If you check any conservative Facebook page there will be inevitably a comment that states, “Unions at one time had a place in American society, but currently all they do is drive up the price of things and force jobs to go overseas.”
Such a statement is complete BS.
What has forced jobs to go overseas are free trade agreements. Companies can take advantage of the incredibly cheap labor in other countries and juice their profits without any penalties. A lot of these companies really aren’t hurting as far as profitability is concerned, they could continue to make things in the US, they just don’t want to. To increase their profit margins companies are willing to sell out the American worker and subsequently America by shutting down factories here and shipping them to countries where we have free trade agreements. If these free trade agreements didn’t exist and companies had to pay a penalty for outsourcing jobs, we’d probably have more jobs here in the US and a better economy – think about it.
So, are we learning from any of this? It doesn’t appear so. The reason why is, Congress is set to vote this week on three new free trade agreements with Columbia, South Korea and Panama. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), these agreements could cost the US an additional 214,000 jobs.
The only people who stand to gain from these new free trade agreements are corporate executives with stock options. We probably won’t be selling these countries a lot, but corporate execs. will have three new options for cheap labor and resources without ever having to create any new US jobs or paying any penalties for outsourcing to them. Please call your Congressional representative and ask them to vote “No” on these agreements. American jobs are on the line.