[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 104 (Tuesday, August 2, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       PASS THE REEMPLOYMENT ACT

  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, a few years ago, the biggest and best 
employer in my home county was the IBM plant in Kingston, NY. Over 
7,000 people worked there, and thousands more wished they could. They 
were highly skilled people who made a good product, the world standard 
in mainframe computers, and the company rewarded them with secure jobs 
and good pay. Then the computer market shifted away from mainframes, 
and the layoffs began. Last week IBM announced it was closing the 
plant, and shifting the 1,200 people who still work there to another 
facility.
  The shift away from mainframes has left thousands of people out of 
work in my district alone. They built the machines all our programs and 
systems depend on, the machines that brought us into the computer age. 
They want to work, and they can work. They are highly skilled, but 
ironically, the rapid advances that their own industry helped to 
generate has made their skills obsolete.
  The Reemployment Act is made for them, and for hundreds of thousands 
of other working people around the country who are in similar 
situations, hard-working, highly skilled people who have been left 
behind by change. It is the rational, sensible answer to their problem, 
an answer that fits today's world. It does not seek to blame them or 
their employers or anyone else for what has happened. It does not try 
to train them for jobs that do not exist. It does not try to shoehorn 
them into a system that will not help them just because it would be 
easy for the Government. And it does not set up a huge new program of 
training schools.
  Instead, it makes use of training programs we already have, 
especially of community colleges. It customizes the services it offers. 
It eliminates the bureaucracy associated with past training programs. 
People will not have to learn how to negotiate a maze before they can 
start learning new job skills.
  We all know the old Depression-era song of the displaced worker that 
begins with memories of past accomplishments:

       Once I built a railroad, made it run
       Made it race against time

  That worker knew he was skilled, knew he had done a lot for us all in 
his own way, but was reduced to asking us only to ``spare a dime'' for 
him. We can do better than that for the workers who built the railroads 
and towers of our time, those who built the computers and highways of 
our age. We can give them the opportunity to learn new skills, and find 
new jobs. We will be helping ourselves if we do, because we can use 
their energy and their skills.

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