The 51 riders—one from each state and the District of Columbia—will worship with about 1,000 of the workers in an interfaith service, hold a town hall meeting to talk about the impact of the jobs crisis and share a pancake breakfast with the workers.
Jim, a rider from Texas, understands the Electrolux workers’ pain. He was laid off from his job as a manufacturing engineer in Austin, which had been dubbed the second Silicon Valley. Now he spends his time looking for work and fixing up his house in case he has to sell it because he can’t keep up the mortgage payments. “All the big corporations are laying people off, and other businesses aren’t drawing enough customers to sustain the downturn. I see houses with ‘For Sale’ signs that have been up for months all over town,” he says.
“It’s overwhelming how far downhill our country has gone in such a short time. Companies are taking advantage of the downturn by putting employees through the ringer.”
On Saturday, the riders discussed the emotional and economic impact of the nation’s jobs crisis on families and communities as they crisscrossed Wisconsin. They participated in a town hall meeting in Manitowoc, where manufacturing accounts for one in every three jobs in the county. Last September, one of Manitowoc’s largest employers, the aluminum cookware giant Mirro Co., laid off 882 workers amid plans to build a plant in Mexico. Since 1998, U.S. imports of cookware, cutlery and kitchen tools have quadrupled.
In Milwaukee, the riders stopped at the Tower Automotive plant, which makes frames for the Dodge Ram truck. Tower has announced that about 500 workers will lose their jobs next year when the company moves production to new plant in Mexico.
Josephine, a rider from New Jersey who spoke at the Tower plant, writes in her daily blog about the bonding among the workers and their sense of mission.
“The bus is a unique support system for those who are out of work.…I wish there was more of this feeling and comaraderie among the job-seekers back home,” she writes. “Here, we are acknowledged, not for what we have or what we do, but for who we are. And, though it does sound a bit sentimental, we do represent real people, millions of real people, throughout the U.S. We see that we do make a difference, even for each other.”
That closeness among the riders has deepened Josephine’s determination to tell their stories and the stories of other jobless workers. “I heard that a GOP spokesperson described our tour as a political stunt. How dare he attempt to trivialize and marginalize us? The last thing he wants the American public to hear is the truth—that we are part of a systematic pattern of cutting millions of jobs to evade U.S. taxes and labor laws, so that greedy CEOs and corporations can get wealthier, with local communities and governments shouldering the consequences. Much of the labor overseas is under poor working conditions, is environmentally hazardous, and is often done by child and prison labor. Free trade isn’t free. It’s costing the U.S. its future, whether its manufacturing, technology or service jobs.”
