Low skill levels mean low pay

* Unless workers can offer more than just muscle, they will dwell in the bottom pay rungs.

The warnings are frequent and ominous.

Your father's job doesn't exist anymore. If your skills are not in demand, your wages are going down.

"American companies, indeed all companies, are focusing on the bottom line like never before," said former U.S. Labor Department Secretary Robert B. Reich. "If younger workers are relatively unskilled and in abundant supply relative to the demand for them, their wages are heading south."

America's new generation of blue-collar workers have a choice: Stay in a low-paying job or head to the classroom.

The economy is booming yet an undercurrent of frustration lingers for a generation of unskilled workers in Dayton and communities nationwide.

At Yale University, cafeteria workers are bound to a "new wage hire rate" because the dining halls were losing money.

At Dayton's Chrysler plant, new workers earn $13-an-hour below top wage because of a deal that helped save the plant from extinction.

Everywhere you look, traditional manufacturing companies that once offered high wages and generous benefits are slimming down and cutting back to preserve profits and survive in a competitive economy.

Nobody expects this to change. In a Dayton Daily News poll, eight of 10 residents said they expect more jobs to leave the United States for low-wage countries like Mexico.

Reich said any hope of reversing these trends rests with the workers themselves.

`Organized labor can attempt to fight back on several fronts,' he said. `They can organize more aggressively and seek to gain bargaining leverage with employers. And they can get rid of rigid work rules which inhibit an employer's flexibility.

"But, in exchange, get an employer's commitment to maintain wages for all people doing the same job."

Main story:

TIERED WAGES
SYSTEM PROMOTES UNREST
   Because of the arrangement, Yale workers can earn as much as $2.40 an hour less than others who perform the same jobs.

Sidebars:

CHRYSLER WOES USHER IN TIERS
   Wage structuring gets a firm toehold in the auto industry in the early 1980s

POLL FINDS DISCONTENT
  Respondents say tiered contracts are unfair and unions have let down younger workers.

INTERVIEW
TOO MANY AMERICANS HEADING DOWNWARD
   The former U.S. Department of Labor secretary suggests seeking solidarity among employees.