Employees Make $13 Million a Piece for Some Corporations: Paid a Pittance While Top Execs Demand More

Why is approximately 12% of the work force being blamed for American business’ financial problems?
(Illustration provided by Cory M. Grenier)

By Pete Dolack
The amount of profits piled up by corporations dwarfs all reason, but the amount of money executives and speculators haul in at our expenses comes into stronger focus when we examine a different metric: Revenue per employee.

The 10 corporations that have the highest revenue per employee averaged US$5.8 million per employee. Each of these top 10, incidentally, is either a pharmaceutical or an oil and gas company. Topping the list is Phillips 66, which managed to haul in $11.5 million per employee. One suspects that the average employee sees no more than a minuscule fraction of that figure.

Examining the 100 largest corporations in the world by revenue, Expert Market, a business consultancy, ranked them by revenue per employee to see which were the most “efficient.” (It is quite possible that other, smaller corporations extract more revenue per employee.) The other oil and gas companies among the top 10 were PTT, Valero Energy, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Statoil.

Interestingly, two of these companies are government enterprises: PTT is majority-owned by the government of Thailand and Statoil is two-thirds owned by the government of Norway. So much for the idea that governments should never own enterprises; at least the profits from these companies can be used for public good. The public ought to own all energy companies considering the gigantic subsidies they receive — an estimated US$5.6 trillion per year, when environmental and health costs are added to the subsidies, foregone taxes and other expensive goodies handed out by governments.

The pharmaceutical companies among the top 10 are Amerisourcebergen Corp., Express Scrips Holding Co. and McKesson Corp. Amerisourcebergen and McKesson both distribute pharmaceuticals, and Express Scrips administers prescription drug benefits for tens of millions of health plan members. Each of these primarily operates in the United States, the only advanced-capitalist country without universal health coverage, and two also operate in Canada, where corporate pressure on the public health system is strong, in part due to its proximity to the U.S.

The pharmaceutical industry is immensely profitable in the U.S., and the industry’s layer of distribution and administration adds to the overall cost. Health care in the U.S. is designed to deliver corporate profits rather than health care, and these kinds of huge profits explain why health care costs in the U.S. are vastly higher than any other countrywhile delivering mediocre results.

Technology companies squeeze somewhat less out of their employees. Apple ranks as the technology company with the most revenue per employee, at about $1.9 million. Google ranks second at $1.2 million. But how much profit does a company need to make? Apple’s products are produced through sweatshop labor outside the U.S., mostly in China, through an army of subcontractors that dwarf the size of Apple’s direct employees.

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Why Republicans Hate Obama's Immigration Plan: Immigrants Will Get Working Papers — And Will Have to be Paid a Fair Wage

Photo by ep_jhu.

By Damian Paletta
President Barack Obama ’s move to potentially offer legal-worker status to several million undocumented immigrants will send unpredictable ripples through the U.S. economy, prompting many to seek higher paying jobs and heightening wage competition in a number of sectors, economist say.

Those studying the potential impact of the president’s executive order, which he’s expected to announce Thursday night, point to the Reagan-era 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which allowed around 1.7 million undocumented immigrants to become lawful permanent residents and around 1 million farmworkers to apply for a higher level of legal status.

The 1986 law had an almost immediate labor-market impact, according to government research as well as studies conducted by a number of economists, sociologists, and demographers.

Federal data showed that immigrants in farming and sales jobs were the most likely to move to higher-paying work in different industries.

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Teaching is Virtual Slave Labor at Many Colleges: Adjunct Instructor — ‘I was practically giving my work away. It was charity.’

(Yassie / Wikimedia Commons) 

By Rebecca Burns
For three years in the early 1970s, journalist Studs Terkel gathered stories from a variety of American workers. He then compiled them into Working, an oral-history collection that went on to become a classic. Four decades after its publication, Working is more relevant than ever. Terkel, who regularly contributed to In These Times, once wrote, “I know the good fight—the fight for democracy, for civil rights, for the rights of workers—has a future, for these values will live on in the pages of In These Times.” In honor of that sentiment and of Working's 40th anniversary, ITT writers have invited a broad range of American workers to describe what they do, in their own words. More "Working at 40" stories can be found here.

In the 1970s, communications professor Jack Hunter told Studs Terkel that his was an “invisible industry.” “Since the Second World War,” Hunter explained, “We’ve had phenomenal growth. There are seven-thousand-plus strong teachers in this discipline.” The centrality of communication and persuasion to human society meant that “communications specialists do have a sense of power,” said Hunter. He was “high on the work.”

Forty years later, Maria (a pseudonym), who until recently taught English composition classes at a Texas community college, similarly describes her work as invisible. But she does not have the same sense of power—as an adjunct professor, she says that she is treated as disposable, even though her work teaching incoming students communication skills is still just as crucial. Maria says that drastic changes have occurred in higher education since Hunter’s day—most notably, tenure-track faculty now constitute just 24 percent of the higher education workforce, according to the American Association of University Professors.

