified"big labor" as the major threat. In July 2002, only 10 percent rated big labor as the nation's biggest threat.
And recent studies show that fewer workers even have paid vacation time, and that those who did don't feel they have enough.
According to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, analyzing information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 22.2 million private-sector workers in the United States did not have a single day of paid vacation in 2000, the most recent year data were available.
The report highlighted the wide gap between paid vacations enjoyed by Americans compared with residents of other major industrialized nations. Employers in the United States are not required by law to give any days of paid vacation, though most employers do so.
Even in Japan, known for its long work hours, manufacturing workers are given more time off than those in the United States, the report said. Under collective bargaining agreements in Japan, manufacturing workers get 18 paid vacation days per year, compared with 12 in the United States. The Japanese workers get 13 paid holidays, compared with 11 in the United States.
Workers in Europe get more than twice as much time off as Americans, the report found.
"As a result, American workers now work more hours per year than any other workers in the industrialized world," the study concluded.
Management consultant Mike Carter of the Hay Group said globalization means more domestic workers are aware of the discrepancy between vacation patterns here and in other countries as many move more frequently outside this country to do their jobs. And many U.S. workers may work for a multinational company that gives more generous vacation time to its European staff.
Carter said that some employers are beginning to voluntarily increase the amount of vacation they give their workers, in some cases to compensate for what they are taking away in medical benefits as health-care costs rise.
"As they are cutting health benefits, they are looking for something else to give value," Carter said.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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