IAM President Tom Buffenbarger sums up what North America
needs to do to create jobs worth fighting for.
Creating jobs, jobs worth fighting for, demands big ideas, bold
leadership and brash plans. The jobs crisis we face in North
America goes to the heart of who we are as a people Ð Canadians
and Americans alike. We are makers of our own futures. And that
future is at risk. We need a broad-based set of initiatives.
We need new leadership across the board ―
in the Congress, at the White House and throughout the Federal
Reserve System. Their trite and timid ways cannot cut it in this
time of crisis.
We need to experiment as Franklin Roosevelt did during the
worst economic crisis in our history. We need to:
- Invest in our plants and factories
― rolling out an investment tax
credit for the renovation and retooling of older facilities.
- Stimulate our smaller manufacturers' efforts to
export their products, to compete against low wage, "low-road"
firms here and abroad.
- Scrap the trade deals that are destroying our
manufacturing sector and negotiate fair trade treaties that
work to our mutual advantage, not our distinct disadvantage.
- Massively invest in the public goods Ð
transportation networks, clean water and air technologies,
electric power, broadband Ð that will let us grow new
industries.
- Redirect public monies to basic research & development.
Half a trillion dollars is now budgeted for the Department of
Defense, NASA, Department of Energy and the National Institutes
of Health. Couldn't some of those dollars flow into state and
local job creation initiatives?
And couldn't we endow and build high tech institutes in each
congressional district so blue-collar workers could readily
upgrade their skill sets?
These are just a few ideas that could be part of a big, bold
and broad set of initiatives. They are but a starting point for
all who would lead this continent in the 21st Century.
