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Us losing millions manufacturing jobs { September 4 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.freep.com/money/business/walsh4_20030904.htmhttp://www.freep.com/money/business/walsh4_20030904.htm
TOM WALSH: Labor leader John Sweeney's take on the economy
September 4, 2003
BY TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
John Sweeney, the feisty 69-year-old president of the AFL-CIO, did a fine job Wednesday during his Detroit Economic Club speech articulating what ails our economy:
15 million U.S. workers who are either jobless or part-timers wishing they were full time.
The loss of 3.2 million nongovernment jobs since President George W. Bush took office, including 2.5 million manufacturing jobs.
"And now American corporations are racing to add to the crisis by outsourcing millions of white-collar jobs in computer sciences, engineering, financial and medical services," he said, to workers in India, China and other low-wage havens.
Problem was, Sweeney followed this litany with mostly the same old solutions from organized labor's tired song sheet: Elect more Democrats and quit signing free-trade agreements.
Even more troubling, perhaps, for Sweeney and the labor union movement is whether anybody's paying attention to them.
Here in Detroit, which Sweeney called "the industrial soul of the richest country in the world," only 350 people turned out Wednesday to hear the nation's top labor leader speak at Cobo Center. That's one-fifth of last week's turnout for Steve Mariucci, coach of a Detroit Lions football team coming off an abysmal 3-13 season.
Even on the dais for Wednesday's event, there were very few corporate, labor or political heavyweights on hand for a guy of Sweeney's stature. Peter Pestillo, Visteon Corp.'s chairman and CEO, introduced Sweeney. But Pestillo was a stand-in for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was called to Washington, D.C., to testify about the Aug 14 blackout.
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger was busy with contract talks and didn't attend. No high-level automotive executives were on hand except Pestillo; name badges were prepared for some General Motors and Chrysler officials, but they were no-shows. Even politicians were absent, except for Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, who popped into the pre-lunch reception but didn't stay for the speech.
To Sweeney's credit, he gave a passionate speech, peppered with data on the alarming drop in U.S. manufacturing jobs and some examples of Michigan people who lost jobs due to cut-rate competition with imports. And he unveiled a new AFL-CIO organization called Working America that would reach out to people who are not union members for support on issues and national legislation important to labor. Sweeney says Working America's goal is to enlist 1 million people within a year.
"We will draw from our frustration and our anger to organize the biggest political mobilization of working people in history to hold elected officials, including President Bush, accountable for their inaction on the trade and jobs crisis and for the war the president has declared on working families and our unions," Sweeney said.
At times, Sweeney hit the heights of hyperbole, declaring now to be "the worst job market since the Great Depression," even though Michigan unemployment rate of 7.4 percent is less than half of the dreadful 16.3 percent reached in late 1982.
The union-heavy audience gave Sweeney a standing ovation at the end of his speech, despite its lack of realistic solutions.
Sweeney's proposals included creating more jobs by jacking up government spending on schools, highways, health care and energy. And he tossed in this goal for good measure: "To create a national industrial policy guaranteeing that every decision made by our federal government contributes to the protection and creation of good jobs."
Wow.
Let's forget for a moment the vexing problem of defining what constitutes a "good job," and just ponder the goofiness of a "guarantee" that every single decision made by our federal government -- remember, these are members of Congress we're talking about -- will contribute to the protection and creation of these idyllic good jobs.
I repeat: Wow.
After the speech, I lobbed a question at Sweeney, hoping for elaboration on what's so horrible about Bush compared to the eight years under his predecessor, President Bill Clinton, a Democrat who pushed and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that organized labor so loves to hate.
Sweeney rambled through an answer suggesting that Clinton tried to insert clauses to protect workers and the environment into trade agreements but was frustrated by the World Trade Organization, which left me frustrated at the dearth of good answers Sweeney had for the very good questions he raised.
Contact TOM WALSH at 313-223-4430 or twalsh@freepress.com.
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