Labor & Employment Law

Trumka: Grow America?s Economy by Investing in Infrastructure, Job Development

By James Parks

U.S. economic and trade policies over the past three decades have led to jobs lost offshore and a shrinking middle class, and the United States must address this economic bleed through trade policies and investment in infrastructure and manufacturing, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.

Speaking this morning to the International Economic Development Council, Trumka said the United States must invest in building the 21st century infrastructure necessary for our future, including high-speed mass transit, smart utilities and universal high-speed broadband. That investment, in turn, would boost manufacturing because we will then:

buy what we need in America?from concrete, wire, steel and pipes to high-speed trains.  And all this will restore revenues for crucial state and local services.

Trumka didn’t mince words when he discussed trade and the need for U.S. trade policies to keep jobs in this country.

Let me put this bluntly: China is cheating, and its currency manipulations have to rebuild our manufacturing base and pointed out that our trading partners?including China, Germany, India, South Korea and Brazil?have manufacturing strategies, but we don?t.

President Obama has proposed more investments in our country and, Trumka warned, those ideas cannot be drowned out by the deficit debate because they can yield great rewards.

The nation’s lack of a national industrial plan hurts all of us, workers and business, every day, Trumka said. 

Individually, we?re all but powerless against hungry and powerful countries like China or India, which are willing to build-to-suit for any American corporation.

Separately, our voices get lost in the background noise. But if we join together, we can truly build an economic development movement, a massive tide of investment and research that will raise all of our boats.

The bottom line, said Trumka, is that this nation can remain great if we believe in ourselves and work together?business, economic development community, workers, government and colleges.

We can win today?s industrial race if we marshal our resources. We can build the best wind turbines and develop the new green energy technologies to capture and use solar and thermal energy.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 22, 2011 (boomark / email).