Jobs in America
   Delivered on the Senate floor by U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.,
  on Nov. 4, 2003.

   Mr. President, I bring to the attention of the Senate an issue dealing with jobs. It is a story about international trade, unfair competition, and the impact it has had on countless of our workers.
   There was great euphoria a week or so ago about the economic growth numbers for the past quarter, some 7 percent economic growth. The problem is, it was accompanied by a loss of jobs.
   Jobs are the kind of thing that families talk about in the evening as they sit around the supper table: Do I have a good job? Does it pay well? Do I have job security? Do I feel good about the company I am working for?
   Our country, regrettably, has lost nearly 3 million jobs in the past several years.
   This is a picture of a bicycle. This happens to be a Huffy bicycle. Huffy is a well-known brand. It is sold at Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sears. This Huffy bicycle used to be made in the United States. In Celina, Ohio, some 850 U.S. workers worked manufacturing bicycles. When a bike came off the Ohio plant's assembly line, they would put a little decal on, of an American flag.
   That was then, this is now. In the last couple of years, those jobs have all moved to China, Taiwan and Mexico. There were about 1,850 workers at Huffy plants in the United States as of 1998. And all those folks were fired, as their jobs were moved overseas.
   In Celina, Ohio, Huffy workers were paid $11 an hour plus benefits. These are decent manufacturing jobs. Nobody was getting rich on $11 an hour plus benefits, but these were good, solid jobs. Then they were told one day they would not be working those jobs any longer because Huffy bicycles would be produced in China.
   My understanding is that the very last assignment for these U.S. workers was to take off that decal from Huffy bikes and slap on a decal that had a picture of the globe.
   Let's talk a little about why a company would decide to shut its plant in Ohio and make bicycles in China.
   Huffy started to manufacture its bikes at a plant in China, where workers have to put in 13-1/2- to 15-hour shifts, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. Let me say that again: 93 hours a week, seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
   They are paid between 25 cents an hour and 41 cents an hour. Failure to work overtime is punished with a fine of two days' wages. There are strong chemical odors in the plant from the painting department, excessively high temperatures from the welding section, no health insurance, no social pension, strict factory rules, harsh management, no talking during working hours.
   Twelve workers are housed in each dark, stark dorm room. They have two meals a day, with poor-quality food. If the workers complain or attempt to raise a grievance about harsh working conditions or excessively long, forced overtime hours, or low wages, they are immediately fired.
   In this particular plant, in late 1999, all the workers in the delivery section went on strike and were fired immediately.
   So the question is, if we cannot produce bicycles in Ohio for 25-cent-an-hour to 41-cent-an-hour wages, do U.S. workers lose? Under current circumstances, yes, we do, because companies decide that if U.S. workers can't compete with slave-like conditions, tough luck. If you can't compete, you're out.
   So people who were working in this company in Celina, Ohio, making bicycles for our marketplace, could not compete because they were expecting a livable wage. They worked hard and they were able to take a paycheck home that meets the needs of their families: $11 an hour plus benefits. But they were told that this was an outrageous level of compensation: $11 an hour -- far too much.
   So instead, Huffy found a place where it could pay 25 cents an hour and then shipped its bikes back to Celina, Ohio, so that some young kid in Celina, Ohio, could go into a Wal-Mart or a Sears or a Kmart and with a gleam in their eye buy his first bicycle. A bicycle now made by somebody who is making 25 cents an hour, working 93 hours a week, seven days a week.
   I guess this so-called globalization is globalization without rules. It means it does not matter that Americans lose their jobs to somebody making 25 cents an hour.
   I have given other examples of 12-year-olds working 12 hours a day, making 12 cents an hour. I am talking about Huffy bicycles today to drive home a point, because Huffy is a household name.
   If we fought for a century on the issue of a safe workplace or child labor laws or minimum wages or the conditions of production, then the question should be, Is there an admission price to the American marketplace? Is there any admission price at all?
   What about bicycles made in a plant where workers are working 93 hours a week, where workers are working from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week? Is that fair trade -- 25 cents an hour, 93 hours a week, seven days a week, working in a factory that does not meet the basic conditions of fairness or safety for workers?
   Is that fair trade? It is not, where I come from. Yet no one will say a word about it. In this town, you are either blindly for free trade, unfettered free trade, globalization, or else you are considered some xenophobic, isolationist stooge who does not understand it all.
   It is so tiresome to see people in this chamber and the people who write the editorials and the op-ed pieces continue to make excuses for the thousands, and yes, millions of jobs lost in this country by people who worked hard but who could not make it because they made too much money. They could not compete with somebody making 25 cents an hour in Asia. It is so tiresome to see and read and hear the excuses from those who continue to support a failed trade policy.