Before I started as an adjunct, I was in publishing for 20-odd years. A long time ago, I was getting my Ph.D, and I had finished everything but my dissertation. I had gone out for a job, and I was in the final group out of three hundred applicants, but I was pregnant at the time and they didn’t pick me. So I went into publishing. But I always loved teaching, and when my kids grew up, I knew I wanted to go back into it.

I started teaching two classes at the local community college as an adjunct. When you first start teaching, you are very idealistic. You think that it’s all hunky dory and things will work out. The following year, a full-time position opened and I applied for it. It seemed to go well, and then all of a sudden I didn’t get it. After my second year, I realized that I wasn’t going to get anywhere.

Adjuncts get paid nothing here in Texas. In places like New York and Boston, and other places where you have unionized schools, you have a better chance at increasing your pay. In places where you cannot have a union [under state law], the pay is abominable. The average pay for adjunct faculty right now, according to the Coalition on the Academic Work Force, is $2,700 per course without healthcare. That’s not a living wage. Here in Texas, the average pay for community colleges is $1,791 per course. With Ph.D. A.B.D. [“all but dissertation”], I was getting $1,800.

I didn’t usually tell my students about what my working conditions were like. When I did tell them how much I made, they were shocked—“You mean a week? A month? Really, a semester?” They couldn’t believe it. “But I make more than that!”

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Paid Sick Days for Six Million Californians to Become Law

California Governor Jerry Brown

By: Jonas Persson

When Governor Jerry Brown signs Assembly Bill 1522, California will join a growing number of states where temporary or part-time employees no longer have to face the excruciating dilemma: go to work sick, or lose pay or your job.

The bill, which allows workers to accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to a total of three days a year, passed over the weekend with a 52–25 vote in the State Assembly. With more than 6 million workers -- or 44 percent of the California workforce -- covered, it is by far the biggest expansion of paid sick days in the country.

"A Key Component of Decent Work"

The lack of paid sick days can have repercussions that extend far beyond the emotional and financial strain caused by employers telling their workers to "shape up or ship out."

Workers who do not have access to paid sick days are one-and-a-half times more likely to go to work sick with a contagious illness, putting their co-workers and customers at risk, and costing an estimated $160 billion each year in lost productivity. Delaying treatment for illness can cause conditions to worsen, leading to more emergency room visits and increased costs for public health insurance programs. A 2012 study by the Center for Disease Control found that employees without paid sick leave are much less likely to receive preventive health care, such as mammography and other forms of cancer screening.

The World Health Organization argued in a 2010 report that paid sick days are "a key component of decent work." Not surprisingly, organizations to the right begged to differ. The California Restaurant Association opposed the legislation, and the California Chamber of Commerce trotted out the tired refrain that employees not working sick is a "job-killer."

And in an op-ed for The Sacramento Bee, two writers affiliated with the Freedom Foundation and the Employment Policies Institute argued that the bill would have "negative consequences for affected employers."

The Employment Policies Institute is a $3 million-a-year front group created by infamous PR executive Richard Berman and which operates out of the same building as Berman & Co, a PR firm that receives funding from the restaurant industry. The Freedom Foundation (which boycotted labor day) is a member of the State Policy Network and the brainchild of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) "scholar" Bob Williams. Despite being funded by powerful corporate and ideological interests, these anti-worker organizations lost the battle in California.

Since Connecticut passed the first statewide law mandating paid sick days in 2011, labor rights campaigns have, in fact, gained both political traction and popular support. Eleven cities across the country have enacted paid sick day laws in recent years, including one in New York City last year guaranteeing paid days for a million workers. Four cities have enacted laws in 2014: Eugene, OR; Newark, NJ; Passaic, NJ; and San Diego, CA.

As the paid sick day movement has gained momentum, its opponents -- particularly those in the corporate restaurant industry -- have tried to thwart it. Since 2011, eleven states have thwarted local control through "preemption" laws prohibiting city, county, or local governments from enacting paid sick day laws with the assistance of ALEC legislators.

Today, an overwhelming majority of Americans across the political spectrum are in favor of paid sick days. Of those responding to a recent YouGov poll, 74 percent supported the measure. While Democrats were most positive, 69 percent of voters who identified as Republicans voiced their approval.

The question will be on the Massachusetts ballot in November, and next year it will be up for a vote in at least six more states, including Maryland and Vermont.

"A Significant Victory"

The original version of the California bill did not exempt any workers from the provisions, but an amendment was added at the last minute excluding the state's 400,000 "in-home" health workers. As a result of this watering-down, some unions withdrew their support. In a statement, Laphonza Butler, president of SEIU ULTCW -- the United Long Term Care Workers' Union -- expressed her shock that "California lawmakers would even consider attempting to send the caregiving workforce to the back of the bus again on sick days."

Still, the passing of the law represents an important step, according to Family Values @ Work, a network fighting for "family-friendly workplace policies such as paid sick days and family leave insurance." Director Ellen Bravo stresses that while the coalition will stay organized to end the exclusion of home care workers and expand the number of days, "it's a significant victory that would not have been possible without a long history of organizing by a broad coalition of local workers, unions, small business owners and partner organizations."

Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), the state representative and former labor activist who introduced the bill, hailed its passage as an unprecedented victory for workers rights.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.