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Len Shindel

By Len Shindel
IBEW Communications Specialist

Things were finally looking up for Dwayne Pendergraph after taking some tough licks.

Pendergraph, 32, and his wife, Darla, were back on their feet after losing their jobs in 2006 when the Carrier air cooling products plant, where they had worked for nearly 10 years, shut down and relocated from Morrison, Tenn., to Mexico — putting them and Darla’s father out of work.

Pendergraph, whose father had taken a severance package before his job at A.O. Smith in McMinville was outsourced to Mexico in 2003, went to work in a Mahle Tennex automobile parts plant in Murfreesboro feeding parts to robots for assembly.

We were like football players doing handoffs.

Darla got a job at a Rich Foods processing plant in Murfreesboro.  Although they now drove 40 miles to work in different directions, they once again had two incomes coming in.

Then the automobile industry tanked.  Pendergraph was laid off and called back.  But the robots and three production lines were sent to Mexico in 2009.

He put in an application at Philips Luminaire’s lighting fixture plant in Sparta.  “They had a good track record,” says Pendergraph, of the plant that opened in 1963 as Thomas Lighting and was designated one of the top 10 industrial plants in North America by Industry Week magazine in 2009. Hired at Philips, Pendergraph joined IBEW Local 2143 and a family of workers and managers whose long history of productive negotiations and steady improvements in productivity had assumed legendary status.

I work with a lot of good people who clock in on time every day and do a good job. When the boss comes down and needs something done, we do it.

After working at Philips for only a year, he already shared the pride in awards that the plant received for safety and efficiency. (more…)

Steven Capozzola

By Steven Capozzola
Media Director, Alliance for American Manufacturing

Readers of ManufactureThis are well aware that ABC World News has been running segments this week about the importance of buying American-made products.  In addition to their reality-TV-style experiment of refurbishing a suburban Dallas home with only Made-in-USA goods, news anchor Diane Sawyer pointed out that if every American spent an extra $64 a year on buying American-made goods, it could create 200,000 new jobs in the U.S.

All this makes good sense to us.  However, Dan Ikenson at the Cato Institute views it as “dangerous, nationalistic propaganda.” Ikenson says this is “reckless” and that U.S. manufacturing “continues to thrive in every metric…except employment.”  He attributes manufacturing’s success to increased productivity– and that “making more with less is the goal! That’s how an economy grows!”

Needless to say, we profoundly disagree with Ikenson on his conclusion that all is peachy with U.S. manufacturing and the American economy.  What we really want to do is call him up and give him a piece of our mind.  We imagine a phone call that might go something like this…

ME: Hi Dan, it’s Steven Capozzola at AAM.  Listen, your viewpoint is just backward.  You guys are the ones who’ve gotten us into this mess.

IKENSON: Free trade works.  Our productivity is better than it’s ever been.  Per capita income is so much greater than it was in 1960, when we hardly imported anything.  Household goods cost less than ever.  People can buy whatever they want. (more…)

Kathy Garrison, a member of the United Steelworkers (USW) who works at the Severstal Sparrows Point flat rolled steel mill in Maryland, provokes evaluation of the nation’s priorities by asking  in this song, “Are We Making It In America?”

She sings the double entendre lyrics written by Ike Gittlen, the USW liaison to the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), and Steven Cappozzola, AAM media director. Mr. Cappozzola wrote and performed the music.

Scott N. Paul

By Scott Paul
Executive Director of Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM)

Too many American are unemployed. But Congress is not likely to act in any meaningful way to boost the economy. The Federal Reserve is trying quantitative easing, but that may not be a panacea.

That’s why it is time to take matters into your own hands…and your wallets. This holiday shopping season: Buy American. It’s your own personal stimulus plan for our economy.

Buying American is easier than you might think. Localization is in. And, products from golf balls to pool noodles are still made in America. There are plenty of domestically manufactured toys, clothes, and sporting goods to satisfy even the most discriminating of shoppers. American-made goods offer a proven safety record, compared to the frequent incidents of tainted products imported from China.

Before you buy those holiday gifts, look at the label and consider the options. We have dozens of gift ideas on our ManufactureThis blog, and we’ll be offering new options for you to consider every day.

