Naked Capitalism has a good perspective on the article.

After accelerating in the late 1990s, productivity growth has slowed markedly in the past decade. The slump is a bit of a mystery given the rapid pace of technological progress, which should generally allow companies to produce more per hour of work.

Is it possible that after seeing generation of productivity gains creamed off by owners, American workers have finally figured out there’s nothing in it for them, so why do it?

Incentives do matter, and guess who's stealing all the productivity gains? It's not the owners, it's inflation (just 2% a year can eat all productivity gains), which means the central bank (which means the government and their cronies).