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Widespread Anxiety Among May 19, 2004 American workers in once-proud industrial states are feeling the pinch of the global outsourcing movement and nervous about their ability to find new jobs if laid off, according to the results of a new poll of blue- and white-collar workers. Nine hundred survey respondents in Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington and Ohio expressed concern for the trend toward outsourcing and the increasing importation of foreign-made goods. The survey was commissioned by the International Association of Machinists. "The fear of job loss runs deep among the workers surveyed in this poll," said IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger, whose union has lost 90,000 members since 2000. "For millions of middle class Americans, both in and out of work, the nations employment crisis is far from over." More than 25 percent of the workers surveyed reported a job loss in their immediate family during the past two years. For those that found new work, the pay and benefits were often reduced. In Ohio alone, seventy-five percent said they were making less than in their previous job. Of those surveyed, 63 percent said it would be difficult to find a comparable job, in skill and pay level, as the position they currently hold. And despite talk of "economic recovery," 75 percent of the people in the survey said the threat of cheap foreign goods that undercut the market for American products and cause companies to lay off Americans "possible" or "very real." Most of the respondents said elected officials were not paying enough attention to issues such as fighting foreign imports that threaten American jobs (62 percent), fighting for tougher laws to keep jobs in America (86 percent) and fighting to save Americas manufacturing industries (75 percent). The poll showed a large majority of those surveyed would support a candidate for president who proposed an aggressive jobs program. More than 80 percent supported new, expanded tax incentives for American companies to renovate and retool their factories in America. Nearly 80 percent said they would like to see trade deals that were destroying manufacturing jobs repealed. Seventy percent said they would favor the government investing more in job creation even if it meant doing without some future tax cut. "This survey just reinforces what we have known for a long time: the trade policies of the Bush administration are toxic for working families and its nonexistent job creation program speaks for itself," said IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill. "There no way to spin the loss of two million jobs in less than four years."
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