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American website tracks job exporting firms
A labour group has launched a website where anyone can find out what firms are exporting jobs overseas.
Labour group AFL-CIO has unveiled a website where anyone can find out what firms are exporting jobs overseas, reports UPI.
Working America, a workers' advocacy group affiliated with AFL-CIO, has created the "Job Tracker" site, where visitors can type in zip codes, company names or industries in order to see what companies are exporting jobs.
People can also see what those companies' chief executive officers earn.
"Americans had no way to track US businesses that are exporting jobs from their local communities ... until now with the Job Tracker," said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.
Currently about 200,000 companies and their subsidiaries are exporting jobs, said AFL-CIO, short for American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations.
A similar programme was suggested earlier this year by Democratic presidential challenger and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
Trumka, former head of the United Mineworkers Union, said the current administration promotes exporting jobs and the problem has become worse and worse over the last four years.
Working America said that since January 2001 Americans had lost 2.5 million manufacturing jobs and more than 850,000 professional service and information sector jobs, with a significant number of these jobs being transferred overseas.
By 2015, Working America said it expects 3.4 million US jobs, paying about $151 billion, to move to other countries. Despite this, Trumka said: "We're told that there is no crisis."
"We can end this by changing local, state and federal laws to ensure our taxpayer dollars are not subsidising the destruction of American jobs," Trumka said.
By terminating overseas tax breaks, the US would be able to generate an extra $7 to 12 billion a year in tax revenue, and the motivation to move companies overseas in order to evade paying taxes would be eliminated, Trumka said.
But Working America admits: "No single policy measure provides a magic bullet for stopping job loss."
Trumka asked US workers to write to companies and government officials asking them to take action to protect jobs. He also advised consumers not to purchase products from companies that outsource overseas.
While some say America needs to curb outsourcing, Tim Kane, expert research analyst at conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, sees exporting as a non-issue.
"Outsourcing is a ghost story developed to scare people," Kane said. Kane does not see outsourcing as a problem that affects either the quality or the quantity of US jobs at all.
What few jobs are being outsourced are neither the best nor the highest-paid jobs, he said. "I find it humorous that exporting has become such a media story."