   If this is a race to the bottom, with corporations deciding they want to circle the globe to find out, Where can I produce the cheapest? Where can I find 12-cents-an-hour production by 12-year-olds? if that is what this is a race toward, we lose -- this country loses.
   More and more families in this country will lose their jobs, not because they're not great workers, not because they do not know their job well, but because someone else in other parts of the world -- where they are not able to form labor unions, where they are not able to complain about unsafe working conditions, where they are not able to stop a plant from dumping chemicals into the air and the water, and where they are not able to complain about being paid 12 cents or 20 cents an hour -- will get the jobs.
   That product will then be made and sent back to the store shelves here. I will guarantee you it will not be cheaper, it will simply represent more profit for those who took jobs away from Americans to give them to people in other parts of the world who will work for pennies an hour.
   We can continue to pretend it does not happen. We can continue to act like ostriches. But the fact is, this country is losing economic strength as a result of trade policies that are, in my judgment, incompetent.
   We will have on the floor of this Senate, very soon we hear, additional free trade agreements -- the Australia agreement, the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. In fact, this administration is now working on additional free trade agreements. We just did one with Singapore, which itself was incompetent. But that is another story for another time.
   This country, it seems to me, has a great deal at stake. This economic engine of ours will work provided we have jobs for American families. When you see the decimation of our manufacturing base, and now, our high-tech industry, as well, with jobs moving wholesale overseas -- in the manufacturing base, moving to Indonesia, China, and other parts of Asia; in the high-tech industry, jobs moving to India and other countries, and moving en masse -- then this county's economy is going to have trouble because the engine of progress in this country is jobs.
   You can talk all you want about percentages -- 7 percent economic growth; that is all great. But it does not mean a thing if we are losing jobs. The engine of progress for the American family, the engine of progress for this country's economy, is jobs -- good jobs that pay well, that have decent benefits, that give a family confidence and hope about the future, because that hope and confidence is what expands the economy. That is all the economy rests on.
   The great minds involved in international trade tell the 850 workers in Celina, Ohio: You are paid too much money. You cost $11 an hour to build bicycles. Shame on you. We can do this for 25 cents an hour in China. So, say goodbye to your jobs. We are taking them to China.
   Is that what we want for our country? Is that what we are willing to stand for? Well, I am telling you something: Year after year after year, the majority of the people in this chamber are willing to stand for it. At some point we better get a backbone to stand up and insist, and demand, that there is an admission price to the American marketplace. We are open and free but we require fairness.
   There are thousands of examples like the one involving Huffy bicycles, all over this country -- of someone coming home saying to their husband or wife: Honey, I have lost my job. They are shipping our manufacturing to China (or Indonesia, or Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka). Why? Because I didn't do a good job? No. Because I am making $11 an hour and they say that is too much. They can get it for 15 cents an hour or 31 cents an hour somewhere else.
   This is not going to save the American consumers any money; they will charge the same price for the products. It is about profit --international profit.
   This is hurting our country. These trade rules injure this country and we have to change them. I serve notice again that, as we negotiate these new trade agreements -- and they are being negotiated in Australia, the free trade agreement with the Americas, and others. Be aware that some of us in the Senate are going to continue to fight as hard as we can possibly fight to say that what is happening to American jobs is wrong.
   If we are inefficient and cannot compete, that is our problem. But don't tell me the workers in Ohio making $11 an hour, building a good bicycle, with an American flag insignia on the front of it, are inefficient.
   We fought for a century over these issues -- fair pay, safe workplaces, the ability to organize as a labor union. We worked for a century on these things, and now you wipe it all out by pole-vaulting over those nettlesome little laws in the United States and say: We can avoid that. We will ship our bicycle production to, in this case, China. It could have been Sri Lanka or Indonesia.
   We ought to think long and hard about how to save our jobs in this country. Our marketplace can certainly be enhanced by having goods and services come from other countries, but only when they are produced under some basic element of decency and fair play.
   There is an organization I want to give credit to that has done excellent work in this area. The National Labor Committee investigates unfair labor practices in various parts of the world. They have investigated the dismal labor conditions at the Huffy factories in China, as an example.
   . . . All of this, in my judgment, comes down to the basic premise that when American families in this country have a job, they have security, and they feel good about the future, our economy thrives. But we are increasingly seeing jobs in this country, which have been the bulwark of support for American families, moved overseas. And the American families are told: We are sorry, you don't have a job any more, so you can find two or three part-time jobs to make up the difference, and have all of the members of your family working, and you can make it that way.
   That is a quick way to undermine the strength of this country. No country will long remain an economic power or world economic power without a strong, vibrant, growing manufacturing sector. Ours is being decimated.
   I yield the floor.

| Top of page | Back to Oh!pinion weblog |