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Guest Commentary: July 23, 2001
You Shouldn't Need an MBA to Get a Good Job
The Honorable Jay Rockefeller
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As Governor of West Virginia in the 1980's and later as a U.S. Senator, I have seen firsthand the devastation that import surges have wrought on manufacturing communities.
I have walked the streets of Welch, knowing that one in four people I met that day were unemployed. I have been to Weirton and Wheeling and seen the impact of the recent surge of dumped and subsidized steel imports on the economic landscape and the collective psyche of those communities as thousands of steelworkers, as well as workers whose jobs depend on those steel companies staying open, have been laid off. I have seen jean factories in Elkins and Phillippi, a shoe plant in Marlington, a glassworks in Huntington, and a shirt factory in Morgantown, close down because of foreign competition, throwing hundreds of people -- many of whom had never held another job -- out of work.
Many of the unemployed are in their 20's and 30's with young children to support. Others are in their 40's and 50's and have held the same job for more than 20 years. A few may never find work again. For those who do, it will be at a vastly reduced salary with fewer benefits. And as plants continue to close down, who knows if the health care and pension benefits that were guaranteed by their employers and which those workers thought they could depend on will still be there for them when they retire?
It makes me angry that we as a Nation have not done nearly enough to help those who have been dislocated from foreign trade, through no fault of their own, particularly when our trade policies led to their unemployment. Instead, we have provided a Trade Adjustment Assistance program for which many of our workers do not qualify and which provides too little assistance for workers to retrain so that they can adequately provide for their families. That is just not right.
At the same time, our foreign trade partners continue to engage in unfair and illegal trade practices that throw more and more Americans out of work. For years, the relative market shares of the top Japanese steel firms has never varied by more than 1 percent, regardless of changes in the marketplace, because they have a cartel. Russian steelworkers often do not receive wages. New uneconomic steel capacity continues to come on line around the world, often partially funded by loans from international financial institutions that receive U.S. Government funding.
Yet our steelworkers, glassworkers, and others in the manufacturing sector of our economy are forced to compete on the same playing field with these countries, whose producers are heavily subsidized or who have benefitted from a long legacy of indirect government assistance or toleration of anti-competitive activities. Such practices have allowed foreign steel companies to stay in business long after they would have shut down if they were located in the United States. How are our workers supposed to compete with that, no matter how efficient they are?
It is no wonder that people in this country are beginning to wake up to our trade policies and wonder just what we are doing and what principles, if any, we are using to guide them. You should not need to have an MBA from Harvard in order to get a good job, with good wages and benefits, in this country.
If this Administration wants to negotiate more trade agreements, without dealing with the impact that trade has on our steelworkers and workers in other sectors of our economy who built this country into the economic super power that it is today, then it will fail miserably.
Note: This column has been adapted from a speech Sen. Rockefeller delivered on the floor of the Senate, July 23, 2001.
 How to contact Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia)
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