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Four years ago, American manufacturing was suffering.  In September 2008, after nine consecutive months of brutal job losses, the economy lost another 51,000 jobs in manufacturing.  By the end 2008, the United States had experienced its worst year since 1945, losing nearly 2.6 million jobs, including 800,000 in manufacturing.

Now, the manufacturing sector is growing.  Over half a million manufacturing jobs have been created since 2010, breaking a decade-long downward trend.  As foreign production costs rise and American businesses become more competitive, economists are predicting 5 million new jobs in manufacturing and supporting industries over the next ten years.

The revitalization of American manufacturing is the result of government policies that have focused on fostering growth.

The auto bailout saved millions of jobs when the industry was struggling in the Great Recession. And the success of the auto companies after the rescue has led to the addition of more than 120,000 auto industry jobs over the past two years. The Obama administration’s decision to enforce international trade regulations against violators like China gave American businesses the opportunity to compete on a level playing field.  In addition, the administration’s investments in research and development of new energy technologies allowed the United States to expand jobs manufacturing products like lithium-ion batteries, electric motor vehicles and solar panels.

To ensure future growth, the Obama administration has advocated tax breaks for manufacturers who keep their plants in the United States—and  penalties for those that offshore jobs.

Four years ago, the government had abandoned American manufacturing, but now a sustained commitment to rejuvenating the manufacturing sector is bringing manufacturing jobs back.

Republicans in two Congressional committees voted last week to press forward with legislation that would deny states the flexibility they requested to help more welfare recipients get jobs.

That’s right.

Not only that, Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential candidate, said last week he is eager to return to Washington this week for a floor vote on the Republican measure prohibiting the Obama administration from, as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) described it:

“encouraging states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF (welfare), particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find and retain employment.”

That’s right.

Republicans don’t want the Obama administration to help states get welfare recipients off the dole and into jobs. In July, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched an attack on the administration’s offer to meet a demand from states for more flexibility so states could move more people to work instead of pushing more paper around. Now, Republicans in Congress are taking up the cause of thwarting Obama’s plan to grant states’ request for flexibility. Historically, Republicans supported moving welfare recipients off the federal rolls and onto private pay rolls. But they’re not going to let Obama get credit for accomplishing that.

This dispute began with an attempt by the Obama administration to reduce regulatory burdens. Here’s what President Obama wrote Feb. 28, 2011 in the Administrative Flexibility memo:

“I am instructing agencies to work closely with state, local, and tribal governments to identify administrative, regulatory, and legislative barriers in federally funded programs that currently prevent states, localities, and tribes, from efficiently using tax dollars to achieve the best results for their constituents.”

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took the directive seriously and asked states for suggestions. Some state officials complained about burdensome welfare reform paperwork requirements and asked if HHS would provide flexibility. Among them were Utah and Nevada, both of which have Republican governors. Utah also has a Republican supermajority in its legislature.
HHS responded with a memo to states issued on July 12. It offers states a chance to achieve flexibility through waiver of some welfare rules if states conduct HHS-approved pilot programs that move additional welfare recipients to work in measureable ways.

The memo states at least 10 times that the goal is increased employment. For example, there’s this:

“HHS will only consider approving waivers relating to the work participation requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals of TANF (welfare).

“Moreover, HHS is committed to ensuring that any demonstration projects approved under this authority will be focused on improving employment outcomes and contributing to the evidence base for effective programs; therefore, terms and conditions will require a federally-approved evaluation plan designed to build our knowledge base.”

In a letter that accompanied the memo, HHS repeats incessantly that all proposals must fulfill the goal of increased employment. Of the 21 sentences, at least 10 specify that less welfare and more work is mandated by the law, is important and will be required for waiver.  For example, there’s this:

“The (HHS) Secretary is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits.”

(more…)

By Tula Connell
AFL-CIO Managing Editor

Each day in 2010, 13 workers on average were killed on the job—some 4,690 workers—and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases, according to the AFL-CIO’s annual report, “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.” Released this week, the report shows the number of those who died in 2010 (the most recent year for which data are available) is up from the 4,551 people who perished in 2009. This trend that has continued since 2004, the first year in a decade that saw the number of deaths on the job increase.

