Making Business Succeed
Posted January 29, 2011 at 3:00 pm, in From Our Allies and Partners
Stan Sorscher
By Stan Sorscher
Labor Representative, Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA)
Last spring, a congressional staffer introduced me to a new expression. She said, “Our job is to make business succeed.”
My message to her had been that careers in science and technology were threatened as our economy de-industrialized. As manufacturing work goes to low-wage countries, the engineering and R&D jobs will go, too. American engineers and technical workers will have fewer opportunities for career growth. Already, engineering and science graduates compete with hundreds of thousands of foreign temporary high-tech workers for entry-level high-tech jobs. About half of all engineering and science students find work outside of engineering and science, when they graduate from college. Our policies are undermining high-tech workers in America.
She was gently explaining how I had missed the point. Her job was to make business succeed. I was worried about workers. Her priorities and mine did not match up.
I assume she meant large businesses, with very large PACs, who have more influence with congressional committees than I do.
Shortly afterward, US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said it more artfully in a radio interview, “Our job is to make businesses succeed… so they can create good new jobs.” (more…)
