Labor & Employment Law

Creating Jobs Takes Center Stage at ?Keep It Made in America? Tour

By James Parks

 With the midterm election just four weeks away, all the polls show the economy and jobs top the list of voter concerns. The question everyone is asking is ?How do we turn the economy around?? The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) has one answer: Keep It Made in America.

The non-partisan group is taking that message around the country with its 2010 “Keep It Made in America” tour. The tour kicks off with a town hall meeting Oct. 12 in Hartford, Conn. In more than two weeks AAM will hold town hall meetings in 12 cities in 10 states. The meetings will give voters the chance to hear directly from candidates and elected officials where they stand on such key issues as unbalanced trade with China and rebuilding U.S. manufacturing for the global economy.

 ”A majority of likely voters say the U.S. no longer has the world’s strongest economy and that Washington isn’t doing enough to rebuild manufacturing,” says AAM Executive Director Scott Paul.

We are providing voters with a chance to ask their candidates directly, ‘What are you going to do about restoring manufacturing and the millions of jobs we’ve lost to China.” We’ve invited the candidates. Let’s see if they’ll face the voters. The voters get it. Will the candidates?

Each town hall meeting will include a panel of local business, labor and civic leaders, as well as federal and statewide elected officials and candidates. The meetings will focus on:

• The need to create good jobs for the 21st century;
• The importance of fighting for manufacturing as the key to any economic recovery;
• Leveling the playing field for American workers and businesses in the global marketplace.

To find out where the town hall meetings will be held, visit the AAM website here.

The “Keep It Made in America”  and the Painters and Allied Trades’ (IUPAT’s) “It’s About the Jobs” coast-to-coast bus tour, which ended Sept. 24, are both part of a massive mobilization by unions and our allies to get Americans back to work and to educate voters about the best ways to create new jobs. 

Over the weekend, 175,000 union members and civil rights and community activists joined together for the One Nation Working Together rally in Washington, D.C. At the same time, thousands of union members were knocking on union family doors and volunteering to get out the vote for Nov. 2. This mass mobilization will continue right up until Nov. 2 because there is no more important issue in this election than the creation of good, new jobs.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 05, 2010 (boomark / email).