West Virginia, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota and North Dakota were among states with the highest workplace fatality rates, while New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island were states with the lowest rates. Latino workers, especially those born outside of the United States, continue to face higher rates of workplace fatalities—8 percent higher—than other workers. More than 3.8 million workers across all industries, including state and local government, experienced work-related injuries and illnesses in 2010, the most recent year for which there is data.

The report includes state-by-state profiles of workers’ safety and health and features state and national information on workplace fatalities, injuries, illnesses, the number and frequency of workplace inspections, penalties, funding, staffing and public employee coverage under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act). It also addresses delays in the standard-making process, ergonomic injuries, new and emerging hazards like pandemic flu and other infectious diseases.Noting that while “we have made great strides in making our workplaces safer,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said:

“Too many women and men in this country and around the world continue to be hurt or killed on the job. (more…)

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his crew of country club conservatives this week brutalized the nation’s democratic traditions to secure legislation demanded by big corporations and billionaire conservative financiers like the Koch brothers – legislation stripping workers of collective bargaining rights.

Walker & Crew succeeded in terminating workers’ rights – but they achieved that only by violating traditional American democratic values. They positioned themselves with dictators who act against the will of the people, deny free speech rights and suppress protests.

They violated the state’s open meetings law, breached the right of Wisconsin residents to rally in their own state capitol building, and contravened conventional standards of fairness by voting to deny workers their rights without assembling a quorum of senators.

Free speech and free access to government protect America’s democracy. Walker & Crew disregarded First Amendment rights repeatedly.

Just this week, Walker & Crew locked protesters out of their own capitol building in Madison. They locked the few protesters already in the building out of the meeting rooms where senate and house members voted. They denied access even to progressive Wisconsin Assembly members, one of whom climbed through a colleague’s window to gain access to his workplace.

In the weeks since Wisconsin’s 14 progressive senators fled to Illinois to prevent the chamber from achieving the quorum needed to vote on a measure spending the people’s money, Walker & Crew also shut down access from the capitol to a web site posted by protesters. And they severely restricted protesters’ access to the capitol where a sit-in and sleep-in began in mid-February.

Protesters, who peacefully gathered in Madison in the tens of thousands, began chanting, “Whose house is it?” referring to the capitol. “It’s our house,” they responded.

That’s not the way Walker & Crew saw it. They said voters gave them control of the people’s house in last fall’s elections. That, apparently, means to them that they don’t have to listen to the will of the people anymore. Polls show a large majority – more than 60 percent – of Wisconsinites oppose stripping workers of collective bargaining rights.

Walker & Crew didn’t listen to the people. And they repeatedly attempted to shut the people up. The First Amendment was written and adopted to protect the people from that kind of oppression by political leaders.

In addition to shutting the people up, Walker & Crew attempted to shut them out. On Wednesday, without providing proper notice, the state’s conservative senators conducted a meeting to consider a newly-written measure to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights. Notice is required by states’ open meetings laws, sometimes called sunshine acts. These guarantee citizens access to government meetings and documents. They’re intended to prevent governments from conducting the people’s business in secret. These laws also require notice of meetings so that citizens can exercise their access rights.

Walker & Crew ignored the notice requirements so that they could ram through their legislation terminating workers’ rights before citizens could comment on or protest the new measure. The conservatives deliberately disregarded citizens’ right in a democracy to participate in the political process that directly affects their lives.

In addition, by clandestinely arranging the vote to be conducted without a quorum of senators, Walker & Crew asserted that although state law prohibits spending the people’s money without a quorum, they feel it is fine to strip citizens of their rights without a quorum. This is the stuff of oligarchy.

Throughout the first two years of the Obama administration, conservatives in the U.S. Senate repeatedly used the filibuster maneuver to prevent votes on legislation that would otherwise have been approved by a majority. The progressives in Wisconsin essentially performed a filibuster with their feet – by going to another state to prevent a vote. What Walker & Co. did this week was exploit a loophole to circumvent the filibuster-by-foot. They damaged the democratic process in a way the progressives in the U.S. Senate never even considered when thwarted repeatedly by filibusters.

Walker & Crew got what they wanted. They commandeered from workers the right to collectively bargain for a better life. They did it with nefarious methods that disrespect the Constitution, disrespect democracy and disrespect workers. They did it in a way that heaps dishonor on them.