When you buy an American-made toy, you’re not only helping to employ a U.S. factory worker, but you’re also choosing a safe option. There are many, many instances of toxic and lead-painted goods from China. Our children’s health isn’t worth the risk. (more…)

Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

The House Ways and Means Committee just approved a bill that pushes China to raise the value of its currency. It looks like the bill will go to a vote on the House floor next week. This is a very big deal because it is a “second front” pushing China to bring its currency to market rates. President Obama met with Chinese Premier Wen yesterday and most of their 2-hour meeting was taken up discussing this issue, and today he gets backing from the House. This tells China that we are serious, that it is more than just the administration talking, and they have to start doing the right thing.

China has been manipulating its currency to keep it low, which means goods made in China cost less in world markets. This, combined with other trade manipulations, has created a huge imbalance in world markets. It moves industries, jobs, expertise, money and power to China, and has created a huge “bubble” of imbalance that threatens the world’s economy. Currently the interests in China and elsewhere, including here, that benefit from the imbalance have the upper hand. But this vote demonstrates that the rest of us, here, in China and around the world, that would benefit from a rebalancing are rallying and challenging the current policies. (more…)

Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

Addressing the AFL-CIO Executive Council yesterday, President Obama signaled support for the new Congressional “Make It In America” initiative, saying,

“As long as I’m president, I’m going to keep fighting night and day to make sure that we win those jobs, that those are jobs that are created right here in the United States of America — (applause) — and that your members are put to work.

So the message I want to deliver to our competitors and to those in Washington who’ve tried to block our progress at every step of the way is that we are going to rebuild this economy stronger than before. And at the heart of it are going to be three powerful words: Made in America. (Applause.) Made in America.”

A Washington Post story, New Democratic strategy for creating jobs focuses on a boost in manufacturing, explains,

President Obama and congressional Democrats — out of options for another quick shot of stimulus spending to revive the sluggish economy — are shifting toward a longer-term strategy that promises to tackle persistently high unemployment by engineering a renaissance in American manufacturing.

That approach, heralded by Obama last week in Detroit and sketched out in a memo to House Democrats as they headed home for the August break, is still evolving and so far focuses primarily on raising taxes on multinational corporations that Democrats accuse of shipping jobs overseas.

The strategy also repackages policies long pursued by the White House — such as investing in clean energy, roads, bridges and broadband service — with more than two dozen legislative proposals aimed at developing a plan for promoting domestic manufacturing. (more…)

Scott N. Paul

By Scott Paul
Executive Director of Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM)

Made in America seems to be all the rage in the Capitol right now. Rahm Emanuel promised us that we’d be hearing a lot more from the White House about this over the next few weeks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi previewed the House Democrats’ “Make it in America” plan to the President a few days ago. It’s perhaps the only issue on which liberals and Tea Party supporters agree. Jeep has launched an ad campaign (which, by the way, looks a lot like a video we premiered in 2007) to link the idea with its new Grand Cherokee. So, what exactly is Made in America?

More on that later. But now, it’s important for you to know what BP didn’t make in America: the blow-out preventer on its failed rig. When the blow-out preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig needed to be modified, it was sent to China. According to the UK’s Guardian newspaper:

BP ordered the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, whose explosion led to the worst environmental disaster in US history, to overhaul a crucial piece of the rig’s safety equipment in China, the Observer has learnt. The blow-out preventer – the last line of defence against an out-of-control well – subsequently failed to activate and is at the centre of investigations into what caused the disaster. (more…)

The other day I posted Whirlpool Bites Hands Of American Taxpayers That Feed It saying, in summary,

• Whirlpool closes a plant in Evansville
• Taxpayers will shoulder the unemployment and other costs.
• All the local supplier, transportation and other third-party jobs are destroyed.
• Even more home foreclosures in the area as a result.
• Local businesses are stressed or have to go out of business.
• They are playing nearby Iowa against Indiana for tax breaks and subsidies to keep just a few of the jobs.
• Whirlpool is profiting from making all this someone else’s problem.
• And, of course, Wall Street celebrates the move.

A Whirlpool spokesperson responded, leading to the post, Whirlpool Exec Responds: The System Made Us Do It, taking a look at the bigger picture that forces our companies like Whirlpool to do these things that destroy people, communities and our economy,

“The spokesperson for Whirlpool is exactly right. It is the system that makes them do this. They are only following the market’s orders.”

I thought that was the end of it, but whoa, what’s this? Whirlpool Threatens Workers: Protesting Plant Closure Risks ‘Future Jobs’

A major corporation planning to shut down a factory in Indiana has warned its union workers that they’ll endanger their future job prospects if they protest the plant’s closing.

