Oct. 20—U.S. companies will send some 406,000 American jobs overseas this year compared with 204,000 jobs three years ago, according to a new government report. Of those jobs, 140,000 will be moved to Mexico and 99,000 will go to China. The report supports the findings in recently released studies by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council (IUC) which examine the role trade has played in manufacturing job losses in several key states. Since January 2001, Americans have lost more than 2.7 million manufacturing jobs and 850,000 professional service and information sector jobs. The AFL-CIO reports show that many of these jobs have been moved overseas as a result of bad trade policies pursued by the Bush administration.
The government report, The Changing Nature of Corporate Global Restructuring: The Impact of Production Shifts on Jobs in the U.S., China and Around the Globe, released Oct. 14, was prepared for the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, which Congress created four years ago.
“With no particular loyalty to country, industry, community or product…this global race to the bottom is driven by…the search for ever-cheaper production costs, accessibility to expanding global markets and the flexibility that comes from diverse supply chains in an ever more volatile economic and political climate,” the report says.
Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and Stephanie Luce, research director and assistant professor at the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, prepared the report.
AFL-CIO Reports Break Down Job Loss in Key States
State-specific analyses by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council bring home the devastation caused by import competition and job exporting in such states as Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Washington. Between January 2001 and August 2004, Wisconsin lost one of every nine manufacturing jobs, according to the IUC. Fully 61 percent of the layoffs by the state’s manufacturers that issued federally mandated WARN notifications between January 2001 and May 2004 were trade related. The WARN Act is the federal law that requires large employers to give advance notice of layoffs involving 50 or more employees.
The figures are similarly grim in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington State: Between January 2001 and June 2004, the Buckeye State lost nearly one of every six manufacturing jobs. Pennsylvania’s computer and electronics products sector, for example, lost more than half its workforce since January 2001. And 40 percent of Washington State’s net manufacturing jobs lost since January 2001 have been trade related.
The state job-loss analyses are culled from a Job Tracker database created by the IUC and WORKING AMERICA. The database is accessible online with information on more than 200,000 U.S. corporations and their subsidiaries that are reported to have moved jobs overseas. WORKING AMERICA is a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO.
Sen. Kerry Will End Unfair Policies that Encourage Corporations to Move Overseas
Working family advocates say President George W. Bush’s tax and trade policies reward companies for shipping the nation’s good jobs overseas. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has pledged to close corporate tax loopholes that reward companies more for shipping jobs overseas than for creating jobs in the United States. Kerry supports tax credits that encourage companies to keep and expand operations in this nation. He also wants to end the practice of U.S. corporations reincorporating overseas to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and refuses to grant such companies government contracts.
Although the U.S. manufacturing sector has been particularly devastated by Bush policies that encourage companies to send jobs overseas, information sector workers also increasingly are among those whose jobs are exported. During the first three months of this year, the communications and IT sector accounted for the most jobs lost, the China commission study reports. High-tech companies announced nearly 55,000 layoffs in the past three months, according to the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas—a figure 14 percent higher than the comparable period last year. Over the summer, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its prediction of the growth in the number of high-tech white-collar jobs between 2002 and 2012 downward by 70 percent.
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The Changing Nature of Corporate Global Restructuring: The Impact of Production Shifts on Jobs in the U.S., China and Around the Globe.
