
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 3, 1994                   TAG: 9406030135
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: From the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. WORK WORLD GRIM, PANEL FINDS

A federal commission painted a grim picture of a fast-changing American workplace Thursday, citing stagnant pay levels, a growing gap between high-wage and low-wage workers and a sharp increase in ``working poor'' who have full-time jobs but fall below the government's poverty line.

The Clinton administration will use the report to try to overhaul the fundamental rules of the U.S. workplace.

The commission said the traditional pattern of lifetime jobs with a single employer is growing less common as firms increasingly hire more part-time and temporary workers to reduce labor costs. It also noted that more Americans - two out of three - now hold jobs or are seeking them, largely because almost three out of five women are in the work force compared to one out of three women in 1950.

Americans also put in more hours per year than in any other industrialized nation except Japan, the report said, largely due to laws mandating four or five weeks of vacation in European countries.

The findings of the Commission for the Future of Worker/Management Relations herald what promises to be a bitter and long fight over labor law reform.

Unlike the U.S. work force of the past six decades, the report said, today's workers are ``more educated; more female, often part of a two-earner family; more likely to be members of a minority group; and getting older as the baby boomers age.'' This ``poses challenges to the traditional modes of compensation and organization of work schedules and makes provisions of equal opportunity for all increasingly critical to our economic success.''

Labor Secretary Robert Reich said the question to be answered is whether the system of laws governing the workplace is ``appropriate to the times.''

While the yearlong study found a decline in collective bargaining contracts and a sharply lower level of strikes, it also reported a surge in government regulation and litigation involving health and safety, job discrimination and other workplace issues. Employment cases in the federal courts increased by 400 percent from 1971 to 1991, the report said.

The commission, headed by former Secretary of Labor John Dunlop, envisioned a growing role for employees in making decisions affecting their jobs and said available evidence suggests that could improve their companies' economic performance.

Even so, the report added, survey research indicates about 50 million workers would like to take part in making workplace decisions but have no opportunity to do so. At most, only 5 percent of all workplaces have effective participation systems, it estimated.

Dunlop said the commission hoped to issue recommendations for change within the next six months.

The commission said the number of ``working poor'' who remain in poverty despite 40 hours on the job every week, has increased greatly in the past 15 years.

``About 18 percent of the nation's year-round full-time workers earned less than $13,091 in 1992 - a 50 percent increase over the 12 percent who had low earnings in 1979,'' it said. ``These workers consist disproportionately of women, young workers, Blacks, Hispanics and the less educated.''

by CNB