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IBEW, Industrial Unions Demand Results From Congress

March 2003 IBEW Journal

IBEW members from Ohio plan their legislative strategy outside congressional offices. From left are Vermilion Local 998 member Bob McCreery, Fourth District International Representative Tom Curley, Toledo Local 1076 member Robert Herman, and Business Manager Dave Austin and Bellefontaine Local 1691 Business Manager Shane Summers

Manufacturing in the U.S. is in crisis. The country is continuing to lose production capacity and good jobs at an alarming rate. Industrial employment fell to 16.5 million in December, its lowest level in 41 years. Health care costs are growing by 10 percent a year and employers are increasingly shifting the burden of health care and retiree benefits to their employees, forcing many workers to drop coverage.

"America’s able industrial complex is the backbone of our country and small towns, cities and states depend on it," said IBEW President Edwin D. Hill. "When we import billions more dollars in goods than we sell, we shortchange America while bankrolling worker abuses overseas."

IBEW Manufacturing Department Director Bob Stander said the aim of the Industrial Union Council, AFL-CIO, is to give the industrial unions a unified voice and strengthen their bargaining position. "It will provide us an opportunity to coordinate, using the same philosophy that we all organized with—that there is strength in numbers," Stander said.

The two days of activities were part pep rally and part policy briefing with members of the 12 manufacturing unions under the new Industrial Union Council banner. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney introduced one session by warning delegates that they would not like much of what they were about to hear about the dimensions of the industrial crisis.

"It’s a sorry tale of purposeful destruction of the high-wage, good benefit manufacturing jobs that have elevated the jobs of all working families in our country," Sweeney said. "It’s a tale that makes me angry and I know that those of you who live this take every day are already angry."

AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) and Rep. George Miller (D-California), also spoke before delegates took their message to Capitol Hill for an afternoon of lobbying. Their bold agenda included calls for developing fair trade policies that reduce the United States’ staggering trade deficit and eliminating incentives for corporations to move production facilities overseas. Delegates also argued for health care and labor law reform. See sidebar "IBEW to Congress: Working Americans Need Your Help."

Congressman Miller forcefully decried President Bush’s continuing advocacy of tax breaks for the wealthy over the interests of working Americans.

"If we cannot change the people who control this government, we cannot help you—it’s that simple," Miller said. "These Republicans are working overtime to shovel more and more benefits to the wealthy. They see the federal economic policies as a chessboard on which to win investment, profit, tax and trade incentives for their corporate, financial, big-donor, and upper-income constituencies. So the Industrial Union Council comes along at the right moment. We need a rededication to the principle of economic democracy on which the wealth of this nation and the strength of our communities was built."

The delegates received a crash course on the economic consequences of international trade imbalances. When the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted in 1994, companies moved production overseas, resulting in a ballooning of the trade deficit, or the difference between the amount the United States exports to overseas markets and the amount of imported goods sold here. The $9 billion annual deficit exploded to $83 billion last year, said Thea Lee of the AFL-CIO’s public policy department, and trade deals similar to NAFTA keep coming.

"Growth has been mediocre in the 20 years since we’ve put trade policies into place," Lee said. "Wages for the majority of American workers are stagnant."

December marked the 29^th consecutive month manufacturing employment declined in the United States, the longest decline since the Great Depression 70 years ago, said Bob Baugh, the director of the AFL-CIO’s new council. He said the continuing decline is dangerous to the United States economy as well as our national security. The job—to stem to tide of manufacturing losses—is a mighty one that every member must take home.

An IBEW workshop focused on identifying problems facing American unions and industry and beginning the process of finding answers. Unfair trading practices, corporate power over American life and the ease by which many members let social issues distract them from bread-and-butter politics were among the many problems cited by the delegates. Increased worker education, political involvement, media relations and, above all, organizing, were among the solutions identified.

President Hill told IBEW delegates that a January incident in St. Louis illustrated the conflict in America over manufacturing. President Bush gave a speech at a warehouse in front of a screen made to appear as boxes printed with the words "Made in the USA." But the real boxes, stacked in front of the podium, bore tape covering their country of origin, China.

"Never have I seen such an obvious example of a politician telling the truth by accident," President Hill said. "If Bush really believes in the unrestricted free trade that he and past presidents—including, sadly, Bill Clinton—pushed, then why cover up the made in China label? If he is so proud of the global economy, why try to hide a fact that is obvious to any American in any store in the land: we are awash in cheap foreign imports, made by people with little or no labor rights, or even civil or human rights for that matter. That tape didn’t cover up anything. It really uncovered the fact that Americans must still care about having a domestic industrial base and creating decent, well-paying jobs for our own people."