(Hat tip: Dissecting Leftism.)
John Stossel went looking for the lost jobs that have resulted from oursourcing.
ABC News asked the AFL-CIO for its best examples of workers who lost jobs because of outsourcing. The first people they told us to talk to were Shirley and Ronnie Bernard.
This couple lost their jobs because a Levi’s plant closed down and shipped its work to Mexico. Many who were laid off had worked for the company for 20 years.
The effect of this is, clothing is cheaper – at the expense of people who no longer get money for making it here in the US. Because of this, they oppose outsourcing.
Since 1992, the US has lost 361 million jobs. However…
…continued in full post…
In the same time period, the US has gained 380 jobs from elsewhere, a gain of 19 million jobs. But what kind of job are we talking about?
“Oh, I love my job now!” That’s Shirley Bernard talking — the outsourcing “victim” the AFL-CIO wanted me to interview. At her old job at Levi’s, the work was hot, noisy and physically difficult. Now, she’s a secretary. She’s paid more, too.
She worries about the long term, and she’s still an opponent of outsourcing, but she admits that many of her co-workers have moved on to better jobs. “Some of them have got, really got excellent jobs that they would never have even left Levi’s for if the plant hadn’t closed,” she says. “This kind of forced them to … to make a decision what they wanted to do and … and they’re really happy at what they do.”
When a worker is laid off, it’s easy to see her pain. Here it comes down the news wire: Thousands of jobs vanish in a single day as a plant closes. The benefits of free trade are harder to spot; when one individual finds new and better work because free trade helped a company expand, it doesn’t make the headlines.
Shirley’s Levi’s plant was featured in news reports as an example of the horrible damage done to an American community by outsourcing, but when we visited the site, construction workers were building a college there. Their jobs and all the other jobs created by the college won’t make the evening news, but they’re a product of outsourcing, too.
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