***

Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.

There’s a bold way to create jobs that’s being ignored by Washington!

What’s the plan? Pass a federal law to return to our pre-1970 status of maintaining a positive overall annual balance of  trade with other trading nations.

How would that work? We’d permit total imports each year to match our own ongoing exports. Import certificates  would be issued and traded by the U.S. government to implement the new arrangement. It’s not a protectionist tariff or added cost to U.S. consumers!

Give us the figures. Right now we import $2.3 trillion a year, and we export $1.5 trillion. $300 billion of the $800 billion deficit is from petroleum imports. The remaining $500 billion goods and services deficit would return to the U.S. for production and 5 plus million new jobs! The Obama jobs creation efforts have fallen far short, and there don’t seem to be any big ideas except ones needing heavy deficit spending.

Why hasn’t this balanced trade plan been adopted? Twice, first in late, 2009 and again this year, Obama held jobs summits. He said he’d consider all credible ideas, but both times his “free trade” advisors blocked all balanced trade proposals.

Result: There’s been no action on already-available legislation- “The Balanced Trade Restoration Act.” It wasn’t adopted by former President George W. Bush. It should be updated and passed. It would create millions of new jobs.

It’s time for bold action now!

Kenneth N. Davis Jr.
President, Economic Strategy Associates, Inc.
Stamford, Ct.
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce
Former IBM Corp. vice president and chief financial officer
Former investment banker

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Robert Reich

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

Two important victories for President Obama this week — the New Start anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia to reduce weapons and re-start inspections, and the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell after a 17-year ban on gays in the military.

Why have Senate Republicans been willing to break ranks on these two, while not a single Republican went along with Obama’s plan to extend the Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income? Why has Obama consistently caved on economic and taxes, but held his ground on foreign policy and issues like gays in the military?

A hint of an answer can be found in another Senate defeat for Obama over the last few weeks that got almost no attention in the media but was a big one: Republicans blocked consideration of the House-passed Disclose Act, which would have required groups that spend money on outside political advertising to disclose the major sources of their funding.

The answer is this. When it comes to protecting the fortunes of America’s rich (mostly top corporate executives and Wall Street) and maintaining their strangle-hold on the political process, Senate Republicans, along with some Senate Democrats, don’t budge. (more…)

Mike Lux

By Mike Lux
Author, “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be”

I was going to call this post Revolt of the Screwed, but decided that I didn’t want to get readers who were looking for porn sites. However, that is a good summary of what happened in the election: the middle class voters most hurt by this terrible recession turned against the Democrats with a vengeance. They were looking for someone to blame for their economic woes. The good news is that their first pick was Wall Street. The bad news for Democrats is that they associated Obama with Wall Street. The two most important and dramatic statistics coming out of the exit polling were (1) the 40% of voters who felt worse off economically in the last couple of years went Republican by 29% after going for Obama in 2008 by 42%; and (2) the 35% of voters who said Wall Street was more to blame than anyone else for the bad economy broke 56-42 for the Republicans. That first number is the biggest swing by far in any demographic group I have ever seen after looking at exit poll numbers for the past 25 years. I have seen swings in the 30s before, maybe even into the low 40s in some small segment of the electorate once or twice, but I have never seen anything close to a 71% swing before.

I wrote early in 2009 that voters were going to be in a very bad mood in November of 2010, and that this would be a blame election, where economically stressed swing voters would be wanting to take their misery out on someone. I was certainly right about that, but here’s the ironic thing: I suggested that since I thought it was unlikely we could get them to blame the economy on Bush since we were in charge now, that our best hope was to get them to blame it on Wall Street. They did, that 35% who laid the blame on Wall Street’s door were primarily the middle class swing voter bloc in this election, but they associated us Democrats and Obama with Wall Street more than Republicans. The TARP bailout and Obama and Geithner’s vigorous defense of it, the kid glove treatment of the big banks at the hands of Geithner, the AIG and big bank bonuses that closely followed, the failure to prosecute or break up the Too Big To Fail banks: it all came together in those angry middle class voters’ minds as Obama being associated with the same Wall Street actors people were blaming for their economic problems. The fact that once the financial reform bill that had some important wins for the middle class was passed, Democrats barely ever talked about it again didn’t help.

