From Plain Dealer's Tom Feran 's column, 9/30/03
(Tom Feran gave some samples of readers responding to his column about loss of jobs
and wages.)
Larry in Austin Texas, blames labor unions for the massive exporting of jobs.
Actually, the private sector union production jobs make up only 25% of union membership now. Production union workers have radically disappeared over
the past ten years. Unions are now primarily made up of public workers and some retail clerk workers. There are
no tangible products involved with these jobs that relate to moving factories. The government workers have been protected
from the massive exporting of jobs. Most likley they will be soon be affected too. For example, 18 states now have workers
in India handling U.S. welfare clients from there. The public workers will soon follow the fate of the production workers
since their jobs are being outsourced now too.
The U.S. government started supporting and funding the moving of factories
to Mexico in 1956. By 1993, 2,000 factories were moved. After NAFTA was passed in 1994, 2,000 more factories were moved crushing
any hopes of creating any real jobs in the USA.
In the early 1970s, there were plenty of $12,000 a year jobs. A first class
stamp was still only 8 cents. The Post Office uses many comparisons to prove that the current 37 cents stamps
is in tune with everything else going up. This means there should be plenty of $50,000 jobs today and of course these jobs
do not exist. As A.E. says in Tom Feran 's column, that one of every four workers today make less than $8.19 an
hour. If compared to the 1970s, this would be only about $2.00 and hour.
M.A. from Walton Hills, Ohio tells how her husband lost his supervisory job
after 32 years and begged a company to hire him for a maintenane position because the family had depleted their savings trying
to survive. M.A. lost her job in February after 19 years. She says she worries everyday about the future and how they
will get by." (about one third of all who lose their jobs after age 55, never find another one with most losing their
entire live savings.)
From Ray (Tapajna) in Cleveland:
"The USA has suffered the most massive dislocation of jobs in its history. The great
need of our times is real jobs and not wars. I worked in four different factories while going to college. I made
the equivalent of $15 an hour (to $20). If these jobs were available today, there would be thousands in line applying, including
college graduates. Why do so many wear blinders about the real terrorism of our time? The war on jobs has been going on a
long time." (Extra note: There were about the same number of bankruptcies reported in 1998 when statistical prosperity
was reported as there were in 2002.) The economy is broken. As Franklin Roosevelt said, economic diseases are highly
communicable. Today these "diseases" are an epidemic with Globalism now breeding wars and terrorism with it.
Thank you Tom Feran for your extraordinary column. We wish there were more like you.
