In an op-ed published on The Huffington Post, Leo Hindery, Chairman of the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation, outlines a new report on how to reverse the jobs crisis.
Hindery, along with United Steelworkers International President Leo Gerard, recently co-chaired a Task Force on Job Creation, made up of policymakers, economists, business leaders, and labor leaders, including IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger. The group developed a series of 15 immediate recommendations, outlined in their “Vision for Economic Renewal: An American Jobs Agenda” report.
“Washington is often a city of Chicken Littles, which makes ringing the alarm bell difficult,” wrote Hindery. “But once Washington wakes up from its deficit hangover, politicians will realize something that most Americans have known for months: The sky has already fallen.”
The group found there are six vital policy areas that our government must address in order to create jobs: manufacturing, trade and globalization, U.S.-China trade, the infrastructure crisis, jobs in the green economy, and youth unemployment.
“America’s manufacturing sector must be a cornerstone of the nation’s economy and thus one of the essential drivers of the recovery we are still searching for,” wrote Hindery. “Our trade policies and unaddressed ills from globalization exacerbate America’s manufacturing industry woes. Coincident with the loss of trade and manufacturing is the decline of our nation’s infrastructure.
“Our national leadership is responsible for tackling the extreme real unemployment and stagnant wages crises. It’s time our leaders show the moral courage that defines true leadership and resolve to restore what all good Americans want and need: the security, well-being and self-respect that come from fair employment and wages.”