So now that this election from hell is over, the question is how do Obama and the Democrats come back in 2012. There’s a lot of talk about moving to the center, but what does that even mean? When Washingtonians talk about the center, they tend to mean cutting Social Security and doing trade deals, but what do the economically stressed swing voters who turned against Democrats mean by the center? Well, these voters have very strong feelings about certain issues, and they don’t tend to track with what pundits in DC talk about much. Check out these numbers from a Stan Greenberg poll done for the Campaign for America’s Future. Stan did a careful analysis of which voters were the key swing voters, and what he found is striking:

-Swing voters supported a message about challenging China on trade, ending subsidies to corporations that send jobs overseas, and stopping NAFTA-like trade deals over a message about increasing exports, passing more trade agreements, and getting government out of the way by 59-28 (more…)

Mike Lux

By Mike Lux
Author, “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be”

There’s all the usual post-election palaver that happens after a Democratic loss: Republican and right-wing triumphalism, the pro-corporate wing of the Democratic party and conventional wisdom pundits arguing that Democrats should “turn to the center” (by which they mean the Washington center — cutting Social Security, doing more trade deals, not antagonizing Wall Street — as opposed to what the center is for voters), and progressives arguing that Obama should stand strong on Democratic values and not cave to the Republican agenda. There’s also a classic dynamic where some Democrats are urgently calling on people not to attack each other or the president, to try to keep the party from looking like it is in disarray, and others wanting to really engage in that old centrist versus left debate and critique.

I have been thinking hard about all this in part because it’s the obvious thing everyone is thinking and talking about and in part because I am doing a lot of panels and media interviews right now — the latest one yesterday at Harvard where I did left-right panel with Bill Kristol on analyzing the elections. Interestingly, while Kristol and I naturally disagreed on the substance and political dynamics on many key issues — Afghanistan, tax cuts for the rich, health care among the big ones that came up — we agreed on the essential point that Obama can only survive by reconnecting with both the Democratic base and working class swing voters by being more populist on jobs, banking issues, and Social Security/Medicare (Republicans get honest while speaking academically in the weeks immediately after the elections — like Lee Atwater, also speaking at Harvard after the 1988 election, Kristol agreed that the swing vote in national elections is a working class populist vote).

At the end of the day, though, I keep coming back to one thing. Political positioning is significant, and I continue to believe populist rhetoric and substance on issues helps. Energizing the base and doing more to turn out Democratic base voters in 2012 will be important. But ultimately there will be only one way for Obama and the Democrats to come back in 2012, and that is for the economy to be substantially better. The thing Washington insiders always seem to glide over is the level of economic pain that is out there. The real unemployment rate is far higher than the official numbers because they don’t include part-time and temporary workers still looking for full time jobs as well as those who are too discouraged to look for work. Incomes have been flat while a lot of everyday costs for things like groceries, gas and utilities, health care, and college tuition are a lot higher than they were a few years ago. Pensions and savings wiped out by the stock market collapse still haven’t recovered for most people. And the housing crisis — 25 percent or more of homeowners are in real trouble, and housing prices are staying down — looms like a massive New York skyscraper towering over everything else. (more…)

Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson
Fellow with Campaign for America’s Future

Today the US Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk filed two complaints with the World Trade Organization (WTO). The first alleges that China is keeping American credit and debit card companies out of their electronic payment market. The second is a “dumping” (selling under cost) complaint on steel products.

“We are concerned that China is breaking its trade commitments to the United States and other WTO partners,” Kirk said in announcing the two cases.

This is a big deal, because it tells China that we are willing to fight back. But Sen. Charles Grassley said this was not enough,

“The administration should go one step further and bring a case against China’s unfair currency manipulation at the WTO. Everyone knows China is manipulating its currency to gain an unfair advantage in international trade,” Grassley said.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post, President Obama Enforces Trade Law In China Tire Case!, celebrating President Obama’s decision to enforce the ITC’s recommendation to impose tariffs on Chinese tire imports.

What was the result of that decision to actually enforce trade laws? Did the world end? Did it start a “trade war” with China? No, the result was that jobs started to return.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing is running this full page ad in a few newspapers today:

AAM explains: (click through for links) (more…)

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

China is disrespecting America.

