[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 90 (Friday, June 25, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1275]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  INTRODUCING THE JOBS FOR AMERICA ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 25, 2004

  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, today I am joining with 
25 of my colleagues to introduce the Jobs for America Act--legislation 
that will help protect American workers who face job outsourcing.
  Every day, more Americans watch their jobs get shipped overseas. Jobs 
are disappearing from every sector of the economy--from high tech call 
centers to health care workers--leaving hundreds of thousands of 
families and their communities in the lurch.
  According to some estimates, 40 percent of Fortune 1000 companies are 
currently using some form of overseas outsourcing, and as many as 3.3 
million jobs may be offshored in the next 15 years. The latest study 
from Forrester Research finds that offshoring of white-collar jobs is 
accelerating, with the number of U.S. business service and software 
jobs moving overseas reaching 588,000 in 2005, up from 315,000 in 2003. 
By 2005, the total loss of software programming, customer call-center, 
and legal paperwork positions will hit 830,000 jobs--an increase of 40 
percent from this year.
  The Jobs for America Act amends the Worker Adjustment and Retraining 
Notification (WARN) Act to require companies to disclose and report 
whenever they lay off workers to send jobs overseas. It would require 
that when a company plans to lay off 15 or more workers and send those 
jobs overseas, it must:
  Inform affected workers, the Department of Labor, State agencies 
responsible for helping laid off employees, and local government 
officials;
  Disclose how many jobs are affected, where the jobs are going, and 
why they are being offshored; and
  Provide employees at least 3 months advance notice.
  Also, the Jobs for America Act strengthens the WARN Act by:
  Requiring the Department of Labor to compile statistics of offshored 
jobs and report them on an annual basis to the Congress and the public;
  Clarifying that WARN Act protections, including the 3 months advance 
notice, apply to all cases where 50 or more workers are laid off, 
regardless of the reason for the layoff; and.
  Ensuring effective remedies for workers who are injured by a 
company's violation of the WARN Act.
  While companies export jobs overseas for cheap labor, American 
workers deserve--at an absolute minimum--the earliest warning of a job 
loss. In today's economy, with massive longterm unemployment, workers 
need as much time as possible to begin looking for a new job or begin 
retraining for a new career. This bill will expand the amount of time 
available to workers to adjust to the loss of a job. It will also 
increase penalties on employers who choose to ignore these simple 
requirements, providing real make-whole remedies for workers who are 
injured by WARN violations, including consequential damages.
  Moreover, for the first time, the Secretary of Labor will be 
collecting and reporting large-scale data on offshore outsourcing. Such 
data collection will help us to better understand the scope and 
dynamics of this phenomenon and its threat to our standard of living, 
enabling us to craft more comprehensive solutions to the problem.
  While this bill will not by itself solve the outsourcing problem, it 
does provide critical tools--such as time and information--which will 
benefit both workers and Congress in their efforts to stem the 
hemorrhaging of jobs from this country.

                          ____________________