This Washington Post article is mostly decent:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
It covers the attempt to bring in 'card check' unionization.
I'm interested in it here for one quote:
Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist with the consulting firm LECG who produced a study predicting job losses if the bill passes, said in a conference call organized by employers that increased productivity had not resulted in larger wage gains in recent decades because the growth was mostly the result of technology. "If the productivity of labor went up, then the wages of labor would go up," she said.
To be sure, she is just one person and doesn't necessarily speak for all business, but the comment is astounding. First of all, it's entirely meaningless. What does she expect, that workers would work faster and faster?
Workers get more productive primarily because of improvements in technology. The deal is 'supposed' to be that investors supply the new technology and the workers learn how to use it properly and both share in the wealth produced by the productivity gains.
That an industry mouthpiece would attempt to justify workers not getting any of the gains of GDP growth is astounding to me.
I'm posting this diary so that hopefully writers like Dave Sirota will see that quote. Corporate executives need to be asked if they share the sentiment that they deserve all the wealth derived from introducing new technology and that actually learning to use it isn't worth anything.