The Asian giant is an international trade outlaw, and U.S. manufacturers and workers are its crime victims.

China illegally subsidizes its export industries and unlawfully manipulates its currency. That kills U.S. industry and destroys U.S. jobs. Earlier this year, the Obama administration asked China nicely to allow its currency value to float up naturally on international markets. On June 19, China said it would.

And then it didn’t.

That’s flipping the bird at America.

Before China’s June 19 promise, bipartisan groups of lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate proposed legislation that would force the U.S. Treasury Department to even the score and to call China out for what it is: a currency manipulator. Hearings on the bills are being conducted this week.

Pass the legislation. It’s time for America to flip the bird back.

Negotiation and threats have failed to produce a sustained, substantial currency float by China. Now, the Chinese currency, the renminbi, is undervalued by as much as 40 percent, a figure accepted by conservatives like C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Even the International Monetary Fund managing director said the currency is undervalued.

China simply denied it. In March, the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, said he did not believe the renminbi was undervalued. That’s flipping off the world.

It works like this: China prints renminbi to buy billions of U.S. dollars, which makes them appear more desired and valuable, and the renminbi, by contrast, less valuable. That undervaluation of the renminbi acts as a subsidy for Chinese exports, artificially making them as much as 40 percent cheaper when sold in the U.S. Conversely, it acts as a tax of as much as 40 percent on American-made goods sold in China.

This dynamic contributed significantly to the rise of manufacturing in China. Earlier this year, China surged past Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy. And it contributes significantly to America’s massive trade deficit. The gap in July was $42.8 billion, more than half of which — $25.9 billion — was a result of trade with one country – China.

China’s rapid economic growth has ended poverty for millions of its workers.  Here in the United States, however, China’s flouting of international trade law is destroying the lives of millions of workers. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 2.4 million American jobs have been lost or displaced since 2001 as a result of the trade deficit with China. American workers celebrate their Chinese counterparts’ improved quality of life, but they condemn the government of China for accomplishing that with beggar-thy-neighbor trade practices.

Earlier this year, it briefly looked like threats would prompt China to act. In March, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators introduced legislation specifying the factors necessary to label a country as a currency manipulator and detailing American reprisals. And in April, the Treasury Department delayed its report identifying countries that manipulate currency rates, suggesting that it was ready to take on China.

China appeared to respond to that pressure in June. It announced it would allow the renminbi to float toward its real value on the open market. The Treasury Department backed off, omitting China from its list of currency manipulators in July.

China then permitted the value of the renminbi to rise less than one percent. One percent. When it’s as much as 40 percent undervalued. That’s flipping the bird at America. Big time.

Still, America didn’t react.

On Aug. 25, the Commerce Department announced 14 new measures to crack down on trade violations, such as ending certain exemptions from duties.

It did not, however, mention currency manipulation.

Dan DiMicco, CEO at Nucor Corp., the largest U.S. steelmaker, said the 14 measures are important, but the problem with China won’t be resolved until the United States takes on currency undervaluation. Here’s what he said:

“As long as we continue to let them get away with it, they’ll keep doing it.”

Six days later, in a trade case filed by the U.S. Aluminum Extrusions Fair Trade Committee, a coalition of domestic manufacturers of aluminum extrusions and the USW, the Commerce Department again squirmed out of dealing with currency manipulation.

Commerce imposed import duties on Chinese aluminum companies because China unfairly subsidized $514 million in aluminum exports to the U.S. in 2009. But Commerce refused to investigate the Fair Trade Committee’s evidence that China’s currency manipulation functions as an additional illegal export subsidy.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, a sponsor of currency manipulation legislation, said afterward:

“The Commerce Department made its finding while still managing to ignore the elephant in the room, which is China’s currency manipulation.”

Commerce and Treasury have decided the proper response to China flipping off America is averting their eyes.  See no evil.

Yesterday Japan followed China’s lead. It bought dollars and sold yen, decreasing the value of yen and increasing the value of dollars. This, the New York Times explained, was “a bid to protect its export-led economy.” That’s exactly what China is doing.

It’s a very public show of contempt for international regulations and for American citizens.

Normally, Americans don’t respond passively to contempt.  Be normal, America.

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Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama recently appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute.  He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union.