Washington, D.C., March 21, 2016 – Following Sen. Bernie Sanders’s trip to Washington state, IAM International President Bob Martinez issued the following statement in response to Sanders’s comments on the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank:
“The IAM continues to be concerned about Sen. Sanders’s push to end the Ex-Im Bank. The bank means jobs for our members, especially for tens of thousands of working men and women in Washington state. Sen. Sanders’s extreme rhetoric and misguided voting record on this issue is alarming for the 85,000 families across the state who rely on the success of the bank.
“Sen. Sanders is simply wrong on the Ex-Im Bank; it is not ‘corporate welfare.’ It drives the Washington economy, including the high wage aerospace industry, one of the last sectors in which the U.S. enjoys a positive balance of trade with the rest of the world. At no cost to taxpayers, this is a winning program for workers and businesses.”
The IAM is one of the largest industrial trade unions in North America, representing more than 35,000 workers at Boeing among 600,000 active and retired members in dozens of industries.
