Exporting jobs betrays American workers

Home News Tribune Online 06/14/05
Fox News and the rest of our corporate media give the American masses fake scandals like the runaway bride, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and Monica Lewinsky to distract their attention from the real scandal that has been perpetrated by the corporations since 1980: the systematic betrayal and destruction of the middle class by the corporations' outsourcing of 80 million American jobs to India, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Central America for cheap labor.

The propaganda from George W. Bush is that outsourcing is good for America. He dwells on the fact that corporate profits and productivity are at an all-time high. However, these profits are a windfall for the ever-increasing and obscene pay given to corporate executives. The big lie is that profits and productivity will translate into meaningful employment for millions of displaced employees.
Many of our college graduates cannot find meaningful employment. And high productivity primarily means more work for less pay for employees.No answers are given concerning: Where and how do we retrain millions of unemployed? What do you train them for? Who pays for the retraining and the family living costs through retraining and finding a new job? Two recent examples of this corporate betrayal of the American worker are United Airlines and the Gillette Company. In May, United Airlines reneged on paying long-term employees their promised pensions, and the Gillette Company said it would not offer buyout packages to employees who will lose their jobs as part of planned job cuts. Nonetheless, Gillette offered chief executive James Kilts options to purchase an additional 800,000 shares of company stock — on top of the $165 million he stands to receive as a result of Procter & Gamble's acquisition of the shaving firm. The fact of the matter is that Bush's economic policies have been an utter disaster for the average American. The measly tax cuts most Americans received have been significantly outweighed by lower wages, higher health-care costs, higher education costs and fewer social services. In view of the above evidence that corporations are no longer loyal to American workers but only to profits, many people have abandoned all hope for the future of America. The power of corporations is now unstoppable and perfectly lethal to everything and everyone on earth, including the minuscule mob at the top currently profiting from their predations. In all of this, President Bush, an instrument of corporate America, has played his part magnificently. Most Americans, by any measure, are clueless to the point of moral imbecility. This is, after all, an alleged democracy, and democracy means responsibility to make informed decisions as a citizen. As a rule, Americans simply don't care, don't pay attention, and a growing number don't even read newspapers anymore. They are too busy watching the trash and propaganda on commercial television to understand how the corporations have betrayed the middle class worker during the past 25 years. Burke
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