US Chamber of Commerce Endorses Offshore Outsourcing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: AFL-CIO
JULY 1, 2004 6:01 PM Sarah Massey 202-637-5018

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on Chamber of Commerce's Endorsement of Sending American Jobs Overseas

WASHINGTON - July 1 - It is a shocking slap in the face to America’s hard working men and women for Tom Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to brazenly call for even more good American jobs to be sent overseas, blindly arguing that this is good for America because this is best for corporations’ bottom line.

It is absolutely stunning that Donohue would then go on to accuse those men and women of "whining" when giant corporations ship their jobs overseas -- despite the fact that these men and women are the ones who suffer the resulting home foreclosures, bankruptcies, loss of health care and the missed chance for a college education that follows such community devastation.

Donohue is oblivious to the fact that our nation is reeling from a major jobs crisis as good jobs disappear overseas every single day. We’ve lost two million family-supporting manufacturing jobs under the Bush Administration, and long term unemployment is at a 20-year high. Wages are at their lowest levels in two years, there are more people uninsured than when Bush took office, and the new jobs that are being created -- WalMart type jobs -- pay on average 20 percent less than the jobs that went overseas.

Tom Donohue would benefit from taking a hard look at the world in which he actually lives -- rather than seeing the world solely through his comfortable corporate bubble -- and considering whether his pointed rhetoric drives even further the wedge between the wealthy and the rest of the people in this nation.