(The following Letter to the Editor by Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa appeared on the Washington Post website on February 5, 2009.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Business columnist Steven Pearlstein usually gets it right, but he got one thing very wrong in his Feb. 4 column, “Stumbling on Their Sense of Entitlement.”
He equated construction workers who want fair wages with chief executives such as John Thain, who spent $87,000 on an office rug after his company, Merrill Lynch, lost billions of dollars.
Mr. Pearlstein asked, “What would be so terrible about temporarily suspending the rule requiring that union wages be paid” on road, bridge and transit projects?
What’s so terrible is that cutting workers’ wages wouldn’t create more jobs, as he claimed. It would cost jobs.
The fact is that unemployment goes down when wages go up. Why? Fewer people quit when pay improves.
Jobs were created when the national minimum wage was raised in the 1990s.
During the Bill Clinton presidency, wages went up, and 23 million jobs were created. During the George W. Bush years, wages fell, and only 3 million jobs were created.
Mr. Pearlstein was right that Americans are angry. They’re poorer than they’ve been in years, and they’re worried about the future. Meanwhile, entitled insiders are looting the very system that is letting down the middle class.
Dragging down the wages of construction workers would only stoke Americans’ anger and frustration.
James P. Hoffa
General President
International Brotherhood of Teamsters