. . . Activists planned a high-profile protest for this Friday, with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka visiting the plant for the first time. But Whirlpool says the effort is futile — they are fully committed to shutting the plant down. The company, however, still seems quite wary of the potential for bad publicity. In a memo sent to its employees and passed along to the Huffington Post, Paul Coburn, division vice president for Whirlpool’s Evansville Division, offers a fairly explicit warning to his workers: If they join Trumka’s protest they would seriously risk future employment opportunity.

Threatening workers who show up at the protest that they risk future employment? Click through to read the entire report and to see Whirlpool’s letter.

And take action: Tell Whirlpool: Keep It Made in America and Save Our Jobs.

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This post originally appeared at the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF).

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Johnson also is a fellow at the Commonweal Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream.

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Follow Dave Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcjohnson

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

It would be easy in these troubled times to shrink from campaign promises, to cower from the greatness that might have been, to claim that the beast of the Bush recession had devoured the nation’s potential to achieve great goals.

President Barack Obama chose instead to arrive at his first address to a joint session of Congress prepared to restore America’s hope for lofty causes. In addition, during those 52 minutes of inspiration, President Obama renewed his commitment to work for the benefit of working people, calling for a legislative focus this year on three areas crucial to them: education, energy and health care.

“We are a nation that has seen promise amid peril, and claimed opportunity from ordeal. Now we must be that nation again,” the president said. Yes. Yes we can.

“The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation,” he said. “The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities, in our fields and our factories, in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth.” Notice that the president didn’t mention in this group those vaunted Wall Street financial brainiacks. He did, however, specify working people, blue collars in fields and factories and white collars in labs and universities.

This next bit is crucial. President Obama said he believes government has a responsibility to act during this economic crisis to help resolve it:

“I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves; that says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity.

For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.

In each case, government didn’t supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive.”

That puts him in conflict with Republicans who want to sit idly by or believe government should commit more of the shameful failures that got the U.S. into this mess – cutting taxes – particularly for businesses. That is exactly what Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal offered as a solution when he rebutted President Obama’s speech for the Republicans afterwards.

Then he went on to try to squirm out of his own party’s responsibility for the current budget deficit – caused in large part by the massive tax cuts the Republican Congress and Republican President bestowed on the rich.  Here’s what Jindal said: “In recent years, these distinctions in philosophy became less clear – because our party got away from its principles. You elected Republicans to champion limited government, fiscal discipline, and personal responsibility. Instead, Republicans went along with earmarks and big government spending in Washington. Republicans lost your trust – and rightly so.” Really? Republicans, who controlled Congress, “went along with” earmarks? Even now they refuse to accept “personal responsibility!”

Among President Obama’s promises in his speech, by contrast, was that he would reverse those Republican tax cuts for the rich. In a pre-emptive strike, he pointed out that only those earning more than a quarter million dollars a year would return to tax rates they had paid before Bush took office. Jindal suggested the Democratic programs would “saddle future generations with debt.” But, again, he failed to mention the debt created by the Republican tax cut for the rich.

President Obama doesn’t accept Jindal’s premise at all, however. He believes that government can be used to prod the economy to grow. He said, “The only way to fully restore America’s economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world. The only way this century will be another American century is if we confront at last the price of our dependence on oil and the high cost of health care; the schools that aren’t preparing our children and the mountain of debt they stand to inherit.  That is our responsibility.”

He said the process begins with energy and that the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead this century. Yet, he said, China has moved ahead of the U.S. to make its economy energy efficient. The U.S. invented solar technology, “but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it.  New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea. Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders – and I know you don’t either.  It is time for America to lead again.”

What’s significant about this is not just that he is seeking leadership in a crucial area, but that he wants factories and workers in the U.S. to make the parts – not import them. Similarly, he promised to remove the tax credit given multinationals that move their manufacturing facilities overseas and to ensure a re-imagined and competitive auto manufacturing industry in America. This president understands the value of that made in America label.

It’s telling who President Obama chose to bring to the assembly and single out first for praise. It was Leonard Abess, a bank president from Miami, who gave his $60 million bonus to his 471 workers. Mr. Abess said he didn’t feel right keeping it himself. This stands in stark contrast to those Wall Street financers who walked away with millions in bonuses – never looking back — after taxpayers had bailed out their failed banks. Obama said that kind of abuse would end in his administration.

Like Abess, Obama clearly appreciates workers. Yes, he does.