Bubbles are relative. The bubble aspect of it is the cost above replacement. As we reach a point where software and hardware can replace more and more workers and there is higher unemployment creating a pool of human workers, too, that's when the wage bubble pops. It's popping. The relative compensation trends among various groups of workers is irrelevant to the discussion. Practically nothing in this world is so special that there can't be a substitute for it. Human labor, of the kind that the bulk of humans are capable of doing, is no different. Also, in typical Mother Jones "bury the lede" fashion, they don't disaggregate total productivity into "top 1% productivity gains" and "bottom 99% total productivity gains". Not saying that it is the case, but it could be the case that the top 1% rise in overall income is just them capturing their share of the productivity gains. When a worker on an assembly line becomes more productive solely because of capital investments by upper management, why should the worker capture any of that productivity gain as income? He didn't put the capital at-risk to do so nor did he necessarily raise his skill level. Indeed, the driver of the gain may have been that the worker had fewer opportunities to screw up production by putting more onus on capital equipment, so that the worker was reduced to a babysitter for the machine. So, when I look at that graph, I see propaganda, not information.
So a few bakers get to decide for the entire company that their jobs aren't worth saving? It seems to me the right thing to do would have been for the bakers to take the deal and the ones that weren't happy with the pay could find other employment
What you are describing is not a bubble, it's structural unemployment. Those are entirely different things. There has been no bubble in wages when normalized to median income during any significant period of time in recent history.
$25K with benefits is still a lot more than all the non-union bakers at $20K per year without benefits. It appears that Hostess was overpaying by at least 25% in direct hourly pay alone (not counting benefits).
The problem with normalizing to median income is that median income is itself an artifact of bubbles, at least it has been for the past ~15 years. The wage bubble occurred because workers were able to demand more in wages because they knew that was the only way to afford the housing they wanted. Employers paid it because they didn't foresee the collapse of the housing bubble and they needed their employees to be able to live near enough that working for them was a viable option. The slowing economy and the amount of competition are flattening wages even for those who are employed. But, it's not "structural unemployment" because there aren't a lot of direct substitutes among the unemployed for each category of jobs where there are openings. Look at the stats for who is unemployed and match their skills up to the jobs that are out there. There is a huge pool of labor which is practically unemployable. But, they aren't the ones competing for jobs because the jobs that are out there require skills they don't have. Among those who are employable, unemployment is actually pretty low. But, employers are able to push down wages even among top-tier workers not because they have a huge pool of workers to replace them with, but because in the absence of any other bubbles in society, they can justify lower wages by pointing to lower employee costs.
what we need in corporate America is something more like the farm system in baseball. Corporations go into high schools, start talking to the kids point them in the right direction, and then train them in the skills needed. Those robots you talk about are just machines, and they break and need to be fixed, and it takes some skill to work with them. A 4 year college degree in Physics may not be what the employer actually needs. They know what they need and can do the training, and probably get some loyalty out of the deal.
Perhaps you should define your terms, since they seem to be different from common usage in economic theory. What does "bubble" mean to you, quantitatively? How much has the real median income risen over the last 15 years, since you chose that period, either in absolute terms or relative to productivity delivered per man-hour?
The pay cuts were temporary. It was a necessary step for the company to get back to profitability. http://www.koaa.com/news/hostess-employee-pay-cut-was-temporary/