Sharing productivity gains

1. As more and more workers are placed into temporary, part-time and contingent employment and experience a decline in wages, purchasing power diminishes. Even those workers with permanent jobs find their wages falling in the midst of rising gains in productivity, with new rounds of re-engineering, technology displacement and wage cuts, continuing to fuel the downward drift in consumption. The steady loss of consumer purchasing power and a decline in worker's pension fund capital are likely to have a far more significant impact on the long term health of the global economy than all the overblown concern over national debts and budget deficits. It is very much in the interest of corporate management to begin seriously thinking about constructive ways to share the vast productivity gains of the information age with their employees if they want to insure both an adequate stream of purchasing power and sufficient investment capital in the years ahead.