It will be very interesting to see where people take this thread. To address the OP's question, I ended up with a 1.5% increase last year. Sounds great and all but due to staffing cutbacks, I had to take on roughly 50% more work that results in me being up till midnight doing work. I figure I have needed to add about 3-4 hours to my day so in some respect, that is a huge pay cut out of my pocket that went straight into the bottom line of my company (who BTW is making record profits). IMO, that is what is occuring and why worker productivity is very high right now.
My bigger concern is that we appear to be engaged in a race to the bottom mentality that essentially says, "I'm getting screwed so why shouldn't you" and the net effect is putting all workers against each other for who will work for less compensation while companies are making record profits. I suppose the end game to that is we eventually end up competing with the likes of North Korea for who can work for less while the people that run our companies sacrifice little and enjoy the benefits as people that work fight amoung themselves for the scraps.
Of course, that is somewhat the nature of competition and that is baked into the American DNA but so is a sense of balance and fairness.
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71 Formula 433, Splayed cap 400 block, 4" stroke Scat forged crank, 6.8 Eagle rods, custom Autotec pistons. SD 295 KRE D ports, Old faithful hybrid roller, Torker II, Holley Sniper Stealth, Tribal Tubes, TKO 600, 3.73 Eaton posi.
Last edited by Formula8; 03-01-2011 at 04:19 PM.
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