March 23—Workers from across the country now are converging in St. Louis to kick off the historic Show Us the Jobs™ tour March 24.
“I am extremely excited about going on this tour. I wish I could be going out and saying there are plenty of jobs, but the truth is jobs are leaving the country and they’re not coming back,” says Jeff, a 39-year-old unemployed construction worker from Ohio. He says the future looks bleak for his two sons, ages 7 and 4. “In 15 years, there may not be any jobs.”
Jeff is one of 51 workers—one from each state and the District of Columbia—taking part in the Show Us the Jobs™ tour March 24–31. The buses will leave St. Louis and travel through eight states and 18 cities, ultimately arriving in Washington, D.C., where the riders will join with union and community allies on Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers to create new policies that keep good jobs in this country.
Follow Along on the Show Us the Jobs™ Website
Through the new Show Us the Jobs™ website, you can follow the 51 workers, read the stories of their personal struggles and their daily accounts (“blogs,” or web logs) of the tour. The site also includes opportunities to speak out for better jobs and read what others are saying about the nation’s jobs crisis. The tour is sponsored by the AFL-CIO and WORKING AMERICA, a new national organization for nonunion working families.
“I want to tell people about the real situation,” says Claudia, a 36-year-old unemployed worker from New Mexico. “You’re supposed to go to school and get a good job and help your family. But there are no jobs,” says Claudia, who just finished graduate school but cannot find a job.
For Tyrone, a retired National Guardsman and unemployed information technology worker from Washington, D.C., the bus tour is an opportunity to make things better in this country. The government is one of the largest exporters of American jobs, he says, and the government is responsible for outsourcing its own jobs. “That has to stop.”
More and More U.S. Jobs Shipped Overseas
Every day in America, 85,444 people lose their jobs. The United States has lost nearly 3 million private-sector jobs since President George W. Bush took office in 2001, including 2.8 million manufacturing jobs. Faulty trade and tax policies that make it profitable to send U.S. jobs abroad have encouraged many employers to ship jobs overseas.
Cindy, 47, is one of the millions of workers whose job has been shipped out of the country. Cindy worked for 26 years at BF Jeanswear in Alabama before the plant closed and moved overseas, putting 13,000 people out of work. She has been out of work for two years. Her daughter is making her house payment for her and she’s afraid because this is the first time in her life she has not had health insurance.
“I just don’t see how we can take four more years of George Bush,” she says. “I want to tell people that the way we’re going, before long we’re going to be dependent on other countries for everything we need. And that’s not good.”
White-collar workers’ jobs also are at risk: As many as 14 million white-collar jobs could be lost in the next decade, according to a 2003 study by the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. At the same time, the jobs that are being created are mainly lower-wage jobs that provide few if any benefits. In the industries now adding jobs, pay is 21 percent less than in American industries losing jobs.
“We have to raise awareness that there are lots of people out of jobs,” Jeff says. “They are classified as discouraged workers, and they’re not counted on the unemployment rolls. But they’re still looking for a job. You have to have a job to live. If they keep sending jobs overseas, there won’t be any left.”
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