[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 158 (Tuesday, November 4, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13840-S13842]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            JOBS IN AMERICA

  Mr. DORGAN. 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, OH, 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, OH, 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., 7 days a week.
  Let me say that again: 93 hours a week, 7 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 2 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 are out.
  So people who were working in this company in Celina, OH, making 
bicycles for our marketplace, could not compete because they were 
expecting a liveable 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, OH, so that some young kid 
in Celina, OH, 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, 7 
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., 7 days 
a week? Is that fair trade--25 cents an hour, 93 hours a week, 7 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

[[Page S13841]]

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 to 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 towards, we lose, this country loses.
  More and more families in this country will lose their jobs, not 
because they are 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.
  Look, I think these are really important issues. We talk about the 
economy, expansion, jobs, and opportunity. 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 anymore, 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.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Murkowski). The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, how much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Three minutes.


                              FOREIGN OIL

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I wish to follow the comments 
of the Senator from North Dakota about jobs going overseas and point 
out another vulnerability we have as a result of dependence overseas, 
and that is our dependence on foreign oil.
  Today, we are importing over half of our daily consumption of oil. 
That is moving toward 60 percent of our daily consumption of oil that 
is coming from foreign shores. As a result, not only does that put us 
in a precarious economic position, but it puts us in a precarious 
defense position. Look at the difference in how we would be able to 
operate in the Middle East, in the Persian Gulf region, if we did not 
have the delivery of that oil. Look at the potential strike of a 
terrorist taking down a supertanker in the 19-mile-wide Strait of 
Hormuz and what that would do to the world economy if that oil could 
not flow out to the industrialized world. Yet what do we do about an 
energy policy here?
  The Senator from North Dakota and I tried to do a simple little thing 
such as get increased mileage for SUVs phased in over the next decade, 
and we only got some votes--in the thirties

[[Page S13842]]

out of 100 Senators--to do that. When we try to look down the road at 
alternative ways, where is most of our energy consumed? It is consumed 
in the transportation sector. In transportation, where is most of our 
energy consumed in this country? It is in our personal vehicles. Today, 
we have vehicles made by Honda and Toyota that are getting in excess of 
50 miles per gallon; they are called hybrid vehicles. It is a computer 
that runs between an electric motor and a gasoline engine, and they get 
over 50 miles per gallon. They cannot make enough of these for the 
demand of the American consumer. Yet we do not have a lot of these 
hybrid cars that are offered to the public.

  What are we doing for the future? We could wean ourselves from 
dependence on foreign oil if we started a crash course to develop a 
hydrogen engine that was cheap enough and efficient enough for the 
American people. Years ago, in the early sixties, when this Nation made 
up its mind, after the President declared we were going to develop the 
technology and the American ingenuity to go to the Moon and return 
safely within that decade, don't you think that with that kind of 
perseverance and will, we could have ended up with an engine that would 
have been an alternative to oil and we would have started to wean 
ourselves from our dependence on this foreign oil that leaves this 
country all the more vulnerable defensewise?
  Indeed, we could, but it takes leadership. It takes the will of the 
American people to say there is going to be a different way.
  I have discussed this issue in terms of defense. I have discussed 
this issue in terms of economic vitality as well as defensewise, and 
certainly environmentally it would make a significant difference as 
well.

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